Merged Wall Street Bets subreddit / Too late to buy Gamestop stock?

[lobosrul5]

It also proposes a problem that isn't immediately easy to remedy.

This is absolutely market manipulation. These people are deliberately pumping up this stock as part of a stunt or get rich scheme.

But there's no leader or group of conspirators. It's thousands of individual investors, many making small purchases. It's the financial equivalent of a DDOS strike, no one person is really playing a large role.

I think it absolutely exposes weaknesses in our stock market system, though the wallstreet bet memers are the problem. The problem is that our institutions are able to make such absurdly risky, overleveraged positions to begin with.

The number of short sales exceeds the total available stock for Gamestop. It's all make believe. Speculative nonsense that, until now, only served to enrich the elite few.

Market manipulation is only illegal (in the USA anyways), given some pretty narrow circumstances. If you pay attention this is the same thing hedge funds have been doing for a long time. Take a short position, say how terrible the company is, profit. These guys aren't even same GME is good, just hey everybody by it!! They haven't made any fraudulent statements.

 

[ponderingturtle]

You think someone has to be in "the 1%" to have hundreds or thousands of dollars?

You think someone on the poverty line has thousands of dollars to play the market with?

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Market manipulation is only illegal (in the USA anyways), given some pretty narrow circumstances. If you pay attention this is the same thing hedge funds have been doing for a long time. Take a short position, say how terrible the company is, profit. These guys aren't even same GME is good, just hey everybody by it!! They haven't made any fraudulent statements.

Oof, i edited my post. I meant to say WSB buyer are not the problem.

They are simply exploiting the gaping vulnerabilities that exist in our under-regulated financial sector. The solution to these financial trolls is the same solution to ever other wall street disaster, more regulation and the ending of needlessly risky investments.

But since it's rich people getting scammed this time, we might actually see some legal response. If there's on thing the SEC doesn't like, it's rich people getting played like fools.

 

[TragicMonkey]

You think someone on the poverty line has thousands of dollars to play the market with?

Did I say they did? There's a very large gap between "poverty line" and "the 1%". And most of us are in that gap, as are the majority of these investors we're talking about.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Did I say they did? There's a very large gap between "poverty line" and "the 1%". And most of us are in that gap, as are the majority of these investors we're talking about.

You said $20K a year. That is certainly on the poverty line charts.

 

[TragicMonkey]

You said $20K a year. That is certainly on the poverty line charts.

That. Was. The. Point. Re-read that post. I was illustrating how one could skew the statistics by including extreme (and inapplicable) edge cases into a data set in order to produce mathematically-accurate but functionally nonsensical results; specifically, you can game the math so you could define "the 1%" to include actually quite poor people.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Bankrupt Blockbuster Joins Reddit-Inspired Retail Rally

(Bloomberg) -- The latest nostalgia stock to jump on the Reddit rally is BB Liquidating Inc., the final remnant of bankrupt video-rental company Blockbuster.

The penny stock surged as much as 302% Wednesday, adding to Tuesday’s 774% spike, on volume that was 70 times the three-month average, showing that even the most retrograde of old-technology stocks isn’t immune to the ebullience of retail investors and day traders.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bankrupt-blockbuster-remnant-joins-reddit-134805213.html

 

[BobTheCoward]

Oof, i edited my post. I meant to say WSB buyer are not the problem.

They are simply exploiting the gaping vulnerabilities that exist in our under-regulated financial sector. The solution to these financial trolls is the same solution to ever other wall street disaster, more regulation and the ending of needlessly risky investments.

But since it's rich people getting scammed this time, we might actually see some legal response. If there's on thing the SEC doesn't like, it's rich people getting played like fools.

Why is this exploitation? People buy stock, stock goes up.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Bankrupt Blockbuster Joins Reddit-Inspired Retail Rally



https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bankrupt-blockbuster-remnant-joins-reddit-134805213.html

Heh. Is everyone brainstorming which one might be next, to try to cash in on it? I'm glad all my investing is done through slow-ass means that take days to execute a trade, otherwise it might be tempting to try to anticipate this. Which would be folly. I'll stay boring and safe. Excitement and risk is for sex, not personal finance.

 

[mumblethrax]

Market manipulation is only illegal (in the USA anyways), given some pretty narrow circumstances. If you pay attention this is the same thing hedge funds have been doing for a long time. Take a short position, say how terrible the company is, profit. These guys aren't even same GME is good, just hey everybody by it!! They haven't made any fraudulent statements.

Shorting and distorting is illegal.

It might be difficult to prosecute a distributed pump and dump scheme (I'm skeptical that nobody involved said anything beyond "Hey, buy this!"), but it shouldn't be all that difficult to regulate it away.

 

[lobosrul5]

Shorting and distorting is illegal.

It might be difficult to prosecute a distributed pump and dump scheme (I'm skeptical that nobody involved said anything beyond "Hey, buy this!"), but it shouldn't be all that difficult to regulate it away.

Its only illegal if it can be proved that the shorter made a false claim. I remember seeing a statement just a few months ago from a hedge fund saying how awful Nikola is (an electric car company that GM was interested in).

Its absolutely not illegal for anyone to say "HEY BUY THIS STOCK CAUSE I WANT TO MAKE MONEY!". Thats 100% 1st amendment protected speech. Making false claims is, like hey buy GME because they made a profit of $100 million last quarter, you'll see when their official numbers come out. That would be fraudulent.

In fact I get financial blogs like in my Google feed all the time from bloggers trying to convince their readers how great a stock is, they do disclose that they have a position. Same thing as the degens on Reddit are doing, just not viral.

 

[Checkmite]

Did I say they did? There's a very large gap between "poverty line" and "the 1%". And most of us are in that gap, as are the majority of these investors we're talking about.

Ah... No. I think you're wrong that "most of us" have thousands of dollars of disposable income to spend as a joke.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Ah... No. I think you're wrong that "most of us" have thousands of dollars of disposable income to spend as a joke.

I meant most of us are between the poverty line and the 1%, not that most of us in that gap would have such money to invest. But many would. One does not need to be in "the 1%" (again, that's >$400,000 a year in income) to have hundreds or even thousands of dollars to invest.

 

[Mader Levap]

You think someone has to be in "the 1%" to have hundreds or thousands of dollars?

To waste, burn or at least significantly risk it? Yes.

Whole thing still stinks to me.

 

[mumblethrax]

Its only illegal if it can be proved that the shorter made a false claim.

Well, yes. It's pretty hard to prove any kind of securities fraud without that. I mean, Nikola genuinely is a terrible company which itself deceived investors and was overvalued as a result. There's no reason to suspect fraud simply because someone tells you why they're shorting a stock.

Its absolutely not illegal for anyone to say "HEY BUY THIS STOCK CAUSE I WANT TO MAKE MONEY!". Thats 100% 1st amendment protected speech. Making false claims is, like hey buy GME because they made a profit of $100 million last quarter, you'll see when their official numbers come out. That would be fraudulent.

If nobody said anything beyond that (either on reddit or in back channels), sure, there's no fraud. Like I said, I'm skeptical that the brain geniuses in r/wallstreetbets are all that disciplined.

 

[Meadmaker]

Oh I highly doubt that. Is there actual evidence to show this effect is largely the result of several thousands of individuals suddenly buying one share each at $20 causing the price to skyrocket, as opposed to a few dozen people buying hundreds or thousands of dollars of stock at a time, which is how market trading usually works?

I first learned about it from my kid, who follows Wall Street Bets.

He bought 5 shares.

 

[lobosrul5]

Ah... No. I think you're wrong that "most of us" have thousands of dollars of disposable income to spend as a joke.

I've never made more than 2.5 times the local minimum wage (which is higher than Federal). And I have about $150,000 to invest. Most of it in retirement accounts. I certainly considered putting a few thousand into GME. Oh well.

 

[lobosrul5]

If nobody said anything beyond that (either on reddit or in back channels), sure, there's no fraud. Like I said, I'm skeptical that the brain geniuses in r/wallstreetbets are all that disciplined.

I've never seen anyone on r/wallstreebets claim that GME is a good investment. Admittedly I'm only scanning some of the top voted posts.

 

[JoeMorgue]

*Raises hand* Where is this going? What does the financial demographic of anyone involved here have to do with anything?

 

[TragicMonkey]

To waste, burn or at least significantly risk it? Yes.

Whole thing still stinks to me.

Jesus Christ, do you people not know numbers? Do you really, truly believe that someone making $200,000 a year couldn't afford to spend a thousand bucks on a stock? Sixty percent of Americans invest in something, even if it's only via retirement funds. They are NOT "the 1%".

This insistence that everyone in America (I'll remind you, it's a superpower, the "first" of the term "first world nations") is either in grinding poverty OR else they're "the 1%" making more than $400,000 a year, and that no incomes exist between $20K and $400K (there's just a big jump in pay when you get that one promotion!) is weird.

The evidence against it is right in the ******* news the OP is about: the people driving the Gamestop stock are the internet masses, not "the 1%".