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

One minor quibble. For the stock market in general, it is not a zero sum game. Someone making a gain does not have to be paired with someone taking a loss. However, that's over the long term, and it also doesn't apply to derivatives, which played a big role in last weeks shenanigans.

Sure. The market, as an aggregate, generally goes up over time.

If there's real value underlying a stock price increase, it's not zero sum.

There was no real value in the GME pump-and-dump scheme.
 
Nope. You had something in mind when you snarked like that.

Unless that was mindless snark, then of course move along.

What I had in mind was exactly what I typed, and it wasn't "mindless". I don't see any good reason why commentary should have stopped when GME experienced dramatic declines; seems to me there was just as much to discuss as when it was skyrocketing. Maybe your initial response to my post is a clue as to why that might have happened.
 
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Don't know about others but I cashed in at the peak. I've taken my Trillion and invested in Bitcoin. I'll only be posting here again when I own the planet. :cool:

I did the same, but then immediately shorted with my entire bankroll. I'm very rich now.
 
Bitcoin?! Oh, ****** I made eleventy billion on Gamestop, but I converted it all to Buttcoin! I'm ruined! Buttcoin stinks! I might as well have just dropped my money into a hole.

Yea, about that, Bitcoin tacked on almost $3000.00 in value during the past 24 hours. Not a lot of stocks can do that....Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
:thumbsup:
 
Yea, about that, Bitcoin tacked on almost $3000.00 in value during the past 24 hours. Not a lot of stocks can do that....Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
:thumbsup:

How is your post "about that" of my post? Did you mean to post about Buttcoin and mistyped?
 
Bitcoin?! Oh, ****** I made eleventy billion on Gamestop, but I converted it all to Buttcoin! I'm ruined! Buttcoin stinks! I might as well have just dropped my money into a hole.


Not to worry. The value of Buttcoin is indexed to the size of the average American butt, so it's extremely safe.
 
Don't know about others but I cashed in at the peak. I've taken my Trillion and invested in Bitcoin. I'll only be posting here again when I own the planet. :cool:

Yeah, the bubble has burst, like all bubbles do.
What surprised me is how many bought into the "THis is a heroic people's revolt against the Evil Master of Wall Street" narrative. Not crazy about Wall Street at all but don't potray a bunch of wannabe grifters and gamblers are some kin of Proleterain heros.
 
The hedge funds are just as guilty of violating the same basic rule: don't gamble with money you don't have. "But we can make huge fortunes doing that!" they object. Yes, and they can lose huge fortunes as well. Crybabies who lose a gamble merit little sympathy.

And, ethics aside, the Hedge funds are a lot better at knowing when to get out then the Reddit mob was.Yes, it's gambling, but in this case it was a bunch of casual poker players up against one of the big league poker players.
 
How is your post "about that" of my post? Did you mean to post about Buttcoin and mistyped?

I read your post as a dig at Bitcoin, since you first typed "Bitcoin" then "Buttcoin", hence my update on BTC performance during the last 24 hours. If it was not a dig against BTC, there was no need on my part to post the update. I will freely admit that I missed the joke if that's what it was.
 
Yeah, the bubble has burst, like all bubbles do.
What surprised me is how many bought into the "THis is a heroic people's revolt against the Evil Master of Wall Street" narrative. Not crazy about Wall Street at all but don't potray a bunch of wannabe grifters and gamblers are some kin of Proleterain heros.

They were highly successful punishing the primary institutional sellers, and burning off the weaponized short pressure on the stock. And many of the early birds made a bundle- some made a fortune. To a significant degree, it was a successful short squeeze.
 
They were highly successful punishing the primary institutional sellers, and burning off the weaponized short pressure on the stock. And many of the early birds made a bundle- some made a fortune. To a significant degree, it was a successful short squeeze.

Short squeezes always end the same way. Lots of money made (and lost) on the way up. And lots lost (and made) on the way down. A giant transfer of wealth.
 
Short squeezes always end the same way. Lots of money made (and lost) on the way up. And lots lost (and made) on the way down. A giant transfer of wealth.

Not if the underlying issue was under priced to begin with. A successful short squeeze gets most of its energy from Institutionals buying to cover, and that strategy fails plenty of times. In this case, WSB's picked an excellent candidate to squeeze, and did a good job of it... especially considering how little central control was involved. In many cases, squeeze campaigns crater early, and only add to the short's profits. This was not just a pure P&D scheme, although it was that too.
 
Well, my wife sold at around the $200 range, on the way down, so she doubled her stake. My son, as he said he would, is holding and is at a not-nice loss. He’s a kid so he’s learning. My wife learned too: she should have had a $400 limit sell and she would have done a lot better.

The bigger lesson is: look for opportunities but don’t listen to the hype and don’t get greedy.
 
Everything seems much easier to predict in hindsight of course. I stay away from trying to predict short-term up and down movements and only invest for long term in relatively safe, diversified funds. I don't follow the ups and downs on a daily basis, but check maybe once a year.
 
Nope.

The bubble has burst.
It was true when he said it. And it's actually still up 13% as I type (3:01 PM Eastern). 13% isn't a bad one day swing if you in to day trading. (this post is not to be construed as investment advice).
 
And, ethics aside, the Hedge funds are a lot better at knowing when to get out then the Reddit mob was.Yes, it's gambling, but in this case it was a bunch of casual poker players up against one of the big league poker players.

I tried to explain to my son that when not so rich people attack rich people on Wall Street, it was likely that the rich people would end up winning.

That's why they are rich.
 
I tried to explain to my son that when not so rich people attack rich people on Wall Street, it was likely that the rich people would end up winning.

That's why they are rich.

I agree, but when the rich people are shorting an unpopular stock 140%, and the not so rich people are legion, somewhat coordinated and hip to the fact they can refuse to allow their brokers to lend their shares out, they can hold their own pretty good. Even when, as is the case here, they really have very little idea of what they're actually doing.
 
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I agree, but when the rich people are shorting an unpopular stock 140%, and the not so rich people are legion, somewhat coordinated and hip to the fact they can refuse to allow their brokers to lend their shares out, they can hold their own pretty good. Even when, as is the case here, they really have very little idea of what they're actually doing.

Well, yeah, a bunch of teenagers can blow up the Death Star. They can't, however, build one of their own.
 
You're just trying to goad (read, inspire, if you like) some teenager aren't you?

Well, maybe inspire some any age, financially naive person not to buy into a squeeze target that's already gained over 100x, while shedding nearly 65% of it's short interest.
 
Well, maybe inspire some any age, financially naive person not to buy into a squeeze target that's already gained over 100x, while shedding nearly 65% of it's short interest.


That’s the thing, isn’t it? GME did go up a ridiculous amount . . . I’ve looked and I can’t find any example of a stock rising to such a degree in such a short time. I’m not that good at stock research though.

The expectations for GME, like my son’s, were way out of realistic proportion. It was never going to hit $1000+ per share. It went from $15.80 on Dec 1 20 to $347.51 on Jan 27 21. Thats 22X in the space of about two months. The peak was over $400! The damned thing squoze! Yet you had a bunch of (please excuse the ableist slur) self-proclaimed “retards” buying in at $300+ because it was going to moon...

My son tells me he has learned something about the stock market and internet hype. He regrets not selling earlier. He can see, with hindsight, that $400+ was indeed an astronomical valuation for GameStop. But he didn’t risk every cent he had. He didn’t buy in at $300+. Those people are the ones I feel bad for. My son is a bit poorer but wiser. Those people are gonna have a bad time.
 
Say it is not so, Joe.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/gam...ellion-it-was-perceived-to-be-data-shows.html

The prevailing narrative was that a band of Reddit-inspired small traders rose up against Wall Street by buying GameStop en masse, forcing a short squeeze by professional hedge fund managers, who were forced to cover their negative bets or risk catastrophic losses.

But several signs are pointing to institutional investors as big drivers of the wild price action on the way up.

"Although retail buying was portrayed as the main driver of the extreme price rally experienced by some stocks, the actual picture may be much more nuanced," JPMorgan global quantitative and derivatives strategy analyst Peng Cheng told clients in a note. JPMorgan's quant team uses public data from exchanges and applies a proprietary methodology to identify which flows are from retail traders. GameStop was number 15 on the firm's retail buying list for January.
 
Of course robo trading would happen.

That's how Wall Street gets rich, at least in part.

It uses AI/IT to buy/sell etc.

The hedge funds get rich partly by AI/IT telling them to buy/short/sell.
 
Of course robo trading would happen.

That's how Wall Street gets rich, at least in part.

It uses AI/IT to buy/sell etc.

The hedge funds get rich partly by AI/IT telling them to buy/short/sell.

Yeah and this is where the conspiracy theories are coming from. Citadel is RH's biggest client. They pay them to see trades, very briefly, before they are executed. So their trading algo's can decide to buy or sell. Citadel bought a big chunk of the hedge fund shorting GME... well one of them anyways. Then RH suspends trading on GME. Smells fishy.
 
Yeah and this is where the conspiracy theories are coming from. Citadel is RH's biggest client. They pay them to see trades, very briefly, before they are executed. So their trading algo's can decide to buy or sell. Citadel bought a big chunk of the hedge fund shorting GME... well one of them anyways. Then RH suspends trading on GME. Smells fishy.

You may be right, but I was talking about trading technology "seeing" the course of sales on the market and getting in on the action.

They can do this far quicker and more profitably than a newbie Redditor deciding to play the market for the first time. In fact, quicker and more profitably than many people.
 
You may be right, but I was talking about trading technology "seeing" the course of sales on the market and getting in on the action.

They can do this far quicker and more profitably than a newbie Redditor deciding to play the market for the first time. In fact, quicker and more profitably than many people.


Worth a read on this topic is Michael Lewis' Flash Boys:

The characters in Flash Boys are fabulous, each completely different from what you think of when you think “Wall Street guy.” Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world’s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits.

https://www.amazon.ca/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393244660

I'll have to dig my copy out and reread it. I was astonished, amused and astounded when I first read it. ;)
 
Yep, High Frequency Trading.

Not sure why it's legal, except the laws would be a nightmare to write, I'd imagine.
 
Not if the underlying issue was under priced to begin with. A successful short squeeze gets most of its energy from Institutionals buying to cover, and that strategy fails plenty of times. In this case, WSB's picked an excellent candidate to squeeze, and did a good job of it... especially considering how little central control was involved. In many cases, squeeze campaigns crater early, and only add to the short's profits. This was not just a pure P&D scheme, although it was that too.

It's fair to question whether gamestop has ANY underlying value. Their business model is outdated. People have moved on to buying their games in other ways, and this trend looks like it will continue.

Trying to run the company like this will turn around is just creating a giant hole for people to dump their money in.
 
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