The Gamestop Stock Market Boogaloo

[Senkaku]

London opens in what, an hour and a half? I think someone posted something about similar short squeezes spreading to Australia and Australian firms, do we think it's going to happen in the UK and Europe too (and will overseas investors pile more aggressively onto the squeezes in the US)?

[Hirota]

CNN blames Trump supporter because hating the elite is apparently a Trumpist concept and WSB coordinated it on Reddit, which was infamous for T_D. Really grasping at straws there, it's an embarassment of an article.

I know I'm not the first person to post this

You mean the mainstream media calls people "Trump supporters" for the most flimsy and tenuous of reasons?

I'm obviously shocked, shocked I say. Luckily obviously nobody on here would ever dream of using daft labels like that for the most flimsy and tenuous of reasons would they?

[The Lone Alliance]

London opens in what, an hour and a half? I think someone posted something about similar short squeezes spreading to Australia and Australian firms, do we think it's going to happen in the UK and Europe too (and will overseas investors pile more aggressively onto the squeezes in the US)?

European Markets have already been involved, a few European Shorts are getting an attempted squeeze too.

Why would you want to do that. People invest based on flashing lights a lot of the time. Stocks are advertised like roadside motels. The stock market is a giant pool of all kinds of companies from terrible to wonderful. The flashing lights are kind of like the lights on the one armed bandit. The pool is massive and you have an almost infinite amount of time to make a choice, but most people go for the biggest machine with the most lights on it.

All that you just said has absolutely nothing to with what is happening right now.

The Gamestop stock wasn't a flashing light, it was a Roach motel 6 being held up by plywood. The only thing Gamestop has going for it is a new board members who are planning on turning the company towards E commerce, and no one actually believes Gamestop has much of a chance to succeed and become amazing.

But people do know that Gamestop isn't going to die just yet and if it's to die it's to die on it's own, not because a bunch of Hedge Fund people are actively trying to kill it.
People didn't like that, they didn't like that at all.

So they bought Gamestop stock because the Hedge fund people were caught in a trap of their own creation and they were going to fuck with them for it.

The dealer makes their money on getting you to buy. They are in the market for the long run and take their percentage off of commissions a lot of the time. A lot of the game is staying away from the dealer and making rational decisions.

That's not how these investors work anymore. There are no dealers, there are no commissions, they use public aps and online programs to do the buying and selling themselves.

That's another reason Wall Street is pissed about this, they want to go back to the good old days where the dealer steered you where they wanted you to go while taking a nice fat commission on the side.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

[I don't want to be a dick about this, but it really does say something that the media and elites are now falling back on "Trumpism" and "Hate speech" to try and deal with this, and maybe some progressives on this forum could have a think about it.

I’m a progressive, and what is there to think about?

News agencies are getting desperate, so they’re pointing out that both this and Trump are the result of anti-elite sentiment. Which is true. And which also doesn’t mean anything.

[Drongonia]

London opens in what, an hour and a half? I think someone posted something about similar short squeezes spreading to Australia and Australian firms, do we think it's going to happen in the UK and Europe too (and will overseas investors pile more aggressively onto the squeezes in the US)?

It's very possible people overseas will hop on the US bandwagon, many including myself already have. Not advertising or anything but the investment platform Stake has grown massively over the past little while. It services Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the United Kingdom with its only function being to allow access to US stocks and ETFs.

The entire service crashed for a while this morning as everyone rushed to buy AMC, GME, BB and NOK. This has already spread worldwide. I doubt that places like Australia will experience such a squeeze as Australian investors don't carry the kind of capital to do so, and Australian markets aren't widely available to investors in any other countries outside of New Zealand and perhaps the Pacific Islands. Europe is a possibility although I'm not familiar with the details of EU investment law.

[Cannot think of a name]

What's killing me is that they 'lost' $14.3 billion, but they lost $14.3 billion that didn't exist on Monday. It's not like they bought $14.3 billion worth of widgets that no one wanted, or they invested $14.3 billion in an action movie staring every expensive star ever reading a computer repair manual while throwing hypercars over a cliff and de aging them all.

They lost 14.3 billion dollars which they had sitting around in some capital account to pay for stock whose price rose. This misunderstands how short sellers have to repurchase stock to honour their contracts. If you want gloat, at least gloat about what actually happened, which was that the wealthy people investing in these hedge funds – the people who capitalise the hedge fund – lost 14.3 billion because Redditors screwed with them.

1. I wasn't gloating.
2. No, that's not what happened. They were using their investor fund but the $14.3 billion hole was created by the inflated value of the Gamestop stock, not by them spending $14.3 billion and losing it. They speculated and now have to generate $14.3 billion to pay off the culture jammers. So, that loss came out of nowhere. They spent the money they had in the hopes that they would make more money. They lost that money and a giant sum more that didn't exist on Monday. That's why there's talk of bankruptcy and cash infusions and the like...because they don't have it because it didn't exist until the redditors created that value.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Haven't the Reddit people just created a lose/lose situation? The hedge fund people are going to lose money, the Reddit people are going to lose money, and Gamestop are going to go bust.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

Haven't the Reddit people just created a lose/lose situation? The hedge fund people are going to lose money, the Reddit people are going to lose money, and Gamestop are going to go bust.

Well, no. As a group, Redditors are going to make off like bandits. Some people will lose their shirts, but more of them will walk away with hedge fund money.

Assuming the SEC doesn’t crack down, that is.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Haven't the Reddit people just created a lose/lose situation? The hedge fund people are going to lose money, the Reddit people are going to lose money, and Gamestop are going to go bust.

Well, no. As a group, Redditors are going to make off like bandits. Some people will lose their shirts, but more of them will walk away with hedge fund money.

Assuming the SEC doesn’t crack down, that is.

Well no, the Reddit people are going to be left holding worthless shares they won't be able to sell. As soon as they try to realise any value by selling the shares, the price will slump before they can sell even a few. If they hold on to them the bubble they have created will collapse and the share price will slump.

The only money being made here is the commission on transactions.

[Cannot think of a name]

Well, no. As a group, Redditors are going to make off like bandits. Some people will lose their shirts, but more of them will walk away with hedge fund money.

Assuming the SEC doesn’t crack down, that is.

Well no, the Reddit people are going to be left holding worthless shares they won't be able to sell.

The short sellers are legally obligated to buy those stocks off the redditors. So only the ones who hold on after the fact will be left holding the bag.

[ImperialRussia]

I call it the game depression

[The Lone Alliance]

Well no, the Reddit people are going to be left holding worthless shares they won't be able to sell. As soon as they try to realise any value by selling the shares, the price will slump before they can sell even a few. If they hold on to them the bubble they have created will collapse and the share price will slump.

When the shorts are called in the people doing the short have to buy the shares, they don't have any choice, they have a huge fat IOU and they're going to have to buy shares to make up for it, no matter what the price is, that means a lot of the Redditors will be able to cash out by selling said shares. Sure some will lose money and some will be left holding borderline useless shares but many of them were expecting that from the beginning.

Another thing is the amount of shares the short people have to buy is larger than the number of shares available that means that even if every share becomes available some of them will have to be bought and sold twice.

The only money being made here is the commission on transactions.

The main Ap the redditors are using has no commissions at all.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Well no, the Reddit people are going to be left holding worthless shares they won't be able to sell.

The short sellers are legally obligated to buy those stocks off the redditors. So only the ones who hold on after the fact will be left holding the bag.

This is why I don't invest. Aren't the hedge funds liable to go bust first?

[The Lone Alliance]

The short sellers are legally obligated to buy those stocks off the redditors. So only the ones who hold on after the fact will be left holding the bag.

This is why I don't invest. Aren't the hedge funds liable to go bust first?

Unlikely unless the price reaches some utterly insane level. And if it does reaches such an insane level someone will inevitably bail them out, like how Melvin got bailed out by another Hedge Fund.

Of course a big risk is that these Hedge Funds are going to have to sell a lot of investments to raise the money to buy through the squeeze which may hurt the stock market at large.

[Blargoblarg]

I'm finding this whole thing fucking hilarious, and for the first time ever I'm actually considering buying stocks. I can't afford to throw much money into the stock market though, and I still think it's no better than gambling.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

This is why I don't invest. Aren't the hedge funds liable to go bust first?

Unlikely unless the price reaches some utterly insane level. And if it does reaches such an insane level someone will inevitably bail them out, like how Melvin got bailed out by another Hedge Fund.

Ah right. But this will make shorting too risky in its present form, and so also stop people trying to do this again?

[The Lone Alliance]

Unlikely unless the price reaches some utterly insane level. And if it does reaches such an insane level someone will inevitably bail them out, like how Melvin got bailed out by another Hedge Fund.

Ah right. But this will make shorting too risky in its present form, and so also stop people trying to do this again?

It will make shorting riskier and naked shorting and out death sentence to whoever tries it, so I can see shorting becoming rarer in the future, or at least not as obvious.

If they are going to do shorting from now on it's not going to be attempted shorts into bankruptcy like we're seeing here.

If you short some major well to do company of a few bucks because they had a small stumble it's unlikely the retail people will notice.

But if you target some well known company that's on it's last legs who's stock is already dirt cheap to the point you're trying to get blood from a stone like they have done with Gamestop and AMC, these people are going to attack again.

That's another thing to take into account Retail investors are so poor that they invest in things that are usually barely better than penny stocks, so it will be easy to avoid them if you stick to safe big money groups that cost too much for most retailers.

[The Marlborough]

Unlikely unless the price reaches some utterly insane level. And if it does reaches such an insane level someone will inevitably bail them out, like how Melvin got bailed out by another Hedge Fund.

Ah right. But this will make shorting too risky in its present form, and so also stop people trying to do this again?

Which is why we're enjoying this golden opportunity while we can. A lot of people stand to actually make their lives even a little bit easier because of this. Paying for school or paying off school. Getting your pet that surgery it needs. Paying off your parents mortgage. Things like that.

[Dresderstan]

GameStop's three largest shareholders earn over $2bn amid stock surge

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Ah right. But this will make shorting too risky in its present form, and so also stop people trying to do this again?

It will make shorting riskier and naked shorting and out death sentence to whoever tries it, so I can see shorting becoming rarer in the future, or at least not as obvious.

If they are going to do shorting from now on it's not going to be attempted shorts into bankruptcy like we're seeing here.

If you short some major well to do company of a few bucks because they had a small stumble it's unlikely the retail people will notice.

But if you target some well known company that's on it's last legs who's stock is already dirt cheap to the point you're trying to get blood from a stone like they have done with Gamestop and AMC, these people are going to attack again.

That's another thing to take into account Retail investors are so poor that they invest in things that are usually barely better than penny stocks, so it will be easy to avoid them if you stick to safe big money groups that cost too much for most retailers.

Interesting. So does this come down to access to information on companies being available more widely? Won't this also lead to more false information spreading to catch the unwary?

Am I wrong in thinking a lot of the money in hedge funds are workers' pension funds?

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

GameStop's three largest shareholders earn over $2bn amid stock surge

They must be loving this. Their dying company has just made them hundreds of millions of dollars.

[The Lone Alliance]

GameStop's three largest shareholders earn over $2bn amid stock surge

AMC has apparently used their recent stock rise from an attempted short squeeze to bail themselves out of Bankruptcy.

Interesting. So does this come down to access to information on companies being available more widely? Won't this also lead to more false information spreading to catch the unwary?

All the information on a company being shorted is public knowledge so it's already available, again this entire situation isn't coming to pass because people lied about the state of Gamestop anymore than usual, everyone has kind of been saying awhile that Gamestop is dying so the Shorts themselves weren't wrong in their belief.

The media has attempted to claim that the Retail investors have been passing or fed false data or that there's some sort of higher power controlling things but it's pretty clear to everyone who's involved that everyone on the planet knows Gamestop isn't exactly the best store around. Most of these investors are Millennials who saw the decline and fall of Gamestop and know exactly what happened so there's no false information here.

We could see the end of the Short manipulation where they short a stock and then use their public influence to put the stock on blast to encourage it's fall. That's what put Citron Research on the radar of Reddit and helped blow it up in the first place.

Their founder was planning to do a stream about why the company sucks and deserves to have it's stock fall in order to convince people to sell so his own short prediction would come true. It's apparently something at a lot of the bigger shorts will do, they'll short a company then use the media to drive the company's stock down to make it a self fulfilling prophecy.

But after this I can see the practice ending because such arrogant statements will only be seen as a challenge to troll investors.

Am I wrong in thinking a lot of the money in hedge funds are workers' pension funds?

Who knows, no one is quite sure, either way it was especially stupid what these Hedge Funds did in regards to Gamestop.

[Cannot think of a name]

GameStop's three largest shareholders earn over $2bn amid stock surge

AMC has apparently used their recent stock rise from an attempted short squeeze to bail themselves out of Bankruptcy.

If internet hooligans save my hang out happy place (I live walking distance to three AMC theaters and had the A list membership, in the before times I spent much time at the theater) I'm going to be so conflicted. Well, not so conflicted. Just, in balance, not that use to saying "good job, internet..."

[Albrenia]

Not terribly surprised the mainstream media is rather confused on this topic. I'd be inclined to believe they're just honestly wrong about this being linked to Trumpism rather than just stemming from vaguely the same source (anti-elitism).

[The Lone Alliance]

AMC has apparently used their recent stock rise from an attempted short squeeze to bail themselves out of Bankruptcy.

If internet hooligans save my hang out happy place (I live walking distance to three AMC theaters and had the A list membership, in the before times I spent much time at the theater) I'm going to be so conflicted. Well, not so conflicted. Just, in balance, not that use to saying "good job, internet..."

At the very least they gave your former Hang out time and struck a blow against a group of people who are actively trying to bankrupt AMC for a few extra million.

Not terribly surprised the mainstream media is rather confused on this topic. I'd be inclined to believe they're just honestly wrong about this being linked to Trumpism rather than just stemming from vaguely the same source (anti-elitism).

Part of the problem is the culture of Wallstreetbets is apparently more in line with 4chan than Reddit and 4chan is always an easy boogieman to connect to Trump.