The redditors, but they're hoping to have taken down some hedge funds before that happens. For the most part, this isn't people trying to get rich, it's people willing to spend (and lose) a few hundred bucks in order to take down some multi-billion dollar hedge funds that got greedy and over-shorted stock.
A couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.
I had a person in my office, (who now I know participates in the r/wsb forum) tell me just that. IтАЩve chosen to potentially take a loss and surrender тАЬtaxesтАЭ to achieve a community goal. The invert of тАЬif youтАЩre going to tax me I want representationтАЭ is тАЬme and some others are going to volunteer for potential taxation to achieve a goal our community supports.тАЭ He considered GME a charity fundraiser with potential profits.
┬лA couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.┬╗
It would have been much better and longer lasting if the bucks had gone to labor union memberships and their political funds so the labor unions could buy their own gaggle of representatives and senators like Wall Street and the Business Roundtable do.
But a large part of the attacks on labor unions by Republicans and "centrist" Democrats was precisely because of that: their sponsors want to be the only ones allowed to buy politicians.
I am presuming you have never worked in NYC. Having done so, I can give an anecdotal reason why I despise labor unions. My job back in the mid-90s involved transporting computers between buildings in Midtown - mostly for repair. I had one of those folding hand trucks. The reason I had a folding one rather than a real hand truck, which would have been way more useful than that cheap folding thing, is that you a. can't use the freight elevator and b. can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is. Of course, being an IT support guy for one of the building tenants, I didn't qualify for any union that controlled the building anyway, even if I were interested in joining.
My little anecdotal story can be extended out to strikes in Great Britain over not much at all, the slowdowns in getting things off the docks or through railroad systems in the US. Anything that has a union involved is slowed down and the service sucks. Ever wonder why there are so many long haul trucks running around spewing diesel fumes? You have your answer.
Unions make life suck just a little more for everyone.
┬лwhy I despise labor unions. [...] can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is.┬╗
So you despise free markets and freedom of contract between consenting parties! The building owner and the union have reached an agreement and exercised that freedom of contract, and your employer have chosen in the free market to be a tenant in that building, and nobody is stopping them from choosing from the free market a non-union building in NYC or anywhere else if necessary.
That's the American Way: capitalism means that winners do whatever it takes, and if a party have the leverage to fuck over their customers, they do it to the fullest extent they can get away with.
In particular in the vast majority of cases it is employers that have the leverage to fuck over their employees, and it is corporations that have the leverage to fuck over customers, and impose as many restrictive practices as they can on customers and employees, and labor unions do that in only a minority of cases.
Regardless, in the case you give as example, the party really responsible for the restrictive practices is the building owner, because neither you nor your employer have contract with the union, that you cannot carry stuff yourself is certainly a rule in the tenancy contract between the building owner and your employer.
Why did the building owner put them in the tenancy contract? Because, given their leverage vs. that of the labor union they had two alternatives:
* Give them a higher wage without restrictive practices, and the cost of that falls on them.
* Give them a lower wage plus a monopoly on certain types of work, and the cost of that falls on tenants.
I don't share your love of laissez-faire capitalism. It results in coercive, abusive, totalitarian monopolies. Exactly that kind of policy resulted in Marxism's rise and grinding a hundred million or more into graves. Color me not a libertarian. How much and what kind of regulation are required is a matter for debate, but labor unions solve no problems at all and create new ones.
"Rage against the dying of the light." That is what is happening here. At that point it doesn't matter anymore, it's about making a stand and sending a message.
I'm not one of the WSB guys, but I interpret the message to be rage against the decoupling from useful work and financial rewards in American society. I'm glad some of them got rich, although I'm not sure how much a digital dollar is going to be worth in a while.
The Puritan work ethic has been utterly hollowed out. People can see it. It's visible. Hard work doesn't get you ahead financially. Personal connections and knowing how to game the system are what gets you ahead. The elite are scam artists.
Exactly. And that is why this is happening. The curtain has been pulled back as far as it can go. Nobody can deny the markets, the "system," the American Dream is now, and has been for decades, a crock of shit.
You are right about the sequelswhen I was a kid-I loved the evil dwarf king Roquat/Ruggedo-he got mind erased and had to pick a new name or something-in The Emerald City of Oz and subsequent books.
Agree-IтАЩm not jealous of blown up financial stock value and I donтАЩt feel bad when it disappears. If you canтАЩt handle the game, stay off the field-and donтАЩt change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing.
"donтАЩt change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing."
haha, this is exactly what the big public trading platforms are doing right now by locking down buys on GME etc. If Twitter is to be believed, Robinhood is actually selling GME holders' shares against their will. That's a pseudo-factoid I can't verify, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
I guess it depends on what your definition of 'getting ahead financially' is but I can't agree with your post. Most people I know have, in fact, 'gotten ahead financially' by working hard and rising either through their ranks or building clientele. America's dream isn't fake, it just isn't being taken advantage of by some people.
The billionaire head of a major U.S. venture capital firm is the self-made child of dirt poor immigrants. He put himself through school, obtained several bio and business degrees, and worked 18- hour days to get where he is. He remains peripatetic and aggressive, working probably 10 times as hard, in real terms, as a randomly chosen nine to fiver. Without venture capital, we wouldn't have Apple or Google, or Silicon Valley, the latter a mixed blessing, or many healthcare innovations. The problem is the excess and greed,the personal jets and steroidal houses, the narcissistic culture we're seeing now, the lack of perspective or proportion, the protestant work ethic/help your neighbor raise his barn restraints. That lack of restraint and greed is what the U.S. must address, the debauched bonus and pay often not always at the expense of the stretched taxpayer. Warren had that right.
Most people who are rich possess the drive to make money -- being smart never hurts. Most people may not have that overweening drive -- they make do and spend time with family, watch the tube, or want to teach, help the sick and the infirm, write, protect the planet, make the world a better place for the innocent or helpless. We make choices. Some phone it in, and gripe about not being rich. In a matter of 15 years, my sister's immigrant gardener, originally from Mexico, became a full-blown landscaping enterpreneur with three beautiful trucks and crews. His brother owns an electrician business that services major developments. They made that happen. The landscaper put his profits back onto the company, and performed consistent, reliable, good work. The result is a thriving business.
There's nothing funnier to me than the people who think WSB is a bunch of principled populists sticking it to the man. It's a tiny minority of that but it's largely nihilistic opportunists laughing at memes and rallying together because they've proven the ability to move the market many times over (GME isn't close to the first time this has worked). To be clear, I have no problem with that! Let 'em rip! The vast majority that are doing it know that it's a stupid idea but it's _fun_! More power to them, I have non problem with it but will always laugh at people who back-fit a populist rebellion on it. Even more so when Taibbi decries the great evils of Robinhood for encouraging reckless trading and then a month and half later praises reckless trading on Robinhood as populist rebellion!
I think you would be surprised. I didn't really care until big tech started trying to deplatform these people. And, then today when the hedge funds and brokerage houses conspired to prohibit buys (not sales, only buys) it exposed a level of corruption that we suspected existed but had never seen so blatantly in the daylight before.
So, I willing to lose a few thousand dollars to help my fellow apes take billions of dollars from Gabe Plotkin. And, I can't wait to be seated next to Gabe at the Applebees.
For me this is 100% protest. I'm not the type of guy who is going to attend a rally in DC. I'm a boring ass 45 year old, but I have diamond hands.
I think I have a found THE connection - it's all about 1967!
*January 4 тАУ The Doors release their d├йbut album The Doors, which contains "Light My Fire".
**Ronald Reagan, past movie actor and future President of the United States, is inaugurated as the new governor of California.[1]
***The Human Be-In takes place in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; the event sets the stage for the Summer of Love.
****February 18 тАУ New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claims he will solve the John F. Kennedy assassination, and that a conspiracy was planned in New Orleans.
*****March 1 -The Red Guards return to schools in China.
******March 12 -The Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, is released in the United States. It is initially a commercial failure but receives widespread critical and commercial acclaim in later years.
*******March 17 - The Grateful Dead debut their first album 'the Grateful Dead' consisting of the songs; The Golden Road, Beat it down on the Line, Good morning little schoolgirl, Cold rain and snow, Sitting on top of the world, Morning dew, New new minglewood blues, and Viola Lee blues
******** March 21 - Charles Manson is released from Terminal Island. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. Upon his release, he relocates to San Francisco where he spends the Summer of Love.[4]
*********April 28 - In Houston, Texas, boxer Muhammad Ali
refuses military service. He is stripped of his boxing title and barred from professional boxing for the next three years.
**********May 12 тАУ The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut album, Are You Experienced.
**********June 12 - Loving v. Virginia: The United States Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.[13]
So... you ask why the history lesson?...well I heard a whisper in a cloud today wafting from the desert...from the THE WESTERN LANDS....IT said - read that magazine if you can still find it and...
тАЬA paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.тАЭ
I don't entirely disagree about the mix, but the nihilist group will get out on time so it's not like everyone who backed the move is going to get rekt
Anyway... the redditors who lose will lose no more than they put in
The hedge fund guys will lose geometrically and that's what's charming about the story
I feel like Matt's uber fan boys think me mocking his gross hypocrisy here project on me that I don't find this charming/hilarious. I'm pro WSBers here! It's great! It's just Matt had his two totally predictable takes and they're directly opposed to one another.
As he explained to you already - and the majority of the rest of us agree with his explanation - you grotesquely misread his posts. What we have here is a junior high school tirade: You made a very public attack on his credibility, and now claim the moral high ground for bravely refusing to apologize when you're obviously in the wrong.
You work for Wall Street. That meme thing is just what the hedge fund scum have been using on the news. Wall Street is fake, dude. It's fake for everyone. Let us know where you live and when you will be out of town next so we can go through your shit.
This trade is safer by leaps and bounds than buying index funds at ATHs, right? The hedgies have publicly disclosed that they are short 140% of the float in $GME and keep loading up every time it climbs. In that scenario a swing group of buyers controls the price. It would be reckless to not pile on, right?!
I agree about people trying to back-fit a populist rebellion onto this. Well said.
I disagree with the idea that Matt's two articles are in conflict. It's funny that these guys sent the hedge funds running. But at the end of the day, the stock price will fall, or else GME will have to find a new business model. If the Robinhood crowd wind up with a majority of the stock, they'd own the company. But what do they do with it? Hire a new board to do what?
Sometimes public companies go private. They do so because they think the company is worth more than the market value. Do these investors think that's true in this case?
[Who is to say the original planners are still the ones moving the stock? Robinhood is allowing buys of ONE share? That ain't gonna move anything.]
The real story here was the proof of concept. For the first time in my 40+ years, I've seen the populous stick it to the wealthy in a way that they actually give a shit about. I liked Occupy, but at the end of the day Finance didn't ultimately care that much. It didn't affect their money long-term and they were already experienced with waiting out a Long position in their penthouses.
This seems like it might be different. They're panicking so much over this that they're being blatantly... blatant about it in their hypocritical calls for regulation. That and the fact that they're losing money and maybe the citizens finally found something that will threaten them.
They were pretty confident that no "movement" with such exacting concern for the divisive dynamics of social justice would last very long. Which confidence proved to be well-founded.
At this point, that which discomfits my enemy is welcome. IF there were such a thing as "Trumpism" (outside the tiny brains of hysterical blue checks), and IF it could be shown this little blow against the Empire was committed by "Trumpistas"...I'd still approve.
It's going to take some bitter hatred and a willingness to absorb loss for this to get turned around. If it gets turned around.
I could be reading him wrong but my understanding is that Matt thinks that the populists and the socialists would be much more effective at learning even the basics of Finance. He's said as much before.
For example - setting aside losing twice in races that were absolutely rigged in various ways against him - Bernie might have got the edge he needed to tip past the long odds in 2020 if he had been able to talk solutions to the Finance issues like Warren was able to do. Warren was able to peel enough of the "I'm a socialist but I'm a serious ADULT! harumph" vote off of Bernie mostly (in my opinion) due to the fact that she could talk a wonky finance game. Warren may or may not have been all talk with her "Plans" but she could still talk, and they weren't even hugely complicated concepts! Imagine if Bernie could have trumped (original meaning) Warren with his own specific finance regulation/tax plans?
My take is this is asymmetrical political warfare, and sometimes the poorly equipped/financed teams can win the battle using guerrilla warfare. Using their weapons against them is a key principle of guerrilla. VC sent France and the US limping out of their country by using their own weapons against them. VC would take discarded ration cans left by soldiers and fix them into mines.
The question of which opportunists/deplorables/gamerpoopsocks constitute the meme stock class is beside the point. This has been a proof of concept for a strategy that works because it's a counterstrike that the elites actually give a shit about. It gutted some of them where it hurt the most. It's plausible that the populists could further develop this strategy and bring back a little wealth in doing so. I want to see where this goes because nothing else that has been tried in recent decades has done anything to make them care.
Well just right now there's AMC and BB as well. Prior to this you had Hertz, NIO, NKLA, arguably TSLA, possible AMD argument, though that one really matches well with fundamentals. There's been more but these are some I remember from the top of my head.
Exactly, there are people all in on Gamestop, but the majority put in as much as they're willing to lose. If and when their position's value evaporates, it will have been more than worth it. Per WSB, "Diamond Hands" don't sell.
After prohibiting the purchase of shares and options earlier, the big market makers implemented a short ladder attack, wherein they put in lower and lower bid prices between themselves with little volume, and since no one can buy, it causes the stock price to appear to be plummeting. However, people who follow the subreddit quickly learned of the ruse. The shorts are still screwed for the foreseeable future.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Did anybody even mention "a bailout" for these plebes?? Don't think so.
Quite the contrary, BIden's press secretary's brother ran the hedge fund that got caught with their shorts down. Janet Yellen made a million dollars in "speaking fees" from Citadel alone! I think people know what "side" our public servants are on.
BTW, the press secretaries LinkedIn profile had her brother scrubbed from it, TODAY.
"Who do you think is going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up?" - as always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20. On the bright side, the publicity will probably help keep the company alive. Retail is a tough business, these days.
┬лas always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20┬╗
A critical detail is that the redditors are not buying the stock, for $20 or $200, they are buying call options on the stock. They know very well that their call options will eventually and soon become worthless, most of them have only bought a $100-$200 of call options and they can afford to lose them.
The big banks selling the call options will lose a lot of money though because their option pricing algorithms make them buy the stock to cover their positions. A large part of the story is that if a stock price ramps up very quickly, those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag.
calls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out huge. The people jumping in now are either long buying small amounts or spending a small fortune for calls. Puts are also wildly inflated too so someone sees the writing on the wall. Truth be told a lot of the last few days are FOMO guys and arenтАЩt going to get rich.
тАЬcalls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out hugeтАЭ
You are missing two important details:
* The huge rise on GME happened because a few days ago calls were "below $100". We are discussing how the stock could have jumped so much in so few days, the past, not the present. As I wrote part of the issue is likely that "those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag", and the lag has shrunk.
* Most of the Redditors buy calls and stock on RobinHoodm and the important selling point of RobinHood is that they "sell" fractional shares and calls. That a lot of people are buying fractions is strongly hinted by RobinHood having to suspend new purchases of fractions for a while while they went out and raised capital for collateral, which makes sense only if they are the actual holders of the unfractioned shares and calls.
Greedy uneducated FOMO amateurs. Stack Market is gambling pure and simple and if you don't study and understand the odds you will leave the table broke. The house (Wall Street) always wins in the end. But those that understand the odds will at times score big time. This is a grown up world, these are not kindergarteners investing their milk money hoping to ride the pony outside. You make your bets and you takes your chances. If mom and pop have their life saving in a managed account and their account manager is not aware of the GameStop danger then they surely chose the wrong place to trust their saving s to. Anyone buying in at $200 has to know the risk.
Or, "Anyone buying in at $200 has to have $200 to lose." And I'm pretty sure most of them do.
Wonder how they're going to phrase the message that "You're not getting your $1400 Covidbux checks because some of you might do something irresponsible with it."
They'll have to first set it up that it's all the fault of "Trumpers" or "Alt-righters", which, with a fully compliant media, they'll probably be able to dl.
Who do you think was going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up without the WSB/RH rise? GME was shorted 140%, so we know who was going to make money - the guys who just lost their asses. So who would have lost without WSB and RH?
Exactly my sentiment. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Andrew has only a vague idea who is holding GME stock, and much more important, Andrew's has never, ever voiced concern for that group prior to this situation.
Everyone who agrees with, "Hold the line" - although, quite a few of the "holders" didn't invest their life savings (we can only hope). It sounds as if most of my fellow redditors simply threw in nominal amounts and let the network effect take hold.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Unless something really crazy happens it will be a lot of Redditors and some of the hedge fund guys. You're totally right, though, they have 100% stuck it to Melvin and have proven (they already had, this is just the biggest time) they can squeeze a short with great effect.
out of context, false equivalence
in the 1st quote he's talking about little-guy investors being exploited by the platform
in the 2nd quote he's talking about how hilarious it is it blew up in their faces
Robinhood is Wile E. Coyote
Who do you think is going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up?
The redditors, but they're hoping to have taken down some hedge funds before that happens. For the most part, this isn't people trying to get rich, it's people willing to spend (and lose) a few hundred bucks in order to take down some multi-billion dollar hedge funds that got greedy and over-shorted stock.
A couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.
I had a person in my office, (who now I know participates in the r/wsb forum) tell me just that. IтАЩve chosen to potentially take a loss and surrender тАЬtaxesтАЭ to achieve a community goal. The invert of тАЬif youтАЩre going to tax me I want representationтАЭ is тАЬme and some others are going to volunteer for potential taxation to achieve a goal our community supports.тАЭ He considered GME a charity fundraiser with potential profits.
Bear emтАЩ at their own game-canтАЩt get more American can do spirit than that.
┬лA couple of hundred bucks is, in a lot of people's minds, a small price to pay to achieve more in a few days than Occupy Wall Street ever achieved in months of protesting.┬╗
It would have been much better and longer lasting if the bucks had gone to labor union memberships and their political funds so the labor unions could buy their own gaggle of representatives and senators like Wall Street and the Business Roundtable do.
But a large part of the attacks on labor unions by Republicans and "centrist" Democrats was precisely because of that: their sponsors want to be the only ones allowed to buy politicians.
I am presuming you have never worked in NYC. Having done so, I can give an anecdotal reason why I despise labor unions. My job back in the mid-90s involved transporting computers between buildings in Midtown - mostly for repair. I had one of those folding hand trucks. The reason I had a folding one rather than a real hand truck, which would have been way more useful than that cheap folding thing, is that you a. can't use the freight elevator and b. can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is. Of course, being an IT support guy for one of the building tenants, I didn't qualify for any union that controlled the building anyway, even if I were interested in joining.
My little anecdotal story can be extended out to strikes in Great Britain over not much at all, the slowdowns in getting things off the docks or through railroad systems in the US. Anything that has a union involved is slowed down and the service sucks. Ever wonder why there are so many long haul trucks running around spewing diesel fumes? You have your answer.
Unions make life suck just a little more for everyone.
┬лwhy I despise labor unions. [...] can't roll a hand truck through the lobby of buildings. Unless you are union, that is.┬╗
So you despise free markets and freedom of contract between consenting parties! The building owner and the union have reached an agreement and exercised that freedom of contract, and your employer have chosen in the free market to be a tenant in that building, and nobody is stopping them from choosing from the free market a non-union building in NYC or anywhere else if necessary.
That's the American Way: capitalism means that winners do whatever it takes, and if a party have the leverage to fuck over their customers, they do it to the fullest extent they can get away with.
In particular in the vast majority of cases it is employers that have the leverage to fuck over their employees, and it is corporations that have the leverage to fuck over customers, and impose as many restrictive practices as they can on customers and employees, and labor unions do that in only a minority of cases.
Regardless, in the case you give as example, the party really responsible for the restrictive practices is the building owner, because neither you nor your employer have contract with the union, that you cannot carry stuff yourself is certainly a rule in the tenancy contract between the building owner and your employer.
Why did the building owner put them in the tenancy contract? Because, given their leverage vs. that of the labor union they had two alternatives:
* Give them a higher wage without restrictive practices, and the cost of that falls on them.
* Give them a lower wage plus a monopoly on certain types of work, and the cost of that falls on tenants.
The builder owner are proper americans!
I don't share your love of laissez-faire capitalism. It results in coercive, abusive, totalitarian monopolies. Exactly that kind of policy resulted in Marxism's rise and grinding a hundred million or more into graves. Color me not a libertarian. How much and what kind of regulation are required is a matter for debate, but labor unions solve no problems at all and create new ones.
"Rage against the dying of the light." That is what is happening here. At that point it doesn't matter anymore, it's about making a stand and sending a message.
I'm not one of the WSB guys, but I interpret the message to be rage against the decoupling from useful work and financial rewards in American society. I'm glad some of them got rich, although I'm not sure how much a digital dollar is going to be worth in a while.
The Puritan work ethic has been utterly hollowed out. People can see it. It's visible. Hard work doesn't get you ahead financially. Personal connections and knowing how to game the system are what gets you ahead. The elite are scam artists.
Exactly. And that is why this is happening. The curtain has been pulled back as far as it can go. Nobody can deny the markets, the "system," the American Dream is now, and has been for decades, a crock of shit.
This is why Library of Congress lists The Wizard of Oz America's most popular book! They still want the delusions.
Maybe it's Wall Street's version of the Thucydides trap?
The older I get, the more I appreciate every little detail of The Wizard of Oz.
Baum's great, kind of like Dickens; he kept cranking them things out to make bank. Most of the sequels are crazier and better than the original.
I was a particular fan of "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_and_the_Wizard_in_Oz
You are right about the sequelswhen I was a kid-I loved the evil dwarf king Roquat/Ruggedo-he got mind erased and had to pick a new name or something-in The Emerald City of Oz and subsequent books.
Agree-IтАЩm not jealous of blown up financial stock value and I donтАЩt feel bad when it disappears. If you canтАЩt handle the game, stay off the field-and donтАЩt change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing.
"donтАЩt change the rules mid-game either b/c you are losing."
haha, this is exactly what the big public trading platforms are doing right now by locking down buys on GME etc. If Twitter is to be believed, Robinhood is actually selling GME holders' shares against their will. That's a pseudo-factoid I can't verify, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
Robinhood will not make it out of this clown show intact-and they donтАЩt deserve to. They are the equivalent of a ref taking a bribe mid-game.
As opposed to before the game?
I think he was referring to the "right out in front of God and 20 million viewers" blatancy aspect of it, not the timing.
I guess it depends on what your definition of 'getting ahead financially' is but I can't agree with your post. Most people I know have, in fact, 'gotten ahead financially' by working hard and rising either through their ranks or building clientele. America's dream isn't fake, it just isn't being taken advantage of by some people.
The billionaire head of a major U.S. venture capital firm is the self-made child of dirt poor immigrants. He put himself through school, obtained several bio and business degrees, and worked 18- hour days to get where he is. He remains peripatetic and aggressive, working probably 10 times as hard, in real terms, as a randomly chosen nine to fiver. Without venture capital, we wouldn't have Apple or Google, or Silicon Valley, the latter a mixed blessing, or many healthcare innovations. The problem is the excess and greed,the personal jets and steroidal houses, the narcissistic culture we're seeing now, the lack of perspective or proportion, the protestant work ethic/help your neighbor raise his barn restraints. That lack of restraint and greed is what the U.S. must address, the debauched bonus and pay often not always at the expense of the stretched taxpayer. Warren had that right.
Most people who are rich possess the drive to make money -- being smart never hurts. Most people may not have that overweening drive -- they make do and spend time with family, watch the tube, or want to teach, help the sick and the infirm, write, protect the planet, make the world a better place for the innocent or helpless. We make choices. Some phone it in, and gripe about not being rich. In a matter of 15 years, my sister's immigrant gardener, originally from Mexico, became a full-blown landscaping enterpreneur with three beautiful trucks and crews. His brother owns an electrician business that services major developments. They made that happen. The landscaper put his profits back onto the company, and performed consistent, reliable, good work. The result is a thriving business.
There's nothing funnier to me than the people who think WSB is a bunch of principled populists sticking it to the man. It's a tiny minority of that but it's largely nihilistic opportunists laughing at memes and rallying together because they've proven the ability to move the market many times over (GME isn't close to the first time this has worked). To be clear, I have no problem with that! Let 'em rip! The vast majority that are doing it know that it's a stupid idea but it's _fun_! More power to them, I have non problem with it but will always laugh at people who back-fit a populist rebellion on it. Even more so when Taibbi decries the great evils of Robinhood for encouraging reckless trading and then a month and half later praises reckless trading on Robinhood as populist rebellion!
I think you would be surprised. I didn't really care until big tech started trying to deplatform these people. And, then today when the hedge funds and brokerage houses conspired to prohibit buys (not sales, only buys) it exposed a level of corruption that we suspected existed but had never seen so blatantly in the daylight before.
So, I willing to lose a few thousand dollars to help my fellow apes take billions of dollars from Gabe Plotkin. And, I can't wait to be seated next to Gabe at the Applebees.
For me this is 100% protest. I'm not the type of guy who is going to attend a rally in DC. I'm a boring ass 45 year old, but I have diamond hands.
This is the same deplatforming thatтАЩs happening everywhere. We all think weтАЩre citizens until they decide weтАЩre just subjects.
"Trying to buy a stock? Nope, sorry,not allowed"
Wait until you try to take your "money" out of the "bank."
Then wait till you try to tell people about it on the Internet.
"Your post was deleted due to a violation of our rules and polices, as follows:
Trumpism
Sincerely,
Internet Ministry of Trust and Security"
I guess that a standard question at interviews will be: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of MAGA or of the Bernie Bros?"
I like how you made this gag just a few days before it was reported that the Biden admin is mulling appointing a Secretary of Reality.
"I willing to lose a few thousand dollars to help my fellow apes"
Return to Monke!
The Mod Gorilla Boss, brought to you by Gamespot (sadly not GameStop, which would have perfected the bit: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/strange-adventures-201-the-mod-gorilla-boss/4000-9403/
Issue details
Name
The Mod Gorilla Boss!
Volume
Strange Adventures
Issue Number
201
Cover Date
June 1, 1967
I think I have a found THE connection - it's all about 1967!
*January 4 тАУ The Doors release their d├йbut album The Doors, which contains "Light My Fire".
**Ronald Reagan, past movie actor and future President of the United States, is inaugurated as the new governor of California.[1]
***The Human Be-In takes place in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; the event sets the stage for the Summer of Love.
****February 18 тАУ New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claims he will solve the John F. Kennedy assassination, and that a conspiracy was planned in New Orleans.
*****March 1 -The Red Guards return to schools in China.
******March 12 -The Velvet Underground's first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, is released in the United States. It is initially a commercial failure but receives widespread critical and commercial acclaim in later years.
*******March 17 - The Grateful Dead debut their first album 'the Grateful Dead' consisting of the songs; The Golden Road, Beat it down on the Line, Good morning little schoolgirl, Cold rain and snow, Sitting on top of the world, Morning dew, New new minglewood blues, and Viola Lee blues
******** March 21 - Charles Manson is released from Terminal Island. Telling the authorities that prison had become his home, he requested permission to stay. Upon his release, he relocates to San Francisco where he spends the Summer of Love.[4]
*********April 28 - In Houston, Texas, boxer Muhammad Ali
refuses military service. He is stripped of his boxing title and barred from professional boxing for the next three years.
**********May 12 тАУ The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut album, Are You Experienced.
**********June 12 - Loving v. Virginia: The United States Supreme Court declares all U.S. state laws prohibiting interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.[13]
So... you ask why the history lesson?...well I heard a whisper in a cloud today wafting from the desert...from the THE WESTERN LANDS....IT said - read that magazine if you can still find it and...
тАЬA paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. A psychotic is a guy who's just found out what's going on.тАЭ
тАХ William S. Burroughs
I have noted the irony of WSB and WSB. Once again we as a country have embarked on Strange Adventures.
I made an entirely different WSB investment. Have been cashing in since 1978. No remorse. No regrets.
I don't entirely disagree about the mix, but the nihilist group will get out on time so it's not like everyone who backed the move is going to get rekt
Anyway... the redditors who lose will lose no more than they put in
The hedge fund guys will lose geometrically and that's what's charming about the story
I feel like Matt's uber fan boys think me mocking his gross hypocrisy here project on me that I don't find this charming/hilarious. I'm pro WSBers here! It's great! It's just Matt had his two totally predictable takes and they're directly opposed to one another.
As he explained to you already - and the majority of the rest of us agree with his explanation - you grotesquely misread his posts. What we have here is a junior high school tirade: You made a very public attack on his credibility, and now claim the moral high ground for bravely refusing to apologize when you're obviously in the wrong.
But, hey, you go wave your SJW flag, pal ...
People enjoy their victories most when they set the rules and keep score. It seems.
You work for Wall Street. That meme thing is just what the hedge fund scum have been using on the news. Wall Street is fake, dude. It's fake for everyone. Let us know where you live and when you will be out of town next so we can go through your shit.
I don't work for Wall Street.
Also, wtf is this: "Let us know where you live and when you will be out of town next so we can go through your shit."??
A threat.
You're definitely a good person.
I think he's a good poster!
...as if one's shit isn't gone through every time one applies for a job or a credit card. Hilarious!
This trade is safer by leaps and bounds than buying index funds at ATHs, right? The hedgies have publicly disclosed that they are short 140% of the float in $GME and keep loading up every time it climbs. In that scenario a swing group of buyers controls the price. It would be reckless to not pile on, right?!
Hah, maybe! Fingers crossed you're onto something
I agree about people trying to back-fit a populist rebellion onto this. Well said.
I disagree with the idea that Matt's two articles are in conflict. It's funny that these guys sent the hedge funds running. But at the end of the day, the stock price will fall, or else GME will have to find a new business model. If the Robinhood crowd wind up with a majority of the stock, they'd own the company. But what do they do with it? Hire a new board to do what?
Sometimes public companies go private. They do so because they think the company is worth more than the market value. Do these investors think that's true in this case?
[Who is to say the original planners are still the ones moving the stock? Robinhood is allowing buys of ONE share? That ain't gonna move anything.]
The real story here was the proof of concept. For the first time in my 40+ years, I've seen the populous stick it to the wealthy in a way that they actually give a shit about. I liked Occupy, but at the end of the day Finance didn't ultimately care that much. It didn't affect their money long-term and they were already experienced with waiting out a Long position in their penthouses.
This seems like it might be different. They're panicking so much over this that they're being blatantly... blatant about it in their hypocritical calls for regulation. That and the fact that they're losing money and maybe the citizens finally found something that will threaten them.
They were pretty confident that no "movement" with such exacting concern for the divisive dynamics of social justice would last very long. Which confidence proved to be well-founded.
Very good point. It started off as a class uprising and people supported it. And then...
Even if it's mostly nihilistic, it's a protest in spite of itself.
At this point, that which discomfits my enemy is welcome. IF there were such a thing as "Trumpism" (outside the tiny brains of hysterical blue checks), and IF it could be shown this little blow against the Empire was committed by "Trumpistas"...I'd still approve.
It's going to take some bitter hatred and a willingness to absorb loss for this to get turned around. If it gets turned around.
I could be reading him wrong but my understanding is that Matt thinks that the populists and the socialists would be much more effective at learning even the basics of Finance. He's said as much before.
For example - setting aside losing twice in races that were absolutely rigged in various ways against him - Bernie might have got the edge he needed to tip past the long odds in 2020 if he had been able to talk solutions to the Finance issues like Warren was able to do. Warren was able to peel enough of the "I'm a socialist but I'm a serious ADULT! harumph" vote off of Bernie mostly (in my opinion) due to the fact that she could talk a wonky finance game. Warren may or may not have been all talk with her "Plans" but she could still talk, and they weren't even hugely complicated concepts! Imagine if Bernie could have trumped (original meaning) Warren with his own specific finance regulation/tax plans?
My take is this is asymmetrical political warfare, and sometimes the poorly equipped/financed teams can win the battle using guerrilla warfare. Using their weapons against them is a key principle of guerrilla. VC sent France and the US limping out of their country by using their own weapons against them. VC would take discarded ration cans left by soldiers and fix them into mines.
The question of which opportunists/deplorables/gamerpoopsocks constitute the meme stock class is beside the point. This has been a proof of concept for a strategy that works because it's a counterstrike that the elites actually give a shit about. It gutted some of them where it hurt the most. It's plausible that the populists could further develop this strategy and bring back a little wealth in doing so. I want to see where this goes because nothing else that has been tried in recent decades has done anything to make them care.
Can you give a few more examples of WSB moving the markets? I'm genuinely curious.
Robinhood's list of stocks you cannot buy today gives a partial list.
<Due to ongoing market volatility, the following securities are currently set to position-closing only:>
AAL
AMC
BB
BBBY
CTRM
EXPR
GME
KOSS
NAKD
NOK
SNDL
TR
TRVG
https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/
Well just right now there's AMC and BB as well. Prior to this you had Hertz, NIO, NKLA, arguably TSLA, possible AMD argument, though that one really matches well with fundamentals. There's been more but these are some I remember from the top of my head.
Exactly, there are people all in on Gamestop, but the majority put in as much as they're willing to lose. If and when their position's value evaporates, it will have been more than worth it. Per WSB, "Diamond Hands" don't sell.
After prohibiting the purchase of shares and options earlier, the big market makers implemented a short ladder attack, wherein they put in lower and lower bid prices between themselves with little volume, and since no one can buy, it causes the stock price to appear to be plummeting. However, people who follow the subreddit quickly learned of the ruse. The shorts are still screwed for the foreseeable future.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Did anybody even mention "a bailout" for these plebes?? Don't think so.
Quite the contrary, BIden's press secretary's brother ran the hedge fund that got caught with their shorts down. Janet Yellen made a million dollars in "speaking fees" from Citadel alone! I think people know what "side" our public servants are on.
BTW, the press secretaries LinkedIn profile had her brother scrubbed from it, TODAY.
"Who do you think is going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up?" - as always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20. On the bright side, the publicity will probably help keep the company alive. Retail is a tough business, these days.
┬лas always, the last few to pile on, the ones who paid $200+ for the stock, when it's worth maybe $20┬╗
A critical detail is that the redditors are not buying the stock, for $20 or $200, they are buying call options on the stock. They know very well that their call options will eventually and soon become worthless, most of them have only bought a $100-$200 of call options and they can afford to lose them.
The big banks selling the call options will lose a lot of money though because their option pricing algorithms make them buy the stock to cover their positions. A large part of the story is that if a stock price ramps up very quickly, those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag.
calls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out huge. The people jumping in now are either long buying small amounts or spending a small fortune for calls. Puts are also wildly inflated too so someone sees the writing on the wall. Truth be told a lot of the last few days are FOMO guys and arenтАЩt going to get rich.
тАЬcalls on GME are a lot more than $100-$200. One contract at current price will set you back $7500. The ones that made out well bought $1000s of calls below $100 and made out hugeтАЭ
You are missing two important details:
* The huge rise on GME happened because a few days ago calls were "below $100". We are discussing how the stock could have jumped so much in so few days, the past, not the present. As I wrote part of the issue is likely that "those algorithms probably underprice those call options because they have a built-in lag", and the lag has shrunk.
* Most of the Redditors buy calls and stock on RobinHoodm and the important selling point of RobinHood is that they "sell" fractional shares and calls. That a lot of people are buying fractions is strongly hinted by RobinHood having to suspend new purchases of fractions for a while while they went out and raised capital for collateral, which makes sense only if they are the actual holders of the unfractioned shares and calls.
Greedy uneducated FOMO amateurs. Stack Market is gambling pure and simple and if you don't study and understand the odds you will leave the table broke. The house (Wall Street) always wins in the end. But those that understand the odds will at times score big time. This is a grown up world, these are not kindergarteners investing their milk money hoping to ride the pony outside. You make your bets and you takes your chances. If mom and pop have their life saving in a managed account and their account manager is not aware of the GameStop danger then they surely chose the wrong place to trust their saving s to. Anyone buying in at $200 has to know the risk.
Or, "Anyone buying in at $200 has to have $200 to lose." And I'm pretty sure most of them do.
Wonder how they're going to phrase the message that "You're not getting your $1400 Covidbux checks because some of you might do something irresponsible with it."
They'll have to first set it up that it's all the fault of "Trumpers" or "Alt-righters", which, with a fully compliant media, they'll probably be able to dl.
Who do you think was going to be holding the bag when GME goes tits up without the WSB/RH rise? GME was shorted 140%, so we know who was going to make money - the guys who just lost their asses. So who would have lost without WSB and RH?
Do you fret for people who are stuck holding lottery tickets that don't win too?
Exactly my sentiment. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Andrew has only a vague idea who is holding GME stock, and much more important, Andrew's has never, ever voiced concern for that group prior to this situation.
Tell me more about these donuts
Everyone who agrees with, "Hold the line" - although, quite a few of the "holders" didn't invest their life savings (we can only hope). It sounds as if most of my fellow redditors simply threw in nominal amounts and let the network effect take hold.
You think the Feds (ie, you and me) are gonna bail out individual investors on reddit? Obviously you don't know how gov't works. Gov't 101: Unless one of those redditors is the great great grandson of the old bags McConnell or Pelosi or Schumer or the son a hedge fund manager (who donates to list of previous old bags) who stole his dad's money and screwed him, there will be no bailout.
Some of the redditors. A lot of the hedge fund guys. There's no neat answer here.
I think you got your modifiers reversed :)
Unless something really crazy happens it will be a lot of Redditors and some of the hedge fund guys. You're totally right, though, they have 100% stuck it to Melvin and have proven (they already had, this is just the biggest time) they can squeeze a short with great effect.
And a lot of people who have no idea what's going on and think they can buy and sell for profit.