CORP/BIZ GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine

Plain Jane

Just Plain Jane
I had hoped that Doc Fung would weigh in on this first but and interesting development has occurred in the markets.. Reddit users are outwitting hedge funds in a massive short squeeze over the GameStop stocks. And apparently it's catching on. This isn't about investment.

This editorial is from yesterday.



GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine
Traders putting on the short squeeze aren’t motivated by greed. They’re engaged in an anger-driven uprising against the establishment.
By
John Authers
January 27, 2021, 12:31 AM EST
There’s plenty to be angry about.

There’s plenty to be angry about.
Photographer: Daniel Grizelj/Stone RF/Getty Images

John Authers is a senior editor for markets. Before Bloomberg, he spent 29 years with the Financial Times, where he was head of the Lex Column and chief markets commentator. He is the author of “The Fearful Rise of Markets” and other books.
Read more opinionFollow @johnauthers on Twitter



Anger Is an Energy
The saga of GameStop Corp. continues. By the end of another frenetic day of trading Tuesday, the stock had just topped its high from Monday. Between those peaks, it staged a fall of more than 50% on Monday afternoon. Colleagues have followed these extraordinary developments as they happened. I will try for now simply to process the single most important question: Is this just a weird technical situation, of the kind that comes along every few years, that can otherwise be safely ignored? Or does it tell us something important about market conditions as a whole?


GameStop's share price surged back to set a new high

Purely qualitatively, based on what I have witnessed, I think it does matter. The signal it sends is disquieting, if not surprising. It also introduces us to a new variant on an ancient market phenomenon.


The cliche is that market capitalism works on the balance between greed and fear. The standard defense is as follows: If the greed to make money by beating the competition is matched by a fear of failure through making too many mistakes or cutting corners, then capitalism works. Nothing else yet discovered gives people such an incentive to work and create growth. Speculative bubbles happen when greed becomes excessive, or when fear diminishes too much. Easy money and easier trading with derivatives oil these emotions and allow them to run riot. The financial crisis of 2008 happened in large part because years of policy had convinced investors that there would be a bailout if they failed; they lost their fear, and greed took over.


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This feeds into the debate over whether we have a speculative bubble at present. Markets are pervaded by gloom and worry, so there is no lack of fear — even if confidence that interest rates will never rise is growing excessive. Meanwhile, there is little in the way of greed. Cryptocurrency has generated excitement, as has Tesla Inc., but in the main the frenzy over a historic opportunity to get rich, of the kind that was everywhere in 1999, is lacking. This is a different, worried world. The last two decades have stripped it of its positivity. The mood is nothing like the great bubbles of the past.

Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it.

On Monday, I argued that it was misplaced to take pleasure at the pain for the short-sellers who had attacked GameStop stock, and then been subjected to a “short squeeze” for the ages by traders coordinating on Reddit. I received a bumper crop of feedback. Here are some representative samples (leaving out many with unprintable expletives):
“You kind of miss the point of what is going on with GameStop. How much did Melvin pay you to write this garbage? shill. Literally trying to protect an industry trying to fleece jobs from low income workers. Sleep well chump.”
“Watching entitled institutional shorts whine on TV and OP EDs that millennials equipped with margin accounts & zero fees are collaborating on Reddit to target them is my new favorite sport. Looks perfectly healthy from where I'm sitting, which is on bull side :) plus 1 for the little guys.”
“Normal isn't putting the retail trader down for being independent while organized hedge funds force you to take their way or suffer in fear. Normal is the American dream and being able to make your own way. This isn't a casino. This is a riot.”
One respondent warned that the people squeezing the shorts aren’t “a herd of impressionable youngsters with Robinhood accounts. No. They are an experienced & ruthless army of insomniacs followed by a silent legion of rapidly learning new traders. This is a new paradigm that won’t go away.”

Another told me I was a “dumb boomer” amid a screed of unprintable epithets. (Point of information: I’m just too young to be a boomer. I’m in Generation X, but it’s the intergenerational antagonism that’s noteworthy.) Another said that the short squeeze was just a way for millennials to recoup the money they had been forced to pay to bankers during the TARP rescue 12 years ago, and to put coronavirus relief checks to work:
“In other words, poor people have too much money and are now controlling the narrative. Damn those $1200 stimulus checks and $600 unemployment supplements. Too much liquidity, let's get these folks back to living paycheck to paycheck.”
“I know. Democratisation of the market is so damned inconvenient for those of us with money.”

“nobody cares about your hedge fund cronies!”

“Bloomberg defending the suits. Not surprised. They’re just mad the rubes are in on the joke now. Might this force the Fed’s hand? Too many regular people in on the game.”
This is all fascinating. In the space of 12 years, the role of the short-seller has turned on its head. Back in 2008, it was the shorts who upset the status quo, revealed what was rotten in the state of Wall Street, and brought down the big shots. They were even the heroes of a big movie. It was the Wall Streeters who attacked them.

Alienation has deepened since then. Short-selling hedge funds are now seen as part of a corrupt establishment, as is the media. The motives of anyone defending the shorts, or anyone wearing a suit, must be suspect. And there is a deep generational divide; those unable to own their own home and forced to rely on defined contribution pensions have a stunningly unfair deal compared to those a generation older, living in mortgage-free homes with guaranteed pensions. That percolates into anger, and a determination to right the scales by making money at the expense of corrupt short-sellers.

We lack precedents for an angry bubble, so predictions are even harder than usual. But there are enough similarities with past incidents to raise serious cause for concern.

First, the little guys have had their success so far with the aid of margin accounts, and by using derivatives. We know what happens when these things are used to excess; even the Dutch tulipmania relied on margin debt and derivatives. Little guys (and everyone else) deserve safer tools with which to build wealth.

Second, “democratization of finance” isn’t new, and in itself is nothing that anyone can object to. The problem is that investment and financial planning are difficult, and require time. Regulate these things, and you no longer have true democratization. Leave people free to take chances, and you get disasters like the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. That also followed plenty of hype about the success of the “little guy,” and the first great explosion of online discount trading succeeded in sucking an army of new retail investors into the bubble’s final climax. Unregulated “democratization” led to the little guy bearing the brunt of the losses.

“Democratizing” finance also leaves newly enfranchised financial citizens prey to spivs and frauds. I started my career covering the disastrous repercussions of one of Margaret Thatcher’s last reforms in the U.K. — giving people the right to leave their defined-benefit pensions, offered by employers, and take on defined-contribution “personal pensions.” Unscrupulous salesmen persuaded miners, firefighters and police officers to abandon copper-bottomed index-linked pensions for plans that came burdened with excessive charges. It was a repellent spectacle, and the bill for compensation was in the billions.

These points doubtless make me appear to be a complacent shill for the financial industry, talking down to the rubes. For the record, I’m still angry about the way workers were ripped off in Britain more than three decades ago, and about the way the little guy ended up bearing the brunt for the financial implosions of 2000 and 2008. But it looks horribly to me as though the same thing is going to happen again — and I don’t think the answer to today’s many ills is to empower poor people to bankrupt themselves with margin accounts and derivatives.

Anger, even more than greed, has the capacity to make us throw caution to the winds. Many of us have a lot to be angry about. If this carries on, and spreads beyond targets like a video-game retailer, I don’t want to see the consequences when history’s first angry bubble bursts.
******

See more at the link but all it's about is getting enough sleep.
 
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Plain Jane

Just Plain Jane

GameStop’s stock market explosion, explained
14
An explanation of Reddit’s war with Wall Street institutions
By Owen S. Good Jan 27, 2021, 2:30pm EST
GameStop store signage is seen on January 27, 2021 in New York City
Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
American stock markets are in a lather. Little-guy investors are supposedly cratering billion-dollar hedge funds. Reddit, social media, and now Elon Musk are involved. And somehow, this is all for GameStop, the beleaguered video games retailer notorious for giving gamers pennies on the dollar for their used software.

It’s very hard to recap what is going on with GME, the ticker symbol that has become a hashtag, because the news in a volatile stock market changes instant-to-instant. We’ll try anyway. The most important thing to understand about GameStop and short-selling, though, is this is now a very high-stakes gambling table with theoretically infinite losses that, for some big players, are becoming very real.

So real, in fact, that President Biden’s economic team and U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen are “monitoring the situation,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

JUST IN: Jen Psaki on #GameStock stock activity: "Our economic team including Sec. Yellen and others are monitoring the situation. It’s a good reminder, though, that the stock market isn’t the only measure of the health of our economy." #GME pic.twitter.com/5hywniFVH8
— Forbes (@Forbes) January 27, 2021
WHY IS GAMESTOP’S STOCK PRICE SO HIGH?
GameStop’s share price, which closed on Tuesday at $147.98 (it’s gone over $300 today) isn’t any reflection of its health or value as a company. It’s a reflection of a war between “retail investors” (individual day traders, or regular people) and institutional investors (big Wall Street firms).
RELATED
GameStop stock price still hitting records as Redditors squeeze short sellers
Hedge funds, supposedly the professionals, have been betting against GameStop’s stock using a trading technique called short-selling. Day-traders, organizing under the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, are holding onto the shares of GameStop that they own — despite skyrocketing values that have made some of them millions of dollars on paper — to stick it to the hedge funds.

The battle began in earnest last week, when r/WallStreetBets realized its users, who had bought into the stock when the supposed smart money was shorting it, effectively controlled the supply of GameStop shares in circulation. Now the banks need to buy that stock to cover the obligations of the short-sell bet they have made. The Redditors are refusing to sell.

WHAT IS SHORT SELLING?
Here’s a very dumbed-down analogy that’s actually 100% accurate.

$GME Short squeeze explained nicely:
Snake - Melvin Capital & Citron
Apes - Retail Investors

Credit @ the group pic.twitter.com/0vyyg9lsnJ
— Tashi Tsenkyap (@tashitsenkyap) January 26, 2021
The “group of apes” in this situation is a chaotic group of investors organized under the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, which counts more than 2 million subscribers. Last week, one of them realized that GameStop was in a “negative float” position. This means that the number of “shorted shares” — that is, the shares loaned to investors that must be eventually returned — was actually greater than the number of shares available to trade.

“There is likely not an original GameStop-issued share left on the market,” the user wrote. “[The] shares that you, me, and [another user] own are a shorted share. … There is no way that [short-sellers] can get themselves out of it. They’re only going to be buying back their shorted shares which, since they are above 100%, there is no way to do that, unless institutions sell off everything they own into the open market.”

In other words, the longer r/WallStreetBets hold onto their GameStop stock, the higher the price goes.

DOES GAMESTOP ITSELF HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS?
No. The company’s last communication with investors was a Jan. 11 report on its 2020 holiday sales results (total sales down 3.1% from 2019, for those counting).

On the same day, however, GameStop announced that Ryan Cohen, a well-known investor who bought a 10 percent stake in the company last fall, had joined the board of directors, along with two of his allies. This caused the initial jump in GameStop’s share price, as Cohen in November wrote a scathing, get-your-shit-together letter to company’s board. Little-guy traders loved it, viewing Cohen as a savior. Investment banks thought their amateur counterparts were due for a bath, and bet accordingly.

DID A BILLION-DOLLAR HEDGE FUND ACTUALLY GO OUT OF BUSINESS OVER GAMESTOP?
No. But Melvin Capital, the fund in question, did take a huge loss when it closed out its short position (i.e. paid its bet and left the table), CNBC reported on Wednesday.

CNBC could not confirm the size of the loss Melvin Capital actually took, but noted that the company took on a $2.75 billion cash infusion from two investment banks to keep itself solvent. Gabe Plotkin, Melvin’s manager, told CNBC that speculation the hedge fund would file for bankruptcy is false.

HOW MUCH MONEY HAVE PEOPLE MADE?
Bear in mind this is paper wealth (and it’s wildly fluctuating) but the trading on GameStop — by the way, on Tuesday it was the most-traded security in the world — has created about $2 billion in wealth, most of it for Cohen and the company’s two other biggest shareholders.

WallStreetBets redditors, however, have bragged that their portfolios have skyrocketed into seven-figure territory. Realizing these gains, of course, would require someone to liquidate their shares. GameStop’s Cohen is by definition in this for the long haul — he bought in to shape the company’s direction, and would lose that power if he sold out. And the Redditors are holding onto their shares with reckless, YOLO glee, promising to see the stock price soar to the Moon, Mars, or other celestial ports of call.

HOW DOES THIS END?
Short squeezes are a risk of short-selling and one that institutional investors are prepared to face, but their assumptions are based on normal investor behavior, and what’s happening right now is anything but normal.

Usually, a share price would reach a too-good-to-refuse level, there would be a run to cash in on it, and while some people would make a lot of money, and others would lose big, the stock would return to a more normal reflection of the company’s value and health.

But the “meme stock” punters of Reddit are refusing pretty much every offer. Moreover, they’re turning their attention to other shorted stocks where they can hurt investment bankers and hedge funds. (AMC Theaters, Blackberry, and Bed Bath & Beyond have become primary targets for WallStreetBets users hoping to force similar gains.)

If #Gamestop $GME runs tomorrow here is a list of other stocks being heavily shorted pic.twitter.com/Mcxb2QjshM
— Esloh Trades (@eslohtrades) January 25, 2021
Short positions of greater than 50% (that is, where more than half of a company’s tradable shares have been sold short and aren’t covered or closed out) are unusual. GameStop had more shares sold short than were actually in circulation, which is called “negative float.”

Once WallStreetBets realized GameStop was in negative float (information that is easily obtainable), it started putting the screws to the short sellers by refusing to sell, putting the share price into a kind of positive feedback loop.

IS THIS LEGAL?
In a Bloomberg newsletter on Tuesday, Matt Levine wrote: “It might be illegal in all sorts of ways, but it is not obviously illegal, and if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were to go after WallStreetBets for this stuff they will be breaking new ground and going beyond their previous cases.”

For now, it appears to be well within the rules, such that any exist in a dog-eat-dog capitalist market. That’s what’s driving a lot of the schadenfreude and popcorn-eating on social media.

Hedge funds and private equity have destroyed every workplace I ever had, so I celebrate any time they are made to suffer. It should happen more often, and it’s ridiculous that their business practices are still legal GameStop Has Another Record-Shattering Day On Wall Street [Update: And Another One]
— Henry Gilbert (@hEnereyG) January 27, 2021
As victims go, it would be hard to find ones less sympathetic than short-sellers and hedge funds. A common theme here is mocking institutional investors for being beaten at their own shady game. There is a large lesson still to come about the broadening of access to financial markets. But for the layperson, the best advice probably came from the well known games industry analyst Michael Pachter last week: Stay away.

“The smart money already got in, and probably got out,” he said.
 

Squid

Veteran Member
Nimble traders or long sited investors could make a killing on the short term volatility. The shorts that include hedge funds and
Long/short funds have taken it in the shorts.

The losses could be greatly amplified by leverage.

The squeeze will punish those on the wrong side, but this could be over in as little as a day or 2 or possibly a week.

If over leveraged traders need to sell other positions to meet leveraged calls this could expand beyond gamestop imho.

The Only thing holding up the current market in my totally unprofessional opinion is free Fed money flooded to banks that they pass to big corp, wall street, and billionaires.

The market from April/May of last year totally de-coupled from the economy because they hoovered up the fed ‘liquidity’ injections. History generally implies in spite of progressive MMT BS that this cannot last indefinitely.

A new equilibrium will be reached after either the shorts are cleared or the market brings down the value to make the short positions less problematic.

Certain trading platforms are restricting trading, wall street is circling the wagons on this one, I do not believe they would be starting this if this was only impacting 1 or 2 hedge funds with a wrong bet.

FYI, I recall the Pelosi’s recently took some leveraged positions on some tech stocks. If they are on the wrong side if they are LEAP’s their investment worst case goes to zero.
 

Plain Jane

Just Plain Jane

WallStreetBets Responds To The SEC: "Eat A D!ck"
Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JAN 27, 2021 - 17:30
Update 5:55pm ET: In a day when regulators, brokerages, and even the administration launched a full-court press to halt the marketwide short squeezes launched by Robinhood daytraders armed with stimmy checks and inspired by Reddit's forums - because a few hedge funds complained or were put out of business - Reddit's infamous WallStreetBets, the alleged origin of many of these bull raids, has published a response to the SEC. We present it without commentary.
"To the SEC retards in this sub: go **** yourself. Why don't you start investigating why companies can shut down trading so their hedge fund buddies don't lose money. But when people lose money it's completely okay. Eat a dick," r/WallStreetBets said, which has already garnered 122k upvotes.

Reddit users of r/WallStreetBets were apparently trashed all day by CNBC hosts and guests, with some calling average retail investors "unsophisticated." Well, if they were so "unsophisticated," then the question begs, how did a bunch of millennials on the Reddit forum unleash one of the biggest "mother of all short squeezes," and during the process, blow up multiple hedge funds who were overleveraged in Gamestop short positions.

One Reddit user said, "SEC I have proof of malfeasance. A group of hedge funds shorted the ever-living **** out of GME putting themselves in this position. What repercussions should they face? Or is it because they're somehow better than retail investors they shouldn't face any penalties? We. Like. The. Stock."

"Hedge funds simply got cocky and made the incredibly idiotic move of reaching 140% shorts in a stock. If we hadn't seen that, someone else would and the result would be the same.

Because that's obviously going to bite you in the ass. There's nothing coordinated or sophisticated about it. It's legit dumber than anything I've ever seen in this sub and I've been here a while," another Reddit user said.

But, "what it?" Well, the following post by the so-called WSB chairman (with 190K followed), and which was liked by Elon Musk, reveals the thinking of what happens next...

* * *
Earlier:
Just hours after Jen Psaki informed the world that Joe Biden is closely tracking the turmoil in the most shorted stocks...


... The SEC released a statement Wednesday after-hours echoing Uncle Jone, that it too was closely following the insanity in the market.
"We are aware of and actively monitoring the on-going market volatility in the options and equities markets and, consistent with our mission to protect investors and maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, we are working with our fellow regulators to assess the situation and review the activities of regulated entities, financial intermediaries, and other market participants," Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee Pete Driscoll, Director, Division of Examinations Christian Sabella, Acting Director, Division of Trading and Markets wrote in a statement.

While the SEC's did not mention individual company names, it was clear that the the was referring to the monster moves in the various most shorted names, including the extensively discussed explosions in Gamestop, AMC, BlackBerry Limited and countless other shorts which r/Wallstreetbets went after in hopes of forcing short squeezes.


GameStop's parabolic rise - which has become a poster child of all that is wrong with this bubble market - is a clear reminder of the Dot Com bubble insanity. Even fund manager Michael Burry who was long Gamestop, called the move "unnatural, insane, and dangerous."
Sure enough, in a hint of what may be coming, overnight William Galvin, Massachusetts' top securities regulator, said today that Gamestop trading could suggest something is "systemically wrong" with the market. Around midday, TD Ameritrade told clients that it would impose restrictions on certain trades involding GME, AMC and other stocks...

... ahead of what may be a marketwide halt in trading in these names as hedge funds come crying to mommy.
Already some industry watchers are speculating that it is only a matter of time before Reddit will be subpoenaed to explain how a bunch of teenagers destroyed a hedge fund.


Also earlier, the CEO of Nasdaq, Adena Friedman, suggest a halt to trading to allow big investors to "recalibrate their positions' to combat reddit users

Then again, the ramp may continue for a while because after being asked explicitly on at least two occasions, uberprinter Jerome Powell refused to answer questions related to Gamestop's parabolic rise, suggesting that the bubble is only going to get bigger.
 

somewherepress

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Game Over?

View: https://twitter.com/verge/status/1354567256534110209


Breaking: Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server

Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server
It was banned following repeated warnings for allowing hate speech

Discord has banned the r/WallStreetBets server, the company confirmed to The Verge. Reddit’s WallStreetBets subreddit is the driver of an unprecedented rally of GameStop stock, and has received a great deal of attention in the press as the stock continues to soar.

Discord says it did not ban the server for financial fraud — rather, it was banned because it continued to allow “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.” The Verge gained access to the server and can confirm the claim that users of the channel were spamming hateful language, including racial slurs.

Here is Discord’s full statement:

The server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation. Over the past few months, we have issued multiple warnings to the server admin.
Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.
To be clear, we did not ban this server due to financial fraud related to GameStop or other stocks. Discord welcomes a broad variety of personal finance discussions, from investment clubs and day traders to college students and professional financial advisors. We are monitoring this situation and in the event there are allegations of illegal activities, we will cooperate with authorities as appropriate.
r/WallStreetBets describes itself as “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,” and many comments on the subreddit contain offensive language.

If you were able to get into the Discord, it was chaotic, with messages coming in at a rapid rate and many voices talking over each other simultaneously. Check out this video from my colleague Tom Warren to get an idea of what was like (note: you may want to turn down your volume before clicking play, as the voices are quite loud):


the main Discord call for wallstreetbets is true online chaos pic.twitter.com/cq8QOyHj6m
 

Plain Jane

Just Plain Jane
Update to article in post 17. The Empire Strikes Back.


Crackdown Begins: Discord Bans r/WallStreetBets From Its Platform
Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JAN 27, 2021 - 17:30
Update 625pm ET: Until now, the only sure way to be shut down by a silicon valley tech titan was to be a conservative website or twitter account. Not anymore: as of this evening, the wrath of the tech giants has converged with that of the largest US hedge funds, and according to The Verge, Discord has banned the server of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit.

Discord told the Verge it did not ban the server for financial fraud (because there was none) but rather because it continued to allow “hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings" which of course is not only laughable, but has become the generic excuse of Wall Street titans to shut down anyone they don't want "polluting" the internet airwaves which it now appears a handful of billionaires decide who can and who can't be on.

One wonders which hedge fund - Citadel or Point72 - made a quick call to the Discord board to make sure the massive short ramps cease.
Here is Discord’s full statement:

The server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation. Over the past few months, we have issued multiple warnings to the server admin.
Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings.
To be clear, we did not ban this server due to financial fraud related to GameStop or other stocks. Discord welcomes a broad variety of personal finance discussions, from investment clubs and day traders to college students and professional financial advisors. We are monitoring this situation and in the event there are allegations of illegal activities, we will cooperate with authorities as appropriate.
The question now is whether reddit will do the same to r/Wallstreetbets as it did to r/Donaldtrump and bans it and, if so, does it mean that any young enterprising trader is just as bad as the MAGArs in the eyes of the tech establishment.
 

Plain Jane

Just Plain Jane
Another update.

Most Shorted Names Tumble After WallStreetBets Reddit Page Goes Private
Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JAN 27, 2021 - 17:30
Update 645pm ET: And just like that the infamous r/WallStreetBets subreddit which destroyed at least one hedge funds. and even cost legendary trader Steve Cohen 10-15% in losses in January...
  • COHEN'S POINT72 LOSES 10-15% AMID HEDGE FUND LOSSES THIS MONTH
... has "gone private", which means that only people who are invited can join.


The move comes just moments after we showed that today was an absolute record day for WSB, which had a whopping 800,000 people join it in one day, the equivalent of $1.1 billion in stimmy checks..

And since it will be that much more difficult to bring new entrants to the forum, it is hardly a surprise that the most shorted stocks which exploded in recent days, are suddenly tumbling with GME down almost $100 after hours on the news...

... and AMC is tumbling too.

So it is over? We doubt it: while the original subreddit may well have enough critical mass to continue its bull raids for the time being, it's only a matter of time before the members regroup and find a venue that welcomes them.

Maybe Parler?
To be sure, the "autists" are not happy, and have a simple message: "**** WALL STREET, **** THE SHORTS."
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/****ing%20banned%20us.jpg?itok=tEC9-BmR
* * *
 

The Snack Artist

Membership Revoked
Nimble traders or long sited investors could make a killing on the short term volatility. The shorts that include hedge funds and
Long/short funds have taken it in the shorts.

The losses could be greatly amplified by leverage.

The squeeze will punish those on the wrong side, but this could be over in as little as a day or 2 or possibly a week.

If over leveraged traders need to sell other positions to meet leveraged calls this could expand beyond gamestop imho.

The Only thing holding up the current market in my totally unprofessional opinion is free Fed money flooded to banks that they pass to big corp, wall street, and billionaires.

The market from April/May of last year totally de-coupled from the economy because they hoovered up the fed ‘liquidity’ injections. History generally implies in spite of progressive MMT BS that this cannot last indefinitely.

A new equilibrium will be reached after either the shorts are cleared or the market brings down the value to make the short positions less problematic.

Certain trading platforms are restricting trading, wall street is circling the wagons on this one, I do not believe they would be starting this if this was only impacting 1 or 2 hedge funds with a wrong bet.

FYI, I recall the Pelosi’s recently took some leveraged positions on some tech stocks. If they are on the wrong side if they are LEAP’s their investment worst case goes to zero.
I dare you to short the vol in GME. Face, meet ripped off. Or, $$$$$$!!!!!!!
 
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vector7

Dot Collector
The hedge fund managers that profiteer off of every event and finance our political class that spit on us daily while smiling in our faces made a clear statement when traders decided they wanted some crumbs too.

The message:
"You'll own nothing, and you'll love it."
RT 2min
View: https://twitter.com/Malcolm_fleX48/status/1354586714581430276

"I didn't hear one person on TV complaining about Wall Street trying to crush GameStop."

@CVPayne says the "whining by Wall Street" is making him "sick" during the GameStop stock shenanigans.
RT 1:31secs
View: https://twitter.com/ShannonSmith_al/status/1354573268930457600
 

Faroe

Un-spun
I'm clueless too. A bunch of gamer people (or Redit users?) got together to short a stock? But now the market there is ok, so they are moving on?, but they need to find another platform?

Sigh. I'll try to get through it again, but have never found myself so lost and directionless in an article.
 

Jubilee on Earth

Veteran Member
I think for as awesome as it was to see these hedge fund managers get knocked down, I think this event is going to be the catalyst for a market crash. It exposed the games (no pun intended) and corruption, and there’s no stopping them from doing this over and over again. It’s now a war, and confidence in the stock market will flounder big time. It’s all vaporware. It will become as volatile as crypto, but this house of cards will crash much harder.
 

Tarryn

Senior Member
I don't invest and I don't game. What the hell do it mean?
So in a very brief nutshell
The hedge fund peeps bet against GME (gamestop).
A bunch of them had short positions on the stock. Shorting stock, also known as short selling, involves the sale of stock that the seller does not own, or shares that the seller has taken on loan from a broker.
So they were betting they could borrow the stock sell it for more and pay back after the price goes down.
Enter reddit/4chan/twitter users who bought the stocks which ran up the price.
If the shorts come due while the price is up the hedge fund assholes lose their shorts.
 

TKO

Veteran Member
I think for as awesome as it was to see these hedge fund managers get knocked down, I think this event is going to be the catalyst for a market crash. It exposed the games (no pun intended) and corruption, and there’s no stopping them from doing this over and over again. It’s now a war, and confidence in the stock market will flounder big time. It’s all vaporware. It will become as volatile as crypto, but this house of cards will crash much harder.
Me, too. Business fundamentals have basically gone out the window. Glad to see shorts get fried.
 

hunybee

Veteran Member
The hedge fund managers that profiteer off of every event and finance our political class that spit on us daily while smiling in our faces made a clear statement when traders decided they wanted some crumbs too.

The message:
"You'll own nothing, and you'll love it."
RT 2min
View: https://twitter.com/Malcolm_fleX48/status/1354586714581430276

"I didn't hear one person on TV complaining about Wall Street trying to crush GameStop."

@CVPayne says the "whining by Wall Street" is making him "sick" during the GameStop stock shenanigans.
RT 1:31secs
View: https://twitter.com/ShannonSmith_al/status/1354573268930457600


ab-so-lutely!

both of those men are right.
 

The Snack Artist

Membership Revoked
I am laughing my ass off at Wall St and the hedge fund managers who got caught in this. Charles Payne never had my respect until today. I like him.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing like seeing a man be destroyed financially in front of your own eyes. I've seen it more times than I can count or care to remember. The look. Whoa. I put in 30 years at the Chicongo Mercantile Exchange brokering options on the S&P. I've been there and have been a part of this. Not for the faint of heart. In fact one day the traders in the futures pit were stepping over a guy who had had a heart attack. What are they going to do? Stop trading to help him? The EMTs were on the way.
 
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