Social Media vs Wall Street - GameStop

Their argument is that that’s exactly what these hedge funds are doing too with the naked shorts. Turns out, two can play this game.

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I think it’s tough. There is no small group that is a reddit forum, it’s a whole crowd of people investing small amounts. Not to mention the huge consideration that is these are almost exclusively small retail investors going long on a US company, buying into the future success. I think it would be crazy for the SEC to come out and start hunting around for those retail investors betting long when you’ve got individual, massive, sophisticated hedge funds on the other side of the deal (who may themselves be partaking in market manipulation in these last few days).

Would truly be the poster child for socialism for the wealthy, capitalism for the masses.

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This is pretty much where I’m at. At least some of what’s being done is protected speech, or thereabouts. And it’s not a conspiracy, they are posting all of this on a public internet forum. You aren’t allowed to ‘foment,’ if I recall correctly. There are limits to what you can say, and it varies whether you’re Joe Schmo on Reddit or the CEO of the company.

In this particular case, the institutional folks had massive naked shorts. They should have known this is a risk. These firms should have risk management in place, and I don’t feel bad for them if a bunch of randos on the internet called their bluff. Now at this point, there are absolutely institutional investors who are long GME, so we’re kind of back to billionaire vs billionaire.

I’d say that they think there is at least a high probability of that, yes. Premiums are high right now for puts and calls, volatility will do that.

:iatp: We have all sorts of protections for unsophisticated investors. These are not unsophisticated investors. Welcome to the big city.

Or as folks in the country say: f*** around and find out.

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:approve:

If they didn’t have risk management in place before, they sure will after. Pretty cool that a bunch of ‘regular’ folks managed to school the big investment companies. I suspect this won’t be quite so easy next time though.

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It’s reddit so they’ll probably throw it into something else and lose it all for internet points.

I see you’ve been to WSB. Yes, this is how it works.

I’m not interested in being involved in this kind of thing, but I’m loving the show and rooting against Wall Street. Makes for interesting reading anyway.

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I dropped in four figures just to get a participation trophy. It’s been fun, and butt-clenching, and I’ve now exited most of my positions. Holding on to a few shares of GME in case it gets any more interesting.

Reminds me a little of the Volkswagen short squeeze 10 years ago. VW briefly was the most valuable company in the world, while at the same time many thought they were on the brink of bankruptcy. At one point there were more shares short than shares available, resulting in the “infinity” squeeze.

I wouldn’t even know how to do that if I wanted to. I’m such a luddite that 100% of anything equity related with me is in index funds that I never look at.

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I have a robinhood account, so I could do this, but I haven’t purchased anything in it since I opened it in 2014 :flushed:

I like buy/hold/occasionally rebalance. It’s less stressful.

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Well hang on to your hats folks, this ain’t over.

Looks like there’s been some shenanigans on the wallstreetbets sub. Looks like they got their discord server banned and the wsb sub went private. In any event, lots of people going berzerk. Redditor’s response of course is to go off the deep end and buy MORE GME. Man, if pity anyone that shorted the stock.

this is the most entertaining event since covid struck.

I got a brokerage account to deal with some ESPP money. Just buying index and bond funds until Covid hit. Made a little money in cruise lines and airlines when the volatility was massive. Then nothing. Then I see how big WSB has gotten, and figure they may collectively be influential. So I just figured hey, this could be a big moment, and why not throw my hat in the ring for a few grand?

So yeah, mostly just boring actuary stuff on my end.

With Robinhood caving to the hedge funds and shutting out the little guy, they should change their name to Sheriff of Nottingham

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Saw this too. How do people sell the GME shares they hold on Robinhood now?

I think you can still sell, you just can’t buy shares. I have AMC and it gives the disclaimer, “You can close out your position in this stock, but you cannot purchase additional shares.”

That seems more like market manipulation than Reddit.

Platforms only allow selling but not buying? How is that not price manipulation?

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