Anyone following the stock market and what the folks at reddit are doing?

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

I love it they're playing to break the market and show with it when information is available and had by all and can be made by anyone that it's useless. 

 

I'm all for Reddit destroying 401ks

Unless you have a 401K with hedge funds and shorts, this was good for your funds.  In theory, it brought GME above too low of value it had.  I'm sure it's too far right now, but as I see the timing, people were advocating shorting the stock when it was already low value.  At the same time that the Chewy people bought in and were installed on the BOD and the consols were introduced- both of which should have raised the value.

WonkoTheSane (FS) said:

Because they don't have connections to other hedge funds to bail them out with billions of dollars? :)

Yes, one of the requirements to play with those sorts of hedge funds is to have enough assets that losing an insane amount of money isn't going to mean losing much sleep. You wouldn't see this sort of thing in a 401K. The other reason is that a professional who regularly makes deals that bad is going to be an amateur pretty quickly.

This one does have one thing in common with previous market disasters in that it's a case of lemmings playing with investments they don't understand - in this case, short selling more shares of a stock than is sane, or more shares than even exist. But for it to trigger a crash would require a pattern of massively over-shorted stocks.

I bought 5 shares yesterday before I started this thread at about $85 per.  Its at $145 per now.  If it hits 150 I'm out

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Even so, to have 77M shorts would take billions of dollars.  They were able to take a tight situation, and push it over the edge.  Which is fine.

It's repeat orders and margin. Then add in very reduced stock numbers and yeah a few people with 10-20 million in starting capital that they margin out like crazy can cause swings like this. At one point there were more buy orders in the system then total stocks issued. 

Its weird as the actual buyer of GameStop really thinks they have a good position to be a small player in the online marketplace like steam or Epic. IF they have the resourse to battle it out with Epic is a whole different question and going up against steam like the new buyer wants to do is suicide at the money they have and the physical locations they have rent on. 

Sold at $149.79

Now, car parts!

The reddit idiots are predicting that Friday will peak due to monthly and weekly calls expiring. 

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Not knowing about GS specifically, all I can think is that the new owners plan on using their on line retail experience to expand Game Stop from a brick and mortar store to on line, like Chewy is.  They may have an angle on the stuff that can't be streamed where they can make money.  Integrate all the store sales to on line, and allow returns and interaction with the stores, maybe?  

It's not as if they have to invent the shipping system.  Just use packaging that says GameStop instead of Chewy.

Dunno- not a gamer, so I have no experience in GS and their stores.

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

Dunno- not a gamer, so I have no experience in GS and their stores.

That's the weird part of this.  GS has a kind of horrible reputation amongst gamers.  Their big thing is buying and selling used games.  They definitely buy for pennies and sell for dollars.

I think they make most of their money from moms and dads of teenagers.

Wow.  Peaked at $192

In reply to Mr_Asa :

It's at 222 after hours. 

peaked at $309 and is now retreating some

I read about this last night in an investment newsletter. The newsletter editor seems to find the situation somewhat amusing.

If you read through the WallStreetBets message boards, you'll see one of the prime targets is Andrew Left of Citron Capital. He has been visibly and publicly short GameStop... which before this whole episode, we honestly thought may have already been out of business.

As it turns out, Left is Whitney's friend, and he gave his side of the story in an interview last night. Left started by saying that this story shows that "the market has come to its lowest form." More from Left, as published in Whitney's e-letter today...

The Reddit crowd apparently said, "Let's find a company that's completely dead – and because everyone knows that, there's a big short interest – and engineer a short squeeze."

There's not a five-year-old in the country who can kick my [butt]... but 1,000 of them probably could. That's what happened here.

As far as they are concerned, it's a case of the "lunatics running the asylum" right now.  And while these "lunatics" have done wonders for my 401k balance, I do wonder when it'll all come crashing down.  

I'm guessing it goes to $900. 

I'm not putting my money on it.

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

I hope it does. We got in with just a few shares sub-$100, so watching it grow has been a wild ride.

bmw88rider (Forum Supporter) said:

peaked at $309 and is now retreating some

now at $367. I'm not getting in this one, but did drop $22 of Ethereum to buy a share of Blackberry because why not?

Summarization from a friend:
So at this point, this is basically a grudge feud between reddit, elon musk, and this Melvin Capitol place. Melvin exists to short stocks and try to drive the respective companies into the ground to make money off their demise. They tried to do it to Tesla, failed, and pissed off elon musk. The retards over at WSB figured out they were doing the same thing to GME and decided "berkeley you,, we're gonna mess up your plans and make some money doing it". As of this morning, even with the big loan they took out Melvin is about to become insolvent due to the internet pumping a stock well beyond its actual value for revenge purposes.

In reply to wae :

I'm saying the system is broken. When you have about a dozen large retail brokerages throwing people into a 401ks that are only slightly different in makeup to float stock value and evaluations that's no different than a forum saying let's increase this company's value by 700% this week. 

Stock investment was never intended for the vast majority of individuals to rely upon it for retirement whether it be be a mutual funds or not. It is a giant posi scheme at this point and needs to be shattered. When a company struggles at this point the best thing is for it to be bought out because then it drives up the stock prices for those who are invested in it That creates monopolies that allows one company to dictate things across an entire business sector. That's never a good thing for entry into the field for competitive pricing or for fair and decent regulation. That is why I want the ship to sink. And a 401ks are what your retirement is solely reliant upon, I'm sorry that your bamboozled by someone in HR or someone at an investment firm or brokerage house. 

There's no reason the SEC couldn't overhaul the rules governing options trading.  The stock market is a good thing.  Options trading?  I'm not so sure.

Mr_Asa said:

Summarization from a friend:
So at this point, this is basically a grudge feud between reddit, elon musk, and this Melvin Capitol place. Melvin exists to short stocks and try to drive the respective companies into the ground to make money off their demise. They tried to do it to Tesla, failed, and pissed off elon musk. The retards over at WSB figured out they were doing the same thing to GME and decided "berkeley you,, we're gonna mess up your plans and make some money doing it". As of this morning, even with the big loan they took out Melvin is about to become insolvent due to the internet pumping a stock well beyond its actual value for revenge purposes.

This. 

Funds that exist merely to ride the demise of companies create their own momentum. They can basically scare the market into saying "oh man, Melvin just put a huge short on GME, so I'm not investing in GME." They (reddit) basically became angel investors, willing to lose a little bit of money in order to make a rich company (Melvin) lose ALOT of money. 

What benefit to short sellers have to our economy? 

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Options and futures do ave their place, but not necessarily the way they're used in a lot of cases these days (for leverage). For example they are useful for certain types of physical goods and as a hedge. 

WonkoTheSane (FS) said:

MadScientistMatt said

Regardless, GameStop’s action illustrates, once again, why non-professionals shouldn’t short-sell stocks.

Because they don't have lobbyists to get Uncle Sam to bail them out with billions of dollars? :)

I fixed that for you. 

pheller said:

What benefit to short sellers have to our economy? 

That's an interesting one - short sellers have been able to expose fraud and other issues in companies in the past, as they tend to do a lot of research before shorting stock or even when not shorting stock.

I generally think that if you are allowed to buy stock, you should also be allowed to lend and short it. As long as it is not used for market manipulation, that is - and that goes more into ownership and size rules, and enforcements thereof. Plus of course there is the bigger question if the stock market itself is useful to the general economy.

I've been watching these guys for months. Some people have made some real money trading options. MAny have lost big money. 
 

it'll be shutdown before long. 

In reply to captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :

Not necessarily. There is nothing inherently wrong with stock investment.  The issue is when it stops becoming an investment and turns into speculation.  Buying a stock solely on the hope the price of that stock increases so you can sell it for a profit.  

As far as 401k accounts being retirement vehicles, that as much a result of the elimination of pensions as any influence from HR depts. 

Another part of what is causing these huge run-ups is nobody really has anywhere else to put their money when interest rates are so low that savings accounts don't pay out enough to cover inflation. So yes, while it is a bit of a Ponzi scheme, there isn't much of a choice right now. 

There are also the tax advantages of putting money into 401k accounts.  I max out my contribution ever year and put at 2x into savings accounts (401k and HSA) as I pay the Federal govt.

Personally, if I could find someway to get out (without taking a huge tax penalty), I would. Somewhere to put money that would at least keep up with inflation and maybe increase a smidge.  But that is also sort of the "holy grail" most investors are looking for.

Fueled by Caffeine said:

I've been watching these guys for months. Some people have made some real money trading options. MAny have lost big money. 

Back in a previous part of my career I used to work on electronic trading systems, including pioneering some automated trading ideas. Most of this was derivatives - futures and options, plus more complex stuff.

Let's say I've seen both the computational and intellectual firepower these trading companies deploy. If you want to make money in these areas you have three options:

• You're lucky.
• You catch someone doing something daft, which seems to have happened here
• You niche down to the extent that you can make decent money but none of the bigger players can make enough profit for it to be worthwhile for them. If you're in that niche it also helps to have a PhD in computational math or similar.

Then again, most day traders lose money anyway, options or no options.

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to wae :

I'm saying the system is broken. When you have about a dozen large retail brokerages throwing people into a 401ks that are only slightly different in makeup to float stock value and evaluations that's no different than a forum saying let's increase this company's value by 700% this week. 

Stock investment was never intended for the vast majority of individuals to rely upon it for retirement whether it be be a mutual funds or not. It is a giant posi scheme at this point and needs to be shattered. When a company struggles at this point the best thing is for it to be bought out because then it drives up the stock prices for those who are invested in it That creates monopolies that allows one company to dictate things across an entire business sector. That's never a good thing for entry into the field for competitive pricing or for fair and decent regulation. That is why I want the ship to sink. And a 401ks are what your retirement is solely reliant upon, I'm sorry that your bamboozled by someone in HR or someone at an investment firm or brokerage house. 

What should retirements be based on in your opinion? How should companies raise funding if not selling stock, and who should/shouldn't be allowed to invest in companies?