Why Did Reddit Trigger a GameStop Stock Surge?

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In summary, the reddit users successfully attacked Gamestop by buying the stock, while the hedge funds lost billions.
  • #36
i don think they're going to charge everyone and if they do its probably going to be light
 
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  • #37
Greg Bernhardt said:
No, they are evil because they prey on retail investors

Exactly. Austin Donnely who was my 'guru' in my early investment education worked tirelessly against it:
https://www.investmentmagazine.com....nelly-tireless-worker-for-shareholder-rights/

When you first realize it, as happened to me all those years ago now, it really makes you mad.

These days I have given it away, although I still subscribe to an investing newsletter that I am thinking of canceling. It is far less stressful.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #38
bhobba said:
Short it using CFD's if you are that way inclined. During my days of share trading I saw all sorts of similar stuff. That's why I gave away short term trading - first I was not that good at it and secondly long term trading based on buying when below a line of linear regression and selling when above worked well (ie relying on regression to the mean) and was much easier on the nerves. Or you can simply switch between classes depending on how far above or below you were - above go for high yield below - high growth although I found a small cap index fund was a bit better - strange. Medium term trading was OK but it still required you to watch your positions like a hawk. You could do long term trading on the weekend. ETF's have really changed things from when I did it.

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Bill
Subtracting several components not applicable to trading in the US, I concur with the general approach to modern trading. Try similar methods using your country's markets. Select amenable trading software and test the system with paper trades over different time frames. Forget about profit and loss for a moment. Treat shorting or purchasing an entity as equal tools, más o menos.
Greg Bernhardt said:
No, they are evil because they prey on retail investors, play by different rules and when they get in trouble they just call up the SEC or brokerages and halt the stocks where they are under pressure. So much for free market.
Concur. The kernel of most trading tracking software originally developed from AAA 'gun' tracking systems. While bereft of financial expertise, I was expert in tracking, including developing electronic systems that augmented then replaced electromechanical track computers. In the field staring at and acting on information from multiple screens and graphs, anticipating motions, became second nature.

A wily broker handling my portfolio at the dawn of the 21st C. got me interested in the maths. The results, even using paper trades without "skin in the game", invariably indicated market price manipulation, usually near close of trading depending on the instruments and exchanges.

Pro gamblers; i.e., small traders; at that time often day traded, opening and closing large positions on margin between opening and closing bells attempting to 'surf the gnarl' and profit from perceived trends before the fix invariably set in. Like all gambling: never play with what you cannot afford to lose.
 
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  • #39
OK, in what sense is the market fixed?

The purpose of the stock market is to allow companies to raise capital by allowing investors to share in their profits. I can buy 5.4 x10-9 of the profits of Alcoa (just an example) for $18.70, and this will get me about 12 cents per year. For this to work, there has to be a secondary market; nobody will buy a share of stock if they need to hold it for the rest of their lives. "The market" is really driven by the secondary market. It looks like Alcoa last issued shares at the end of 2019. What if I want to buy stock today? And what if someone who has it doesn't want it anymore? That's what the stock market tries to do. I would argue that it performs this function reasonably well.

Company prioces change over time. Thus, the value of your five-billonths of Alcoa is worth more on some days and less on others. There is money to be made speculating on which way this will move. Even if everything is above-board, the individual investor is at a serious disadvantage here. I can spend nights and weekends studying Alcoa, but JPMorgan can have a person whose entire job is to follow Alcoa. Next to his desk is someone who studies only Kaiser Aluminum, and they have a boss who supervises the entire sluminum market and so on.

Big banks will do better at speculation than individual investors even without skulduggery because they are better at it. They are better at it because they put more into it. Individual investors better understand that. Ignorance of the facts is no excuse. Of course, if one plans on holding stocks for a very long time, this doesn't matter so much. The longer you hold it, the less it matters.

It is certainly true that brokerages make their money in ways that are opaque and in some cases legal but unsavory, e.g. profiting off the bid-ask spread off their own clients. But it is also true that trading has gottem much cheaper. Fifty years ago, a guy named Charles Schwab made his name offering trades for a mere $70 commission. Back then, you paid extra for odd lots (not a multiple of 100 shares), extra if you were a small investor (or, if you like, a discount if you were a large investor), had a bid-ask spread twice what it is today, didn't get your trade executed in seconds, and so on. Would I prefer a more transparent model, without the monkey business? Absolutely. Do I want to go back to 1974? Not on your life.
 
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  • #40
bhobba said:
Exactly. Austin Donnely who was my 'guru' in my early investment education worked tirelessly against it:
https://www.investmentmagazine.com....nelly-tireless-worker-for-shareholder-rights/

When you first realize it, as happened to me all those years ago now, it really makes you mad.

These days I have given it away, although I still subscribe to an investing newsletter that I am thinking of canceling. It is far less stressful.

Thanks
Bill
is it a good news letter
 
  • #41
Vanadium 50 said:
OK, in what sense is the market fixed?
There are numerous insidious advantages big institutions have over the common retail trader and it's a lot more than just knowing the industry, it's a stacked game. Just look at this current fiasco. Hedge funds can use their billions to short sell a company into oblivion and hop on CNBC and bash the stock and then that's okay, but the minute there is a crowdsourced counter to it, it's manipulation and they pressure brokerages to stop allowing them to buy the stock (they are allowed to only sell), but oh the Hedge funds can still buy it.
 
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  • #43
vela said:
Robinhood has prohibited individual investors from buying the stocks. They can still sell. Meanwhile, traditional firms are free to buy and sell as usual. It seems pretty obvious Robinhood is acting to protect the hedge funds.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22254102/robinhood-gamestop-bloc-stock-purchase-amc-reddit-wsb
Doesn't that also protect individual investors from themselves? Sooner or later the music is going to stop on this. Redditors that keep buying and buying are playing chicken with a brick wall, with their eyes closed.
 
  • #44
russ_watters said:
Doesn't that also protect individual investors from themselves?
Lots of fine lines with that logic though and I certainly don't trust any PR from them like that. Robinhood is already finished as a platform. They are getting put through the ringer and traders are leaving in troves. The hedge fund that was shorting GME closed out and lost like $22B. You don't think there were some calls made?
 
  • #45
Vanadium 50 said:
OK, in what sense is the market fixed?

...Even if everything is above-board, the individual investor is at a serious disadvantage here. I can spend nights and weekends studying Alcoa, but JPMorgan can have a person whose entire job is to follow Alcoa. Next to his desk is someone who studies only Kaiser Aluminum, and they have a boss who supervises the entire sluminum market and so on.
Greg Bernhardt said:
There are numerous insidious advantages big institutions have over the common retail trader and it's a lot more than just knowing the industry, it's a stacked game.
I think we all know the game is fixed, for both perfectly legitimate and insidious/underhanded reasons. My question is: why do so many individual people still insist on playing? Do they not really believe it is fixed?
 
  • #46
russ_watters said:
My question is: why do so individual people still insist on playing? Do they not really believe it is fixed?
Have you been to Vegas lately? :)
 
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  • #47
Greg Bernhardt said:
Have you been to Vegas lately? :)
It's been a while. Not that interested. So is the answer then that so many of these people are degenerate gamblers? Most people only go to Vegas for a vacation and there's only so much you can lose over a weekend unless you put real effort into it. But here, people are gambling their life savings!
 
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  • #48
russ_watters said:
It's been a while. Not that interested. So is the answer then that so many of these people are degenerate gamblers? Most people only go to Vegas for a vacation and there's only so much you can lose over a weekend unless you put real effort into it. But here, people are gambling their life savings!
For many, day trading and individual stock picking is gambling wrapped with a sense of financial responsibility marketed by big institutions. I think we can all agree long investment in funds and indexes is an actual responsible plan. Single day traders don't have the systems or cash in place to manipulate and so they are often preyed on. Never before have we seen a crowdsourced day trader effort to achieve what big institutions do all the time, often among themselves. They lost and now are cry babies.
 
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  • #49
After a boring afternoon of only swinging +/-25%, it closed at $197. Session high: $468 session low: $126.
 
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  • #50
Greg Bernhardt said:
For many, day trading and individual stock picking is gambling wrapped with a sense of financial responsibility marketed by big institutions. I think we can all agree long investment in funds and indexes is an actual responsible plan.
Yes, I suppose that is probably true. And I'll admit I'm not immune (I have a few individual stocks). I also wonder if people think they are winning because they are making money even if they are losing? If I'm looking for an emotional/political reason to like index funds, it's because I'm getting the Fat Cats to work for me without having to pay them. That's probably why I'm not as upset about them for being them.
Single day traders don't have the systems or cash in place to manipulate and so they are often preyed on. Never before have we seen a crowdsourced day trader effort to achieve what big institutions do all the time, often among themselves. They lost and now are cry babies.
I enjoy seeing hedge funds lose too (probably not as much as you), but my concern is that I'm not even sure the redditors recognize how much they themselves stand to lose. I don't think they are in the same game or league as each other and I think many don't realize it. It will be interesting to see what happens to the redditors when it collapses underneath them.
 
  • #51
Problem with cornering a market is what to do next, just ask the Hunts or the founder of Piggly Wiggly

https://globalfinancialdata.com/the-piggly-crisis
Clarence Saunders also became part of the last stock corner on the New York Stock Exchange in 1923. The corner became so prominent, that the whole affair became known as the Piggly Crisis. Clarence Saunders was generous, determined, stubborn, and well-known in Memphis. Saunders became known as the home boy who faced off the financiers of Wall Street who were using a bear raid to try and profit from a decline in Piggly Wiggly stock. ...Once the corner is completed and the shorts have covered their positions at the inflated price, little demand is left for the stock. The price of the stock can collapse, leaving the bulls with a burdensome load of debt. The whole process can end up bankrupting both the shorts and the bulls. Piggly Wiggly shares started trading over-the-counter in July 1920 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in June 1922. In November, 1922, several of the independently-owned Piggly Wiggly stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut failed and went into receivership. Although Saunders’ corporation operated independently of these stores and was profitable, some Wall Street operators saw this as a reason to begin a bear raid on Piggly Wiggly stock. The bear raiders began selling PIggly Wiggly short and spread rumors that the company was in poor shape. Saunders took this challenge personally. He had created Piggly Wiggly stores, created the concept of self-shopping, was spreading his stores across the country, and some bears were trying to create profits by spreading lies about his stores. Saunders decided to “beat the Wall Street professionals at their own game.” Saunders not only used his own money to battle the shorts, but he borrowed ten million dollars from a group of bankers in Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Chattanooga and St. Louis to buy up the existing float. In the Wall Street of the 1920s, bear raids came and went. Companies didn’t go bankrupt because of bear raids, and if the fundamentals of the company were sound, the stock would bounce back after the bear raid was over. Nevertheless, Saunders refused to give into the Wall Street city slickers. Saunders hired Jesse L. Livermore, the most famous bear on Wall Street, to help him break the back of the bear raiders. Within a week, Livermore had bought 105,000 shares of Piggly Wiggly, over half the float of 200,000 shares...
 
  • #52
Also, its only gambling if you do it with your own money. Serious investors gamble trade with other people's money.

Dont see much impact on Gamestop, but hopefully some employees with company stock languishing in their 401K managed to sell. Ultimately the hedge funds are at fault for shorting over 100% of the float of GME and more power to WSB for catching the opportunity.

Volkswagen also did this a couple years ago to its shorts
 
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  • #53
what 401k has gamestop stock in it though
 
  • #54
nduka-san said:
what 401k has gamestop stock in it though
Presumably Gamestop has an employee stock purchase program
 
  • #55
nduka-san said:
its fun to watch the little guy win
HUH ? @nduka-san I don't think you understand what's going on. The "little guys" including teachers and nurses and so forth that have their life savings in pension funds that have invested in the hedge funds that got hurt are NOT going to share your belief.
 
  • #56
nduka-san said:
what 401k has gamestop stock in it though
That's irrelevant. See post #55.
 
  • #57
nduka-san said:
what 401k has gamestop stock in it though

Many. CREF alone has three funds (Stock, Social Choice and Equity Index) that hold it.
 
  • #58
phinds said:
HUH ? @nduka-san I don't think you understand what's going on. The "little guys" including teachers and nurses and so forth that have their life savings in pension funds that have invested in the hedge funds that got hurt are NOT going to share your belief.
if te big guys do it as well its only making it a fair playing field
 
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  • #59
nduka-san said:
if te big guys do it as well its only making it a fair playing field
Do WHAT? Do you think "the big guys" have ever caused a $20 stock to go to $500 and whipsaw up and down over a period of two or three days?
 
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  • #60
no but they still influence it in their favor.
 
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  • #61
russ_watters said:
why do so many individual people still insist on playing? Do they not really believe it is fixed?

There are two games.

One game is where you buy into a company and make your money through appreciation and dividends. I have made a lot of money playing this game. This is not a zero-sum game.

Another game is where you try and out-trade your trading partner. This is a zero-sum game. Expecting to win this game against a well-supported pro is like expecting to win one-on-one with Michael Jordan at his peak. Even without any cheating, I wouldn't expect to win. I wouldn't even expect to break even.
 
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  • #62
Vanadium 50 said:
There are two games.

One game is where you buy into a company and make your money through appreciation and dividends. I have made a lot of money playing this game. This is not a zero-sum game.

Another game is where you try and out-trade your trading partner. This is a zero-sum game. Expecting to win this game against a well-supported pro is like expecting to win one-on-one with Michael Jordan at his peak. Even without any cheating, I wouldn't expect to win. I wouldn't even expect to break even.
except today it was mj vs hundredss of elementary or middle schools in this scenario, not very experienced but very good teamwork.
 
  • #63
Except the pro zero-sum game is more like rock-paper-sissors than the NBA
 
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  • #64
phinds said:
HUH ? @nduka-san I don't think you understand what's going on. The "little guys" including teachers and nurses and so forth that have their life savings in pension funds that have invested in the hedge funds that got hurt are NOT going to share your belief.
Then the managers of those funds aren't worth their 6 figure salary if they got whopped by a bunch of amateurs.
 
  • #65
256bits said:
Then the managers of those funds aren't worth their 6 figure salary if they got whopped by a bunch of amateurs.
Six figures? LOL, Try three comma
 
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  • #66
Next thing I'd like to challenge. There is no "Wall Street". There are banks, and brokers, and analysts, and so on. It's an interrelated system, to be sure, but it is made up of individual actors with their own motivations and reward structures.

Many of these people influence stock prices. A broker does so by putting buyers and sellers together. An analyst writes reports on the financial health and prospects of various companies as she sees it. This is not only legal, it is necessary. What they cannot do, however, is to collude. (This happened with LIBOR a few years back - billions of dollars in fines and 14-year prison terms for some of the bad actors.)

I think a good question is whether the Reddit folks colluded to manipulate stock prices. Is it collusion, or is it conversation? Certainly someone who bought the stock, then talked about running up the price on Reddit, and sold it while telling others to keep buying is in a worse position than someone who just talked.
 
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  • #67
phinds said:
HUH ? @nduka-san I don't think you understand what's going on. The "little guys" including teachers and nurses and so forth that have their life savings in pension funds that have invested in the hedge funds that got hurt are NOT going to share your belief.
Boy, I hope pensions aren't invested in hedge funds. My sister is an analyst for such funds and I'm pretty sure it's all fixed/guaranteed income; bonds and such.
 
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  • #68
Vanadium 50 said:
One game is where you buy into a company and make your money through appreciation and dividends. I have made a lot of money playing this game. This is not a zero-sum game.
It's not zero sum, but measuring success isn't against a baseline of zero either. Most individual investors still lose if they measure themselves against market averages. That's what I mean when I say they think they are winning but they aren't.
 
  • #69
russ_watters said:
Boy, I hope pensions aren't invested in hedge funds. My sister is an analyst for such funds and I'm pretty sure it's all fixed/guaranteed income; bonds and such.

not as much as they were 10 years ago before performance began to suck, but yes, large plans generally have some allocation to hedge funds. Most of the assets are stocks and private equity. No hope of meeting actuarial return assumptions of 7-8% with a large allocation of bonds
 
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  • #70
russ_watters said:
Boy, I hope pensions aren't invested in hedge funds. My sister is an analyst for such funds and I'm pretty sure it's all fixed/guaranteed income; bonds and such.

Oh yes they are. And it has not always gone well.

Even 401(K)'s can do so, (just this year in fact) in very limited circumstances.

russ_watters said:
Most individual investors still lose if they measure themselves against market averages. That's what I mean when I say they think they are winning but they aren't.

I don't know. My portfolio over the last five years has returned 12.33%. I think that's pretty good. In the same period with the same methodology, the S&P 500 returned 12.89%. So I came within 56 basis points of the market after fees, transaction costs and the like, with a portfolio with substantially less risk. If this is losing...

I am an accredited investor, so I have access to hedge funds. Do I have any money in them? Nope. They have very high fees, and the fraction that do well enough to justify these fees is about what you'd expect from chance alone. (I do have investments in funds with very high minimums, however.) That makes it hard to decide whether Fund X is better or worse than Fund Y based on past performance, so I stay away. I'll take my 12.33% thank you.
 
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