Reddit/Gamestop vs.Wall Street

1800_Ladladlad

CNBC Chamath Palihapitiya Interview January 27th, 2021


A very good interview, much of which has been stated in the thread so far. Its been taken down by CNBC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8RRuYuYyBY

This is it

1800_Ladladlad wrote: »

CNBC Chamath Palihapitiya Interview January 27th, 2021


A very good interview, much of which has been stated in the thread so far. Its been taken down by CNBC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8RRuYuYyBY

A good watch, would love to hear more from him today after the shenanigans

There are a lot of high profile people speaking out about financial pundits and the market manipulation by Robinhood, et al today. You'd have to think there'll be huge ramifications from this.

Even with the huge losses today the original Reddit user that bought in early is up $33m, with $13m of that already cashed out. He started with $50k. Absurd amounts of money flying around.

I bought in Tuesday. Got my original investment back so happy enough to let the rest sit and see what happens.

Overheal

No it's still there?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/chamath-palihapitiya-closes-gamestop-position-but-defends-individual-investors-right-to.html

well, the first 2:53 is that's when Chamath flips the script on the host. That's when he pivots and started going against the hedge fund model. They're conveniently leaving all that out.

I played your link and theirs side by side - managed to get them 100% synced tapping pause enough :pac:

fritzelly

I used to trade in the markets a few years ago but from everything I've been reading the past few days this all sounds like collusion to manipulate the market by not Reddit users but hedge funds and their friends to help themselves make money

Surely this is all illegal, apart from the 140% shorting (how is that not illegal????)

Cannot but help think this is some kickback from the last crash that fecked everyone over because of these greedy people

ShaneU

https://www.twitch.tv/aoc

AOC talking about it on Twitch

MisterAnarchy

I wonder what Gordon Gecko would make of all of this ?

fritzelly

1800_Ladladlad wrote: »

CNBC Chamath Palihapitiya Interview January 27th, 2021


A very good interview, much of which has been stated in the thread so far. Its been taken down by CNBC.

That's a great watch!

edit - and gone again...hmmmm...

completedit

As the day has gone a bit of reality has set in. Realistically, the rich will always gain. Sometimes the proles will have their day but then this is rare and they mah just end up like the hated elites. At best, they end up subscribing to their game. Like in the big short when the two lads realise that if they're right on their bet, then the consequences for society will be catastrophic.

At its core, hedge funds to me seem to play a role in our modern economy, for good and bad. Not all HF's are created equal. Their value that they create is very abstract and is only good if you have full faith in capitalism as a powerful force of good. In the times we live in where capitalism is under siege, its difficult for most of us to be able to see what they actually do of value.

AbusesToilets

completedit wrote: »

As the day has gone a bit of reality has set in. Realistically, the rich will always gain. Sometimes the proles will have their day but then this is rare and they mah just end up like the hated elites. At best, they end up subscribing to their game. Like in the big short when the two lads realise that if they're right on their bet, then the consequences for society will be catastrophic.

At its core, hedge funds to me seem to play a role in our modern economy, for good and bad. Not all HF's are created equal. Their value that they create is very abstract and is only good if you have full faith in capitalism as a powerful force of good. In the times we live in where capitalism is under siege, its hard to see them in a positive light.

It's not capitalism tho, it's monopolies, collusion and corporate socialism when it inevitably crashes. It's a ****ing giant scam

Melanchthon

Melanchthon wrote: »

I do think its likely that key users/mods in the sub could be using it too make cash, I think one of them was shilling a book last year.

Will retract this completely, I was talking about something that did happen but as I do not follow it closely (unfortunately it seems). Those moderators were apparently removed last year

Melanchthon

https://mobile.twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1354989746158784514

Can't believe I am saying this but this is a great CNN interview

hatrickpatrick

Thematics wrote: »

Investing people's wealth is valuable for society.

Not unless it's investing it in something that actually produces a good or service, sells it, and makes money on it for the investor. Anything else - investing in property already built by somebody else, investing in stocks or currency for the sake of gambling on the price, investing in commodities already created and jacking up the price - all of these are examples of economic "activity" which doesn't generate any new wealth or value, it simply robs Peter to pay Paul.

There was a very good article in the Irish Times about this a couple of days ago actually, it was specifically about how the trend of pension funds owning large amounts of rental housing and making bank on the current housing crisis was essentially a case of the currently retired generation leeching wealth actually generated by millennials from those who generated it, without actually creating or contributing anything to earn that wealth.

Price gouging, hoarding, speculating - all of these are examples of economic "activity" which is utterly destructive and detrimental on a societal level. It is, quite simply, an attempt to 'earn' money without actually producing anything to justify earning it. It breaks all the fundamental rules of how capitalism is supposed to work and is one of the main reasons economic systems are so f*cked up and are locked into this never ending cycle of stagflation.

fritzelly

Melanchthon wrote: »

https://mobile.twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1354989746158784514

Can't believe I am saying this but this is a great CNN interview

Someone who knows what they're talking about and not taking sh*t - wish it was longer so he could keep digging

BTW - was he a patsy, wasn't expecting someone so young!

Melanchthon

fritzelly wrote: »

Someone who knows what they're talking about and not taking sh*t - wish it was longer so he could keep digging

There's an interview on Bloomberg Markets and Finance as well , your man is bricking it, less combative but still a lot of questions and think this is before the first interview I stole from the Reddit sub.

https://youtu.be/2AyDYJ5Qt1I

Edit: good bit is the end of the interview, they (Robinhood) were going to go public this year and they have just absolutely thrashed their reputation

patnor1011

Muahahaha wrote: »

Interesting story here whereby an activist investor message board on Reddit called WallStBets with 2 million subscribers have managed to push the share price of Gamestop so high that Wall Street hedge funds who bet on the share price falling are running for the hills with multi-billion dollar losses.

Gamestops share price was worth $3.25 this in April last year and hedge funds have been betting that the company is a dead duck due to the pandemic and dominance of Amazon. Redditors in the group have a fondness for Gamestop and a collective of day traders decided have in the last few months driven up the price past $140 meaning billions worth of Wall Street bets have been lost. So far they have claimed the scalp of over $6bn of Wall Street cash with one hedge fund losing $2.3bn of that just last Monday alone.

Its stock price is so volatile that the NYSE suspended trading on it 9 times on Monday and the White House say they're monitoring the situation. Be interesting to see how this plays out. The Redditors are having their fun and cleaning out Wall Street hedge funds right now but once the music stops they're left with a vastly over valued stock thats in an inflated bubble.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/27/gamestop-stock-market-retail-wall-street

Nope. Stock was over-shorted to the point that those who must cover their short positions will have hard time to find shares to buy. There is not enough of them.

patnor1011

AbusesToilets wrote: »

It's not capitalism tho, it's monopolies, collusion and corporate socialism when it inevitably crashes. It's a ****ing giant scam

Corporate socialism is actually definition of fascism. Fascism was a movement disguised as workers party but in reality backed fully by corporations.
That is actually where we are heading now. Big multinationals and corporations be it in manufacturing or media are starting to dictate what is permitted and what is not. They can force countries to change laws and policies to suit them. People are slowly giving up to thought police with their cancel-lynch mobs...
In other words history repeats itself over and over.

Overheal

1800_Ladladlad wrote: »

CNBC Chamath Palihapitiya Interview January 27th, 2021


A very good interview, much of which has been stated in the thread so far. Its been taken down by CNBC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8RRuYuYyBY

So guess what, they yanked that link on copyright grounds too - and CNBC's youtube channel just shows the first 3 minutes as before,

Here's a still up link for the full interview where he hands CNBC their lunch https://vimeo.com/505494564 the whole interview is fire, its half an hour long, and if you still see this link working take the time to view it if you're following this thread.

Wanderer78

Thematics wrote:

Investing people's wealth is a valuable economic activity.

...and by doing so, the wealth trickles down causing the tide......

patnor1011

Overheal wrote: »

So guess what, they yanked that link on copyright grounds too - and CNBC's youtube channel just shows the first 3 minutes as before,

Here's a still up link for the full interview where he hands CNBC their lunch https://vimeo.com/505494564 the whole interview is fire, its half an hour long, and if you still see this link working take the time to view it if you're following this thread.

That interview was hilarious.
So in principle it is ok when hedge funds skin retail because it is how the system works but if reverse happens then we all should be concerned because there is hazard involved and some folks can lose money.
That moderator was so concerned about poor Joe Public who may lose his 300$ he spent to buy a share when in fact he was and is scared that hedge funds may actually sink whole casino because they gamble with money they do not own and which do not even exist.
Pretty much the same is happening in silver market. Every time price moves up few banks put up so much shorts that there is not enough of silver out there to cover 10% them and price goes down. And if you want to buy some most of the sellers are out of stock.

hatrickpatrick

patnor1011 wrote: »

Corporate socialism is actually definition of fascism. Fascism was a movement disguised as workers party but in reality backed fully by corporations.
That is actually where we are heading now. Big multinationals and corporations be it in manufacturing or media are starting to dictate what is permitted and what is not. They can force countries to change laws and policies to suit them. People are slowly giving up to thought police with their cancel-lynch mobs...
In other words history repeats itself over and over.

On a related note, Robin Hood is today restricting traders to owning no more than five GameStop shares, so anyone who already owns more than five is prohibited from buying more - and I'm not 100% sure whether this is tied to the utter sh!t show yesterday of multiple traders reporting RH having used some obscure TOS provision to sell their shares without consent, thereby hampering the price rise.

Wikipedia now has a section, backed up by media citations, documenting the link between RH and Citadel, one of the funds being targeted by WSB. Citadel has denied pressuring or instructing RH to lock trading or restrict it, but it looks dodgy as f*ck and questions are now being asked at a US congressional level.

I'm very cynical so obviously this is only my view, but it's starting to look like the suits made some extremely reckless decisions yesterday in their panic, and in so doing inadvertently exposed just how much manipulation is routinely going on. This appears to be a real "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" moment which has now got the attention of some extremely prominent United States Congresspeople, notably Alexandria Ocasio Cortez from the left and Ted Cruz from the right.

Whatever the fallout on the specific issue of GameStop and Melvin Capital, the wider issue of how f*cked up the market economy is and how far from a 'free market' it actually operates as just moved from something which is discussed on online conspiracy forums to something which is being actively considered by two branches of the United States government. Anyone who still believes this won't have an impact beyond a few meme lords making or losing a large amount of money during a volatile couple of days' trading is kidding themselves at this point. The wider issues are taking over the story and this will have ongoing ramifications in one form or another for a long time.

Wanderer78

Thematics wrote:

Do you have a problem with investment management?

It claims to benefit all, but a lot of the time it actually doesn't, it truly only benefits asset owners, but it's important to always bare in mind, asset ownership globally is heavily skewed, ultimately leading to wealth trickling up.

Wanderer78

Thematics wrote:

Do you have a problem with investment management? Or are you just repeating slogans you heard in movies or somewhere else?

I repeat what I continually research from reputable sources

Mike Murdock

Ah now have a heart! Those Paddy Power-esque Gamblers on Wall Street with their "unique" (racing) systems are people too!

hatrickpatrick

Thematics wrote: »

Do you have a problem with investment management? Or are you just repeating slogans you heard in movies or somewhere else?

The current concept of "investment" is an utter corruption of what it was originally envisaged as and yes, it is extremely damaging to society.

Investing was originally supposed to be about paying companies an amount of money up front in exchange for the promise of a future share of the company's earnings. That was the idea. Once it became primarily about betting on the share price and trading shares from one buyer to another without any of that money actually going to the company itself, it became a toxic entity which fundamentally contributes nothing to society and yet for some reason is still regarded as a benchmark of the overall economy, with serious consequences for ordinary people if the casino glitches in any way. That's why so many people on the left and right despise the system as it currently exists.

It's similar to housing. Nobody is going to get pissed off at those who invest in construction - putting money into housing projects with the expectation of sharing some of the profits from the eventual sale or rent of the resulting housing.

It's when the housing has already been built, therefore nothing new is getting created or produced into society, that the speculative trading and hoarding of said housing for the purposes of gambling on its price fluctuations becomes utterly toxic. Toxic for one simple reason - the entire fundamental purpose of speculative investment is directly at odds with the fundamental goals of society and more and more importantly, also the fundamental realities of what's good or bad for the planet.

Take this case for example: Melvin Capital's position essentially meant that in order for them and whoever they represent - pensions, banks, trust funds, whatever - a company with many employees and other shareholders had to go bankrupt so that Melvin could make a gigantic profit on the short.

Any system which allows one group of people to massively profit from the downfall of others is a system which is inherently bad for humanity, if one's view of humanity is that, in general, we should be moving away from a world in which the only way to be a winner is to create losers.

Tl;dr, investing in productive businesses thereby capitalising them and helping goods or services get produced for society while sharing in the profits = fine, good, exactly why the stock market was created.

Investing in non productive moving of already existing assets from column A to column B or competing with other investors to drive prices up without anything of value actually being created for the wider economy = one of the main reasons modern economics is so unbelievably screwed up and causes so much large scale societal fallout on such an unbelievably regular basis.

Speculative investing is toxic. The very nature of it involves exploitation, manipulation, and fundamentally a higher cost of living for ordinary people.

patnor1011

Thematics wrote: »

Investing people's wealth is a valuable economic activity.

Problem is they no longer are in that game. It is not people's wealth they invest but a gamble with hypothetical monopoly money which in this instance they lost. So now they have to find and pay real money to cover monopoly money they were playing/gambling with.

Wanderer78

Thematics wrote:

Who claims it "benefits all"? But it does indeed have further benefits to society. But benefitting all? Don't know who said that.

The benefit all claim is widely used in society, hence terms such as 'trickle down' and 'the rising tide', this is what we d call bullsh1t! Once again these activities only truly benefit asset owners, primarily major asset owners, which has resulted in financialised activities such as 'share buy backs' etc, which in fact is money making money schemes, but adds very little value to the real economy, only truly the finalized economy, again, which only truly benefits the minority in society, I.e. asset owning classes.

hatrickpatrick

patnor1011 wrote: »

Problem is they no longer are in that game. It is not people's wealth they invest but a gamble with hypothetical monopoly money which in this instance they lost. So now they have to find and pay real money to cover monopoly money they were playing/gambling with.

And those who called the game for what it was and exposed the lie are being attacked all over the place by neoliberals shouting "these are peoples' savings you're f*cking with!"

Again acting as if it's exposing the con that's the issue as opposed to the con itself. They're acting like the quintessential rom-com character who gets caught having an affair and blames their partner for not trusting them, looking for evidence and thus "ruining our relationship".

It's laughable.

LessOutragePlz

Thematics wrote: »

Efficient capital markets bring about a lower cost of living for ordinary people. And by the way people have been trading shares of companies for hundreds of years without any money going to the company. Why should it go to the company. If Dave wants to buy shares from Alan why should the company get any money from that. The com9any already got money when it issued the shares.

Why should two people not be alllowed to trade shares, what's your problem with that?

No, investment is not non productive. It provides a service to people who want their money to grow over time in accordance with their risk appetite

On the topic of short selling. I see no problem with it in itself, it adds value to society through price discovery. Over valued companies should be found out. It is best for society when capital is directed to productive and efficient companies.

Care to show us how the average Joe benefits from a massive hedge fund making billions from shorting a stock?

What about when there was an attempt to drive down the share price of Tesla by investors shorting the stock?

If that had happened and Tesla went bust using you're logic that would have been good for society because it would have been reallocating capital to the "right" places. We all know EVs are a lot better for the environment and thus are a great benefit to society yet you claim short sellers are doing everyone a favour. We all know that is a load of nonsense and they have been caught with their pants down big time.

If can't see the flaw in your logic, then no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.

The EMH is a hypothesis and this week has proven that the hypothesis is not true.

Chris Cuomo skewered the Robinhood CEO who tried to use the exact same script that he used on MSNBC.

The J Stands for Jay

Gatling wrote: »

Has anyone actually made real world money on this or is just a case of sticking it to the hedge funds

I bought one share share for the lols @$88 and sold for $410.