So I’ve heard a lot about this the past few days and don’t see a general chat thread for it, but I still cannot wrap my head around it myself so thought I’d create one
What is it, what’s the recent action with Robinhood about, and what’s your opinion?
Made a bit of money on this so i’m going to be biased.
It’s just amateur investors making money out of hedgefunds, the exact thing that any large investment firm does.
That and the occupy wall street spirit to things.
For an explanation even I can understand, read this;
I don’t understand it but that subreddit is pure cancer and should be shut
Probably the most accurate account of it from a large media website.
Alot of sites are going to have financial interests in these hedge funds not loosing insane amounts of money.
It’s the adrenaline of the discord calls while looking at freetrade that I enjoyed while making some money on the side. I never put in more than I was prepared to loose.
Guessing the stock market became my new lockdown hobby.
From what I can understand the community from the Reddit decided to all put into Gamestop which obviously bumped the value because of demand but when it was deemed to be “getting out of control” Robinhood blocked it?
Gonna give this a read now, thanks @Anarchist
It’s basically what happened, I found out from 4chans /biz/ board which has become a lot busier since /r/wallstreetbets was made private to stop journalists from snooping around trying to get it banned.
Yes I recommend you read the article.
I thought this was a good article about it. Well, clear enough that I understood it.
Why is it?
I Will give this one a read as well, I appreciate it!!
It embodies the most toxic internet meme culture. I found this this morning and just put me off the whole thing:
Such a bizarre event. I barely understand half of it but have read a few articles explaining things in crayons.
What I don’t get…
… reports say that “Investors” have bought shorts(? Right term?) to 140% of the available shares… how does that work?
… the going rhetoric for the WallStreetBets lot is “keep holding” and “buy more” to squeeze the price. At some point it peaks right, but surely a good number of those will lose out big time right? I keep seeing reference to the fact that the shorts have to be bought at the new prices at some point - but surely a good number of folks will lose big time (as in, the people buying now to squeeze the price)
… and what does this actually mean in practice for GameStop?
I think that’s one of the things that the WSB lot are laughing about - it shouldn’t be possible to short more than 100%, so the hedge funds have mucked up somewhere here.
That’s how I see it too, there’s no real endgame past messing with the shifters, and many many people who’ve bought in while the stock was high will miss the peak and lose bigly.
Probably little other than they get to ride the tiger for a while. Possibly some insides are delighted they can take large profits on their own stocks without needing to sell too many. But in terms of the day-to-day running and future business challenges? I can’t see any effect.
Yes. And No.
The thing is, the price will rocket. The short holders are playing games to keep the price down, and you’ll see today’s price hasn’t moved much because people are just not selling. Shorters can’t cover shorts if no one sells.
A lot of people can put in “sell prices” (or limits, or whatever they’re called), basically saying “I want x for my shares if you want to buy them”. A lot of the redditors have put this at stupid high prices - like $10,000 - so that if people buy at that point, prices start to go up.
Now, the thing here is, when shorters start to buy, yes, everyone may start selling, pushing some price down. But shorter will have to keep buying to cover their shorts, so they’ll push the price back up. Ultimately because they are so short they have to buy 100+% of all shares in the company. If people hold, they can’t buy, till they become really really desperate to buy due to contractual obligations, or interest on the borrowed shares etc.
If you look back to when something similar (but not the same) happened with VW shares, they were at a stupidly high price for a coupe of days (maybe a week), so people will be able to sell.
But the way I see it, there are 2 factions against the shorters here. One group are people that literally don’t care about their potential losses. Buying, and refusing to ever sell. The other, are people in it for some money, who will find the fact they get a 50-150% return on their shares (at $500) amazing, and sell.
The price will fluctuate a lot, there will be a lot of market work by the shorters to push the price down and weed out the investors that don’t have the stomach to stand through a small (or any) potential loss, therefore selling.
But don’t forget, yesterday, when trading was halted (unscrupulously) by some trading platforms, the price plummeted – some shorters added more shorts to the stock. Ultimately increasing their risk.
To the wider discussion, this has blown up massively, it’s a movement against Hedge Funds, against the whole system that’s broken. It’s shown up the whole fact that markets are manipulated so long as they are benefitting some people and not others. Robinhood have a couple of pending investigations/lawsuits. SEC are getting involved to work out why the share purchase was halted. Some of the brokers/intermediaries don’t have the money to cover what’s happening etc.
The system is broken, this is drawing light on it. But jump on the Reddit forum, and just read some of the stories on their, some people have paid for a year’s supply of insulin, or an operation for a friend, or even healthcare costs, or student debt paid off etc. These winners aren’t using the money for bad, but the hedge fund people don’t necessarily use their money for good.
I’m all for it, and am enjoying watching it.
Amen. I just wish I had bought some GME a month ago!
Haha don’t we all!
I bought £100 the other day, just for fun and support 
this was a fascinating story! thanks for posting 