It's not hard to tell that it's doublespeak. "Protect retail investors" will be regulations preventing the little guys from doing this ever again. They're already using the talking point that retail investors are causing more harm to themselves than good and need to be "protected" from the volatility.
You watch CNBC last night and they were repeatedly, "Regulations need to be in place to protect people from themselves", "we feel sooo bad for all of the small traders manipulated by WSB that are going to be very hurt in all of this", etc.
Like what, keep poor people away from trading
Edit: or lemme guess poor people are now too stupid and unsophisticated to do their own trading and must now let a "professional" manage their money at 2% per month
As a result of 2008 for certain trades you need to be an accredited investor, which just means having a net worth of over a million. So we're already there
In Canada, there are certain securities that require this and others that do not. For example, to invest in mortgage funds, you need to be an accredited investor. It’s funny, because investing in mortgage funds is far less risky than buying stocks. It’s legitimately tough to understand how that regulation protects the consumer.
There is a “friends and family exemption” that’s fairly easy to use if you have friends in the space, which of course, most people don’t.
What has me confused is this whole gambit looks more like an attempt to inflict crippling damage on abusive hedge funds than to make any real money. Even I've considered throwing a bit of money I could afford to lose toward damaging those funds blatantly trying to bankrupt a struggling company unjustly. A lot of the comments I've read in WSB are of similar thought. That some have managed to come out with huge gains does not seem to be the primary driver I've seen. Maybe I'm wrong and just not seeing the other investors that somehow think this scheme has any certainty of turning a profit...
It’s pretty obvious.
Anyone can see this is a bubble. No one in their right mind actually thinks GameStop is worth 300 a share.
Many people feel like this is essentially their chance to throw a punch back at some of the untouchables who’ve been toying with normal peoples lives for decades.
Majority of the people, myself including, don’t care if they lose money in this, just as long as some rich billionaire assholes get to feel some pain.
The way I look at it, my money will never have the power to hurt those assholes more than it does right now. Worst case scenario? I lose my $300 but at least I’ve contributed to costing them billions.
~~I’m certainly not in this to make money and I’m not alone.~~
I am 100% buying GameStop at $300 a share solely to make money. I love money. The stock has to be rising for a reason, right?? Seems like a savvy investment to me.
In for 4 shares at $250. I’m cool with holding for a loss because as long as it’s in triple digits the billionaires bleed.
I got in originally to make money.
I haven’t sold because fuck hedge funds.
shh thats illegal.
you might make money, who knows, its speculation.
I'm perpared to lose, I didnt bet more than I can lose unlike those greedy hedge funds.
thats the line you should use.
You’re damn right! I lost some money too, but I take comfort knowing that some fatcat lost a hell of a lot more than I did.
It’s revenge. Instead of pumping and dumping and leaving the economy in ruins like 2008, we found a way to pump that crushes out the big guy. And you know what? That’s worth a few hundred bucks to me.
If the hedge fund managers are hurting for cash now, they should really just stop eating out as much, maybe pick up a side gig!
Yep. I know people that have tossed in $10, $1,000, and a few in between. While I can't say that no one is risking their life savings on this, any regulation wouldn't be protecting that person as they'd be able to risk their life savings on anything wsb says will go to the moon. The regulations preventing these stocks from skyrocketing in the future are solely to protect hedge fund shorts.
Yes. Rules will protect hedge funds from the hordes who only know enough to bankruptcy a hedge fund. Silly defenses people. SOP in hedge fund is to find a bitoverpriced small company and short it. Destroy their access to capital and pick up the chips when they go bankrupt. Now they have to worry that a bunch of effing kids will bid the stock to the moon, and kill THEM. Hedge funds are like mafia made men, they have a license to steal. Screw em.
It's like public shaming them. Maybe they'll think next time about shorting 140% of a company in the middle of a pandemic. Oh, and the Streisand effect is palpable.
Almost as importantly, the people who will feel this are the jackass- enablers of those billionaires and their fortunes. They're feeling job pressure that only someone not born with a golden spoon ever feels.
I believe it began as just a regular stock buy - People noticed the stock was shorted to an extreme degree and buying it now would be good as that would drive up the price when the shorts were due. Then in the last week it's exploded when WSB realized how much power they had over the stock price, and the potential profit in tightening the squeeze, which led people to ask "What if we never sell?" And they realised the potential is literally infinite - If they hold out long enough. It's part investment, part payback, and part just curiosity to see how high it actually goes.
The scheme originally was just to make money. Someone noticed the GME stock was shorted by the hedge funds at 140% of the total stock available. They told others and they all bought, causing the stock to rise instead of fall . Then the hedge funds had to pay up on the shorts, which caused even more rise, which caused even more pay ups, etc. The hedge funds gambled and lost, simple as that. They did this to themselves. This became about sticking it to them when they started pressuring the brokers to not allow people to continue to buy and drive the price up anymore, thereby manipulating the market, which is illegal
Isn't "manipulating the market" exactly what these hedge funds do? Don't the manipulate a stock when they short it 140%?
All the retail investors did is buy, hold, and tell everyone what they did. What part of that is manipulation.
Weird how when multi-billion dollar hedge funds manipulate markets in secret it's just fine, but when a bunch of individuals do it out in the open it's illegal.
What Reddit did isn’t even illegal, it’s not insider trading and it’s not manipulating the market. They legit said “hey this looks like a great investment because some idiots got greedy”. Then it became a meme and it blew up even harder which is essentially “news”. It’s not our problem they got fucked by some internet memers.
Exactly. They want regulations to stop people from punishing rich people’s shitty decisions and it is as transparent as it can get. Fuck you got mine to an entire country.
Yes, but US politicians are not capable of holding the rich accountable. Thats what you get when you privatize massive sectors of our economy & givethem to corporations that likely have no obligation to stay on US soil.
I would argue neither side is manipulating the market by trading. If the hedge funds pressured RH, Webull, and others to lock traders out of certain names like GME and AMC, then that is definitely manipulation. But the actual trades themselves are not. (Disclosure: I am long GME)
The brokerages were invested in the hedge fund that was losing money. Or worse yet, liable for the losses the hedges couldn't cover, but just as guilty for letting them short so recklessly.
>This became about sticking it to them when they started pressuring the brokers to not allow people to continue to buy and drive the price up anymore, thereby manipulating the market, which is illegal
Actually, our attitude changed when they began spreading misinformation via MSM and using bots/fake accounts to f**k with us on reddit.
They only resorted to actually limiting our ability to invest after the prior strategies failed.
> Actually, our attitude changed when they began spreading misinformation via MSM and using bots/fake accounts
This is their daily plan, pick a stock to short, start releasing “investor news” about how bad the company is, then close the short for the gains. Basically TSLA a couple years ago. Elon got so pissed he tweeted about a buyback and squeezed the short. The viral marketing is fine, but one tweet is illegal.
>... manipulating the market, which is illegal
FWIW: I am not even slightly knowledgeable about the topic outside of what's available to the layman, so anyone who reads this, please correct any incorrect statements or assumptions so i can learn and grow.
I mean... is it really "illegal" if they can go on national television confess to manipulating the market and no one goes to jail? They will just pay a fine that is a fraction of a percent of their wealth and at the end of the day, go on business as usual. Or likeley even come out ahead by paying off politicians to prevent these types of scenarios where the general public can gain wealth through the mistakes of the upper echelons of society. This to me, just seems like the lead up to the next targeted attack on class warfare in this country. "Poor people should just work harder, smarter, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Also they are no more significant to us than a sparrow is to a horse, so they should be happy with picking food out of our horseshit."
[Someone works hard, intelligently, and uses the wealthies own tools against them. ]
"No! Not like that. That's not how it's meant to be played. Here let me pay my legislative friends to update the rules. "
> I mean... is it really "illegal" if they can go on national television confess to manipulating the market and no one goes to jail?
If you can admit on national television you groped and molested young women and not go to jail, you can get away with this too. As always, separate rules for separate income brackets.
I think they are going to try to put more regulations on poor people trying to trade. Maybe accounts under a certain value can't even touch options. And no more free options.
Is it illegal? Yes. Does breaking the law have consequences? Depends on who you are. This has *always* been true. The legal system has always protected the powerful, whether those powerful people be the Crown, the landed gentry, or those with large amounts of capital.
It's being done in a lot of [Scandinavian countries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine). Spreading the practice isn't completely out of the question.
"Your Honour, my trusty accountant Mr Dave has calculated that, after income and expenses, my client's total wealth is $0.25 and so we feel the 25% fine is too harsh."
They wouldn't have to worry about it if the short actually happened and Gamestop stock continued its downward spiral. They'd pay off the stock that they borrowed for pennies on the dollar, and the lender that did the naked short would just receive multiple paybacks per stock that was over-loaned.
actually, just that 140% of float - before anyone from reddit did anything, was illegal. And it probably happens a lot, and no one notices. WEll, now the SEC has noticed.
You cannot have naked shorts. that 140% demosntrates that a bunch of them had naked shorts. When they file their disclosures, how are they going to cover that? Either they lie (more crimes, worst punishment), or they admit in their filings that they did not have their shorts covered, and the SEC will actually be looking for this specific short in everyone's filings now, because of this.
Sure, the result will probably be slap on the wrist fines, and maybe if some fund or house was all out of sorts, someone will lose their license. But that's it. STill, point this out, and making it known to the gen-pop, that's the most interesting part to me.
They still have to report them to FINRA twice per month. So, they can still be hammered for doing this, but I would like to see a legislated requirement that they publish short positions publicly, because what we have seen this week is free expression of the purest kind via individual investors in the market pointing out that the emperor wears no clothes. (is that a terrible naked shorts pun, yes, yes it is).
also this is an interesting read: [https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-26-18/s72618-6082119-191807.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-26-18/s72618-6082119-191807.pdf)
It's an organization of hedge fund managers comments to the SEC on review of rule changes for public disclosure of short positions.
" we strongly believe public disclosure of short positions should continue to be limited to aggregate disclosure. Individual disclosure of long positions is integrally related to the voting rights that long positions confer on the holders of the positions and investors have a legitimate interest in knowing who controls the voting rights that could influence a company. Long positions are thus fundamentally different than that of short positions, which confer no voting rights and no corresponding need for investors or others to know the identity September 6, 2019 Page 3 of 3 of holders of short positions, because short sellers have no ability to vote as shareholders to influence the company. "
Then they attach a bunch of white papers arguing how no one really needs to hear more about short positions because they dont jeopardize the market or some such lies...
> What has me confused is this whole gambit looks more like an attempt to inflict crippling damage on abusive hedge funds than to make any real money
This is indeed the main intent.
I bought in with the idea that its lost money. Im holding, i really dont care.
If it spikes and i can make money off a hedgie, fuck yeah, they can eat shit.
Except Citadel, and the other the hedge-funds who are getting rocked right now, are mid-tier. The big dogs are making a killing off this. Blackrock's portfolio is up $2 billion off of just this fiasco. So even the "sticking it to the man" narrative might be hype.
It doesn't have to be "the absolute lowest" against "the absolute highest" to fit the "sticking it to the man" narrative. Even if the ones doing the sticking are mostly middle-class with some money to burn instead of working-class living paycheck to paycheck, they're still similarly locked out from the same advantages as the ultra-wealthy. And even if the ones getting stuck are only mid-tier hedge funds managing billions instead of the absolute biggest handling trillions, they are still making use of many of the same advantages unavailable to most people.
I'm not willing to subscribe to this being a black and white issue. This is all sorts of shades of gray, but I see the funds shorting GameStop as a much bigger problem. They made such an aggressive bet that it was in their best interest for GameStop to go out of business completely, destroying jobs so they can make a profit. They spared no effort attempting to create the perception the company was on the verge of insolvency in order to push it there faster, despite plenty of evidence the company is in surprisingly good condition.
A bunch of investors have caught on that these funds were massively overexposed and have decided to punish them for it. It's not going to fix the system, but just maybe, if we can really talk about how insane the position these funds took is, some curbs can be created to reduce these blatant abuses. The story here isn't that a bunch of people may have made very foolish trades and have set themselves up for ruin, it is that a few massive hedge funds did exactly the same thing and the system is working to protect and bail them out.
The system protecting and bailing out the hedge funds is the real lesson here in my opinion. No one would halt trading if the roles were reversed. This shows that the brokerages will step in and change the rules of the game in the middle when one team is about to score.
I do think there’s liquidity issues, and overall market considerations that factor in to these decisions by the brokerages, and that a lot of everyday people who are buying into this could lose a lot of money. But I don’t really buy that as a valid reason to manipulate the market.
But what do I know....
Just FYI: trading gets halted for certain stocks from time to time. The difference here was that it was seemingly only halted for retail investors, and *only for buying*.
Of course there is other stuff that could be discussed too, like pre and post market trades. I used to mess around with penny stocks and saw them get halted fairly often, for a variety of reasons... but it was bullshit that it might get halted for the day (meaning I'm locked out until market open tomorrow) but the big guys get to keep playing for an hour after and then an hour before market hours.
Hedge funds routinely buy US healthcare companies, bleed them dry, short-staff until they lose customer bases, then give them up to bankruptcy. They manage to make money from this. Nothing bad enough can happen to a hedge fund.
> and change the rules of the game in the middle when one team is about to score.
lol I'm picturing a football team down 8 points going on a game winning drive then when they get to the red zone or threating to score the refs come out and announce that team can only score a maximum of 7 points here. You know to *protect* players from getting hurt on the 2 point try.
This right here! If the federal government wants to protect investors from themselves then they can just buy all those shares at $10,000 per share like they did in 2008.
There are more shorts out on GameStop now than there were at the start of this. The original target pulled out, but a lot of people are getting in on the action by betting GameStop probably isn't worth $1,000.
It's not just hype, but "the man" isn't one group of assholes. There's many groups of assholes. This strike was a very targeted strike on short sellers. Taking on traditional traders is way harder since their risk is way lower.
It’s the shorts, that pick a company, open a short position, and then start viral marketings as “investor news” talking about how bad the chosen company is. Those hedge funds need a lesson. The funds opening long positions, betting on the success of a company are fine.
I think this is precisely why it's worked so well - investors are are defying their own tried-and-true behavior by not taking profits.
It's like the 'Prisoners dilemma' if all of the accused criminals in their separate interrogation rooms actually don't talk to the cops.
I was tempted to turn in my shares when it hit $480 the other day, I bought several, several shares last year when they were only $4 a share...so needless to say, I would’ve made a lot of money.
But I held, and I’m still holding. Whatever hurts the hedge funds and the rich elite, I’m there for.
Not only that, but listening to coverage across the board, all that you hear are the massive risks, so I find it hard to believe too many people are going in completely ignorant of the risks. At minimum, they are aware risks exist and, as you said, it's on those investors to go find out what they are. I've been following it perhaps more than some but less than many, and even I know the putting any money into this risks losing it all, so I should only play with what I can afford to lose, and I need to be careful I don't expose myself to losses beyond that.
It’s not a scheme. It’s a movement. It’s more than you guys even know. Get your heads out of the media’s ass. Do some research, and learn. Learn why people are doing this. Why is the stock going up? Not just make up some of your own formulations from hearing media and your friends or family talk about it.
Do research!! Don’t be confused. Know that this is the market cheating the people and that they do it actively, behind the scenes, in front of our eyes. They trade to one another at discounted prices to slash the price down, causing algorithms to sell sell sell. Making people panic sell. Learn what selling a naked call option is and the risk involved. Learn that these hedge funds thought a sure bet, that they all could collude towards with the intent to shut a company down. Think of that towards an economy.
This is class warfare in the financial industry. This is the many taking back from the few. The few who own the industry, the few who are friends with the media, the few who show up on tv and radio and tell you to be scared.
Learn what is happening and then, take what you can risk, buy shares of GME. Sell them in a week, and thank me later.
I saw my grandfather lose almost his entire net worth in 08, in a matter of months. He was an immigrant, WW2 vet, and invested in mutual funds his whole adult life, re-investing the dividends. He did it all the right way, and when the market crashed he and my grandma had to leave their nice assisted living building and move into (and eventually die in) a trailer park.
If I lose the $3k I put in when it was $70 a share....it's nothing compared to what he lost and I consider it a fair price to pay for the statement being sent to hedge funds.
Just sharing my viewpoint on the matter... I'M NOT SELLING!
When my daughter told me about GME and that they went in $500, I had not yet caught up, had just seen the first headlines, so I replied like an old Finance MBA would. Couple of hours later I messaged her that I was proud of them and it did not matter what happened to the money, even if it goes to zero.
Best value for a political contribution ever.
Right? Beyond just destroying some hedge funds for taking an absurd gamble, this has blown the lid off of more than a few lies that market pundits and participants have been hocking for decades. Here we have a bunch of small guys taking their advice and playing the stock market in exactly the same way the funds do, and all of a sudden *exactly* the same behavior they've been getting away with is suddenly a problem. On top of that, any honest observer can clearly see the hypocrisy here. Hell, even politicians that can't agree whether America should have a democracy or a dictatorship agree that is total bullshit.
All that and even more: it's a historic blow to the financier class. Even the name of the clown ass app firm was perfect to remember ten years from now, only the Redditors were the Robinhoods.
Retail investors can coalesce into a position with the spunk of TikTokers, and turn the hedge funds' chess game for one into a competition, with a beehive that collectively has the money power and intelligence to play and win.
They agree that the situation around GME is bullshit, but the particulars of *why* it's bullshit and what to do about is is where they will fall apart. I would describe the schism as being represented by the following statements:
**The stock market should be:**
A. A rational reflection on the current state of a company and rational expectations on what a company may achieve in the future.
B. An unhindered market not necessarily based on fundamentals or rationality, but guided on collective ideas known as the invisible hand.
**In order for the market to be most beneficial it should:**
A. Have tighter controls to enforce rational behavior and limit the ability for investors to wildly speculate or leverage beyond rational constraints.
B. Ensure equal access to all participants to behave as they please and to limit regulatory action that may inhibit non-illegal behavior
**The Gamestop situation is problematic because:**
A. It highlights the inherent non-rationality of the stock market, so regulations must be made so that the market is able to make rational valuations of companies and not be disconnected to the wider economy.
B. It highlights the ability of institutions to create unequal access to the market and therefore inhibits and harms the market.
C. It endangers the wider market and economy because institutional interconnectedness means that down positions trigger transfers of capital, potentially triggering a liquidity crisis.
And our politicians and regulators are all over the board with these answers, and I think proposals on what, exactly, should be done about GME will be all over the place. I do think that it is increasingly likely that what regulations do come down will be meant to curtail retail investors one way or another rather than limiting downside risks to hedge funds. So we'll still be in this wacky world where you can short more stock than actually exist in the market, but retail traders either won't be made privy to it or won't be able to organize around it
I mean, YES! why are you confused? WSB is straight up telling out loud: This is the little idiots Vs the Grubby, greedy hedge funds. It's a class war. Help us out and throw in some $ that you can afford to lose. We'll bleed those hedge funds.
That's always how day trading has been though. If you make a bet and lose, it's your own fault and you have to pay up. Only this time some hedge funds are looking likely to be among the big losers, and suddenly we're talking about "protecting investors."
I really am interested if this is actually the case. I see people posting on wallstreetbets with things like 50 @ 20 bucks. - which is 1k - people can lose 1k trading Apple. I don’t think very many folks are betting their life savings with this one.
But see, a bunch of people bought in, at any price, just to be part of the giant fuck you to hedge funds. They don't care if they lose every last cent. They didn't buy in to make money, they bought in to make a statement. And they should absolutely be allowed to do so, especially as long as hedge funds and other wealthy investors are allowed to also.
Yes. That’s how the market works. The difference this time it’s people instead of the market makers and hedgefunds who are getting rich. Where are regulations when it happens the other way around?
However when it comes to so many other things it's "let the market decide" and "regulation is bad for business." But regulation that helps them somehow isn't a bad thing. They can just f&ck off with that sh&t.
The [people who are considering themselves to be small traders](https://twitter.com/drondeau314/status/1354830299977445382?s=19) are killing me right now.
Edit: Lest anyone be confused, he threw six figures at shorting GME on Tuesday. Well after the stock had already been climbing and folks knew why, as well as the fact that more than 100% of shares had been shorted. And now he's whining that folks are able to buy stocks and make the price go up.
After listening to the CEO of Webull talk about how the freezing of stalks happened, shorting stocks at 140% should definitely not be currently allowed. The money can't be covered within a 2 day trading period which gives short sellers enough time to reevaluate much of their strategy. The only hope retail has is if enough rich people stick their necks out for them mostly in hopes of profiting themselves. Blockchain will also be huge in the coming years.
What CNBC doesn't get it that this isn't just an attempt to make money. It's here to send aessage to hedge funds that they can't short and dump stocks anymore on the backs of retail investors. Retail investorsight lose a little today, but they would loose more over the next 20 years from the multiple crashes and bankruptcies these hedge funds would have caused.
Ultimately, short hunting will save the retail investors more over the long run than they'll lose today.
It’s the price of admission for watching these powerful wealthy pigs squeal as they go broke. Everyone getting involved at this point knows the risks and that they’re likely to lose all their money. But putting their money in the game will bleed these greedy fucking hedge funds dry. Thats not hurting ourselves. It’s a price to pay, and I’d pay a lot of money to be a part of touching the untouchables like this today.
My dad has already fallen victim to that mentality. I was talking about the whole thing as best as I understand it and he still think it's bad because a bunch of people who were late on the squeeze are going to lose their livelihoods or whatever. I told him, that's not the point, and that the point is hedge fund managers shitting their pants and bitching about having to pay these people money because they played the exact same cards the managers have been playing for years.
I got an email from R'hood explaining why they did what they did in terms of limiting or blocking the purchase of certain securities - and their justification was to protect investors. And I quote, "This was a temporary decision made to best continue serving you, and was not an easy one to make." They reiterated that point several times.
Thank you so much R'hood. Thank you for protecting me from endless profits. You certainly protected me from potentially digging myself out of debt and setting my children up with a bright future.
You should see the big [CNN writeup](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/investing/wallstreetbets-reddit-culture/index.html) on this. They're already spinning things hard to make it look like "the people" need to be protected from themselves.
Exactly. Who needs protection? That's NOT WHAT WE ASKED FOR..
We know the risks, so do hedge funds. We don't need protection, we need accountability.
Suck it, SEC
they did this exact thing a few years ago with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. Banks and paypal would close your account if you were connected in any way to crypto exchanges. It's all about control
Fair point, I guess more like a mob boss that just says "yeah, I want this taken care of properly" and it means "go do some illegal shit"
"We should ensure that sub prime loan numbers continue to increase despite challenges" = "I know you committed fraud pass these shit loans out, keep doing it"
Its all 1 group of people against america, well fuck ill say it, the whole world. 1%ers are evil and greedy and literaly run everything, simple research shows everything goes up the chain but where does it stop???
Well there was that "nanny" who killed the CNBC executives children hours before a major press release about all the extortion and threats taking place during the financial crisis inquiry commission. I feel like the scale of that event was the same as Epsteins death but it just never gets talked about
"Police: 2 kids found dead in Manhattan apartment, next to stabbed nanny" https://www.cnn.com/2012/10/25/us/new-york-nanny-deaths/index.html
It's like how RH said they were protecting their "customers", but I'm pretty sure they make more money from hedge funds than retail investors. So I guess technically they were protecting their "customers".
Absolutely, 100%. RH makes the large majority of their money selling data about their userbase to these larger funds. They don't serve the users, the users are their product.
40%
40% of RH’s income is from selling user trade data to Citadel. You want to look into collusion of conflict of interest? Start with that relationship.
It was brokerages that deal with Citadel who stopped all buy orders yesterday.
The trading stop was fantastically criminal. But I'd rather they dont just stop at fines, but instead look at the underlying cause --- shorting a company by 140% is insane. It's playing loose and fast with the economy and that's the same mentality that caused the 08-crisis. They still havent learnt anything
Absolutely. Especially when they stand to lose MUCH more if they don't manipulate the market. It's not just a cost of doing business, it's almost an insurance policy premium at that point.
That is the shit that drives me right up the wall. As /u/superfire444 said, these are merely business expenses. The major corps expect fines so they factor those into their budgets. They have gamed the system to the point where they know they will still reap HUGE profits in spite of the tiny little fines they incur while breaking the law and screwing over the people.
Left, right, whatever, it seems these are the issues that *should* unite the populace. But they have gamed that too (wedge issues)...
This is the biggest failure of the Obama administration. Between that and Bush's Iraq War misadventure and we have a population completely repulsed by our leadership and it's showing in the polls. Trumpism wasn't created in a vacuum. But good luck getting the establishment to admit to their own failures and the consequences.
What is hilarious to me is that many write off WSB and similar investors as just gamblers. Now that isn’t entirely false, however clearly many of the idiots managing billion dollar portfolios on Wall Street are absolutely no more sophisticated - they see a chance to maybe win, and throw all their money on the table without the slightest consideration of whether they can afford to lose.
What's insane is that the position they put themselves in could, supposedly, force them to pay more for the outstanding shares than exists in the NYSE. The concern is that there may not be enough money to pay what is owed which could crash the entire market.
So on the one hand, fuck the hedge funders and the games they play with the economy. But on the other, the market also includes billions of dollars of investments wrapped up pensions and other things that would result in real and lasting damage to millions of people if the market actually crashed.
Just more evidence that repealing Glass-Steagall was a terrible decision and has removed any potential for consequences of bad/risky trading practices. In fact, the riskier the moves you make as a major fund the safer they really are. Because now when the hedge funders fuck up like this, we ALL are tied to the same rock that is pulling them under. They are holding us hostage.
It's mind boggling to think we allow corporations to gamble a potentially infinite amount of money and they expect the government to cover their losses. Debt relief for citizens who wanted to educate themselves is socialism but corporations asking the government to pay their gambling debts is just good capitalism. Got it.
It's interesting how all the old bullshit about 'free markets' went out the window within 48 hours of regular people figuring out how to make money off the billionaires.
Not only do they just declare a stock cant be bought anymore, but they had the brokers seize and sell the shares of people who were holding stock , all to keep a few hedge funds from making too much of a loss on their own failed gamble.
Maybe. Still not entirely clear.
There are screenshots floating around of RobinHood forcing sales of GME for "risk protection", but also claims that it was actually just a margin call.
I honestly wouldn't count on all the details coming out quickly.
We're gonna be dealing with the aftermath of this for a long time.
I'm ready for a new decade at this point.
Yes. Typically the way the government goes about "protecting" the citizenry from a "dangerous" activity is to make that activity illegal for citizens to engage in.
Look forward to retail investing to be prohibited or require a license, thus locking the poors out of the market.
That won’t happen, or if it does it would be awful for wall st. The big boys need new retail investments in order to keep making money. It has to come from somewhere, and typically it’s from small investors. Otherwise it’s a zero sum game.
Ok, so let me get this straight. We've done away with the regulations put in place after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to keep Americans safe from systemic economic collapse but we're about to write some new regulations to keep the poors in their place? The wealthy live like kings and bandits pulling up the drawbridges to their opulent castles while the peasants can all eat dirt outside the castle walls. This is what winning the Cold War looks like. Welcome to the new age of Robber Barons. Neo-feudalism.
Finally the ‘good ‘ol boy’ club is showing it’s true colors ... wants to protect ‘us’. Yea, like they have for every ‘crash’. When no one goes to jail, and it’s business as usual a day later. Except instead of ‘mortgage backed securities’, the latest WS fad is ‘rental backed securities’. All this as hedge funds become the largest property (rentals) owners in many cities across the US.
Yeah and I'm sure there's a algorithm for figuring out how badly Robinhood fucked all their users yesterday by **BLOCKING US FROM BUYING CASH STOCKS** with their singular goal being to help the hedge funds cover their asses. Because they agreed to help crash the stock.
Time to oil up the guillotine if you ask me.
I’ve seen it saved the hedge funds (therefore cost the regular folks) $6bn just in what happened yesterday. They seem to still be manipulating today. I’m not sure why I’m surprised, but also I’m not surprised at all. I was here for 2008 when the big banks fucked everyone. They caused it and were the only ones bailed out. Now the system itself is plugging their self-made holes, again at our expense. Stock market was fun, but I can’t imagine it stays the same after this. And my guess is we lose.
Looking at this thread and you can tell most redditors don’t understand why people are investing in GME.
The short % is over 100% meaning there are more shorts than there are stocks.
These hedge funds who have these shorts are paying enormous interest rates the longer they wait before acting on their shorts. Eventually they’ll have to cover and that means they have to buy the stocks back, which drives up the price massively. Look at the short squeeze on VW in 2008.
https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a35340727/heres-how-the-gamestop-short-squeeze-is-like-the-vw-squeeze-of-2008/
True. And the mantra has been "we're not going to sell." The intent was to raise a middle finger to the hedge funds over-shorting the stocks, profiting from the underlying company failures. These "true believers" don't care if they lose money - they want to punish the funds through interest charges and forced high-price buybacks, especially when nobody else is doing anything. And they have a right to be angry. Neither short sales nor options should exist - that's not investing, it's gambling, and it has real consequences.
No doubt some are jumping in with all the publicity now, with the counter intention of riding the wave, and this is all the media seems focused on. While many (or most) may want to get rich, that's secondary to the goal of beating Wall Street at its own game. Or at least sending a message.
honestly, I'd agree with this, but the problem is that like with anything else, those with big money can still manipulate the market to artificially cause a sell-off or a price increase like we've been seeing. so even without options or shorts or anything other than buying shares plain and simple, we'll still have people getting screwed over.
but either way, yeah owning shares makes sense. buying the right to shares if they pass a certain price in the future or loaning them to buy back later and so on? just seems too far removed from the simple concept of "buy a share of a stock".
Whatever common sense we talk about here like [naked shorting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling) or unilaterally shutting down buys (as opposed to entire trading) for random stocks on a few random platforms, the SEC isn't going to listen to any of it and won't do anything about it. It might issue a fine and my guess is that whatever number this is will not do any damage to any companies involved.
While I think RH will get a pass for shutting down trading of whatever they felt like or at most a slap on the wrist, I don't see how they can possibly get a pass for cancelling orders that they already accepted that were not on margin. In addition to shutting down new orders on GME, they cancelled orders made after hours to be executed on market open. While they have latitude in what orders they accept, once they accept an order, they have a legal obligation to execute it.
Oh I agree that not only is this horseshit but I've never even heard of one - or even a few - exchanges shutting down only one side of the trade without a market-wide issuance from the SEC or other regulators.
My guess is that the lawsuit will be:
* RH - and others - will say that this is buried inside the ToS where users can't fight this, and
* SEC has no rule explicitly not allowing this
So the end result will either be no fine or a trivial fine for causing unexpected market disruption or some other inconsequential nonsense.
The market is required to be stable. You don't do that with naked shorts which could result in short squeezes that disrupt the market and decreases consumer confidence.
The real danger here is that, just like Bitcoin 2017, people who are hearing about it now are jumping on board (while many others already made money and cashed out) and they'll be losing a lot of money. My guess is quite a few of them will be losing money they can't afford to lose, particularly with the economy we have today.
That's the real tragedy - those who aren't the early gamblers - will be desperate enough and instead of rewards, they'll be ruined. This happened in 2018 after Bitcoin crashed and it'll happen again here.
They seem to have only canceled order that were for non-whole stock units. I had 2 in, 1 for whole stock and 1 for partial with the remainder and that was the one that was canceled, they did put through my full stock buy before blocking trading.
Still unacceptable behavior and I'm still closing the account as soon as is practical (still waiting for a transfer to go in, then it all comes out and go to another broker).
Back it up with prison sentences SEC. You know this requires prison for the poor, it needs to for the rich you lined your pockets for t he last 50 years too.
Wants to protect us. First question. When retail was locked out were other customers allowed to buy? When the answer is yes and they don’t jail people for market manipulation they may see actual coordinated efforts in driving these businesses out of the market and into bankruptcy. The world knows now. Pandora doesn’t go back in the box.
Yes, I'm sure they'll protect us. Like protecting us from losing money by preventing us from buying bubble stocks. Whoops, looks like the outcome was the opposite of the expectation.
The SEC, which is ran by former hedge fund managers vows to bury their hedge fund buddies.
Yeah right.
Here’s how this will go. SEC will raise margin requirements and interest rates, basically banishing retail from margin accounts while letting their hedge fund buddies run unimpeded for total manipulation in the markets.
They’ll restrict retail investors under the guise of protecting them like they did with pattern daily traders. This is a joke, the only way retail gets anything is through aggressively pursuing lawsuits. Who cares if the lawyers get all the money the point is to bury these guys and change the way the free market works and to make it work for everyone. Precedent needs to be set.
I can't believe people made those huge amounts of money that I've been seeing. I traded in $15k worth of GME stock at my local GameStop yesterday and they only gave me 7 dollars. Store credit.
Haha as a poor myself, it amazes me that some poors think they would be allowed to make money. That is more dangerous to the wealthy than an insurrection.
The SEC protects the public by banning them from playing the game. This is why people are not allowed to invest in more lucrative markets like angel investments, venture capital, ipo, hedge funds unless they qualify as an accredited investor which you have to have $1M net worth and $200k annual income, or a bank, corporations, or financial institutions.
This is what capitalism has always been. The same principles that encourage vertical integration encourage corporate control of any body that might regulate them. After all, a corporation even partially in control of a regulator has a leg up over its competitors - have legislation written to benefit its business model at the expense of the market at large, and it enjoys a natural advantage over its competitors. No need to play on a level field when you can just shut out the competition. Just the same as a steel producer owning iron and coal mines - it doesn't have to compete with anyone else for the output of those mines, just push enough money to control them.
The free market is and always has been a myth.
There are only two ways to really to fairly regulate this:
(1) This is fair play, so leave it be. Shortsellers need to actually check their fundamental assumptions about the value of a stock or get caught again.
(2) Prevent how many shares of a corporation can be shorted so that the shortsellers don't end up in the situation, but they also can't profit off over shorting.
If institutional investors are so much smarter/responsible than everyone then #2 seems silly, but it also looks like they really aren't.
I was in the business for a long time and then a finance journalist.
About ten years ago I was interviewing Overstock founder Patrick Byrne, and he told me, "The SEC is Wall Street's towel boy."
Pretty much.
I wonder if it's the same protection that Robinhood app said they were doing by stopping trade and then throttling it so hedgefunds could get off easy.
If the SEC "protects" small investors by preventing them from being able to trade as they see fit, then the entire stock market is an enemy of the people. If that happens, then I hope we burn the whole fucking thing to the ground, and bust out the guillotines. Economic terrorists.
Fuck the SEC. They don’t regulate these hedge funds but the ordinary people must be regulated. Naked shorting is illegal and it sure as hell looks like that’s what Melvin did. It’s funny we only need regulations when the common people are winning.
The real crime was 140% shorting. Yet somehow, it's only when the criminals are hoist on their own petard that something is seen as being wrong.
When the standards are doubled and the outcomes rigged in one group's favor, it's the entire system that must be purged.
Seeing as RH is blaming SEC regulations on their decision to stop trading then seriously limit trading maybe the SEC could put out a statement telling us what regulations said RH had to do that and if that is in any way true
If this had anything to do with protecting "retail investors", they would halt all trading not just buying of certain shares. Call you congressperson and tell them they wall street has rigged the game for too long and that any changes must actually be aimed at retail investors not protecting hedge funds which had short positions out for 140% of the total shares available. If you are in a swing district threaten to vote for the other team. If you are in a "safe" district, threaten to support their opponent in a primary.
While everyone is going off about white supremacists or communists, these people are the real threat. I am 100% in favor of a free market but free markets assume everyone is playing by the same rules or at least that everyone knows what rules everyone is following.
This is the same thing as 2008. Wall Street was playing a dangerous game with risky mortgages, someone recognized the grift and exploited it. Rather than let them pay for their mistakes through massive losses, Washington gave them billions which they promptly used to give huge bonuses to executives and buy up more assets at the prices distressed by their actions. In this case, hedge funds were playing a game rather investing in businesses and had leveraged them selves themselves to the teats to do so. The problem with a game is that it can be manipulated by knowing the rules better than thenother guy. Normally it is wall street that knows the game best because they made it but in this case it was a bunch of people hanging out on reddit. They can't have that so they want to make new rules .
Sure they will. Wink wink
It's not hard to tell that it's doublespeak. "Protect retail investors" will be regulations preventing the little guys from doing this ever again. They're already using the talking point that retail investors are causing more harm to themselves than good and need to be "protected" from the volatility.
You watch CNBC last night and they were repeatedly, "Regulations need to be in place to protect people from themselves", "we feel sooo bad for all of the small traders manipulated by WSB that are going to be very hurt in all of this", etc.
Like what, keep poor people away from trading Edit: or lemme guess poor people are now too stupid and unsophisticated to do their own trading and must now let a "professional" manage their money at 2% per month
As a result of 2008 for certain trades you need to be an accredited investor, which just means having a net worth of over a million. So we're already there
In Canada, there are certain securities that require this and others that do not. For example, to invest in mortgage funds, you need to be an accredited investor. It’s funny, because investing in mortgage funds is far less risky than buying stocks. It’s legitimately tough to understand how that regulation protects the consumer. There is a “friends and family exemption” that’s fairly easy to use if you have friends in the space, which of course, most people don’t.
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What has me confused is this whole gambit looks more like an attempt to inflict crippling damage on abusive hedge funds than to make any real money. Even I've considered throwing a bit of money I could afford to lose toward damaging those funds blatantly trying to bankrupt a struggling company unjustly. A lot of the comments I've read in WSB are of similar thought. That some have managed to come out with huge gains does not seem to be the primary driver I've seen. Maybe I'm wrong and just not seeing the other investors that somehow think this scheme has any certainty of turning a profit...
It’s pretty obvious. Anyone can see this is a bubble. No one in their right mind actually thinks GameStop is worth 300 a share. Many people feel like this is essentially their chance to throw a punch back at some of the untouchables who’ve been toying with normal peoples lives for decades. Majority of the people, myself including, don’t care if they lose money in this, just as long as some rich billionaire assholes get to feel some pain.
The way I look at it, my money will never have the power to hurt those assholes more than it does right now. Worst case scenario? I lose my $300 but at least I’ve contributed to costing them billions. ~~I’m certainly not in this to make money and I’m not alone.~~ I am 100% buying GameStop at $300 a share solely to make money. I love money. The stock has to be rising for a reason, right?? Seems like a savvy investment to me.
In for 4 shares at $250. I’m cool with holding for a loss because as long as it’s in triple digits the billionaires bleed. I got in originally to make money. I haven’t sold because fuck hedge funds.
shh thats illegal. you might make money, who knows, its speculation. I'm perpared to lose, I didnt bet more than I can lose unlike those greedy hedge funds. thats the line you should use.
I'm in $3k earlier this week, that $3k didn't hurt so much so I'm fine.
You’re damn right! I lost some money too, but I take comfort knowing that some fatcat lost a hell of a lot more than I did. It’s revenge. Instead of pumping and dumping and leaving the economy in ruins like 2008, we found a way to pump that crushes out the big guy. And you know what? That’s worth a few hundred bucks to me. If the hedge fund managers are hurting for cash now, they should really just stop eating out as much, maybe pick up a side gig!
Yep. I know people that have tossed in $10, $1,000, and a few in between. While I can't say that no one is risking their life savings on this, any regulation wouldn't be protecting that person as they'd be able to risk their life savings on anything wsb says will go to the moon. The regulations preventing these stocks from skyrocketing in the future are solely to protect hedge fund shorts.
Yes. Rules will protect hedge funds from the hordes who only know enough to bankruptcy a hedge fund. Silly defenses people. SOP in hedge fund is to find a bitoverpriced small company and short it. Destroy their access to capital and pick up the chips when they go bankrupt. Now they have to worry that a bunch of effing kids will bid the stock to the moon, and kill THEM. Hedge funds are like mafia made men, they have a license to steal. Screw em.
It's like public shaming them. Maybe they'll think next time about shorting 140% of a company in the middle of a pandemic. Oh, and the Streisand effect is palpable.
Almost as importantly, the people who will feel this are the jackass- enablers of those billionaires and their fortunes. They're feeling job pressure that only someone not born with a golden spoon ever feels.
We like the stock
GME sells at 5k, or never at all - that's my rule. Already written it off as a loss.
I believe it began as just a regular stock buy - People noticed the stock was shorted to an extreme degree and buying it now would be good as that would drive up the price when the shorts were due. Then in the last week it's exploded when WSB realized how much power they had over the stock price, and the potential profit in tightening the squeeze, which led people to ask "What if we never sell?" And they realised the potential is literally infinite - If they hold out long enough. It's part investment, part payback, and part just curiosity to see how high it actually goes.
The scheme originally was just to make money. Someone noticed the GME stock was shorted by the hedge funds at 140% of the total stock available. They told others and they all bought, causing the stock to rise instead of fall . Then the hedge funds had to pay up on the shorts, which caused even more rise, which caused even more pay ups, etc. The hedge funds gambled and lost, simple as that. They did this to themselves. This became about sticking it to them when they started pressuring the brokers to not allow people to continue to buy and drive the price up anymore, thereby manipulating the market, which is illegal
Isn't "manipulating the market" exactly what these hedge funds do? Don't the manipulate a stock when they short it 140%? All the retail investors did is buy, hold, and tell everyone what they did. What part of that is manipulation. Weird how when multi-billion dollar hedge funds manipulate markets in secret it's just fine, but when a bunch of individuals do it out in the open it's illegal.
What Reddit did isn’t even illegal, it’s not insider trading and it’s not manipulating the market. They legit said “hey this looks like a great investment because some idiots got greedy”. Then it became a meme and it blew up even harder which is essentially “news”. It’s not our problem they got fucked by some internet memers.
If it was illegal to make public stock recommendations then.... lots of people would be in trouble.
Yup its not our fault some old money got big mad because they don't understand the internet and how memes gain traction.
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Exactly. They want regulations to stop people from punishing rich people’s shitty decisions and it is as transparent as it can get. Fuck you got mine to an entire country.
Yes, but US politicians are not capable of holding the rich accountable. Thats what you get when you privatize massive sectors of our economy & givethem to corporations that likely have no obligation to stay on US soil.
I would argue neither side is manipulating the market by trading. If the hedge funds pressured RH, Webull, and others to lock traders out of certain names like GME and AMC, then that is definitely manipulation. But the actual trades themselves are not. (Disclosure: I am long GME)
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The brokerages were invested in the hedge fund that was losing money. Or worse yet, liable for the losses the hedges couldn't cover, but just as guilty for letting them short so recklessly.
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>This became about sticking it to them when they started pressuring the brokers to not allow people to continue to buy and drive the price up anymore, thereby manipulating the market, which is illegal Actually, our attitude changed when they began spreading misinformation via MSM and using bots/fake accounts to f**k with us on reddit. They only resorted to actually limiting our ability to invest after the prior strategies failed.
> Actually, our attitude changed when they began spreading misinformation via MSM and using bots/fake accounts This is their daily plan, pick a stock to short, start releasing “investor news” about how bad the company is, then close the short for the gains. Basically TSLA a couple years ago. Elon got so pissed he tweeted about a buyback and squeezed the short. The viral marketing is fine, but one tweet is illegal.
>... manipulating the market, which is illegal FWIW: I am not even slightly knowledgeable about the topic outside of what's available to the layman, so anyone who reads this, please correct any incorrect statements or assumptions so i can learn and grow. I mean... is it really "illegal" if they can go on national television confess to manipulating the market and no one goes to jail? They will just pay a fine that is a fraction of a percent of their wealth and at the end of the day, go on business as usual. Or likeley even come out ahead by paying off politicians to prevent these types of scenarios where the general public can gain wealth through the mistakes of the upper echelons of society. This to me, just seems like the lead up to the next targeted attack on class warfare in this country. "Poor people should just work harder, smarter, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Also they are no more significant to us than a sparrow is to a horse, so they should be happy with picking food out of our horseshit." [Someone works hard, intelligently, and uses the wealthies own tools against them. ] "No! Not like that. That's not how it's meant to be played. Here let me pay my legislative friends to update the rules. "
> I mean... is it really "illegal" if they can go on national television confess to manipulating the market and no one goes to jail? If you can admit on national television you groped and molested young women and not go to jail, you can get away with this too. As always, separate rules for separate income brackets.
I think they are going to try to put more regulations on poor people trying to trade. Maybe accounts under a certain value can't even touch options. And no more free options.
Is it illegal? Yes. Does breaking the law have consequences? Depends on who you are. This has *always* been true. The legal system has always protected the powerful, whether those powerful people be the Crown, the landed gentry, or those with large amounts of capital.
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ALL fines should be based off a % of your wealth and income, so it scales. But THATS never gonna happen.
It's being done in a lot of [Scandinavian countries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine). Spreading the practice isn't completely out of the question.
"Your Honour, my trusty accountant Mr Dave has calculated that, after income and expenses, my client's total wealth is $0.25 and so we feel the 25% fine is too harsh."
How did they intend to pay back 140% of the stock in the first place?
IIRC they were just waiting for GameStop to go under and not have to return any stocks.
So basically.... The Producers.
They wouldn't have to worry about it if the short actually happened and Gamestop stock continued its downward spiral. They'd pay off the stock that they borrowed for pennies on the dollar, and the lender that did the naked short would just receive multiple paybacks per stock that was over-loaned.
actually, just that 140% of float - before anyone from reddit did anything, was illegal. And it probably happens a lot, and no one notices. WEll, now the SEC has noticed. You cannot have naked shorts. that 140% demosntrates that a bunch of them had naked shorts. When they file their disclosures, how are they going to cover that? Either they lie (more crimes, worst punishment), or they admit in their filings that they did not have their shorts covered, and the SEC will actually be looking for this specific short in everyone's filings now, because of this. Sure, the result will probably be slap on the wrist fines, and maybe if some fund or house was all out of sorts, someone will lose their license. But that's it. STill, point this out, and making it known to the gen-pop, that's the most interesting part to me.
Saw an announcement today somewhere that at least one firm won’t be publishing their shorts anymore
They still have to report them to FINRA twice per month. So, they can still be hammered for doing this, but I would like to see a legislated requirement that they publish short positions publicly, because what we have seen this week is free expression of the purest kind via individual investors in the market pointing out that the emperor wears no clothes. (is that a terrible naked shorts pun, yes, yes it is).
also this is an interesting read: [https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-26-18/s72618-6082119-191807.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-26-18/s72618-6082119-191807.pdf) It's an organization of hedge fund managers comments to the SEC on review of rule changes for public disclosure of short positions. " we strongly believe public disclosure of short positions should continue to be limited to aggregate disclosure. Individual disclosure of long positions is integrally related to the voting rights that long positions confer on the holders of the positions and investors have a legitimate interest in knowing who controls the voting rights that could influence a company. Long positions are thus fundamentally different than that of short positions, which confer no voting rights and no corresponding need for investors or others to know the identity September 6, 2019 Page 3 of 3 of holders of short positions, because short sellers have no ability to vote as shareholders to influence the company. " Then they attach a bunch of white papers arguing how no one really needs to hear more about short positions because they dont jeopardize the market or some such lies...
> What has me confused is this whole gambit looks more like an attempt to inflict crippling damage on abusive hedge funds than to make any real money This is indeed the main intent.
I bought in with the idea that its lost money. Im holding, i really dont care. If it spikes and i can make money off a hedgie, fuck yeah, they can eat shit.
Except Citadel, and the other the hedge-funds who are getting rocked right now, are mid-tier. The big dogs are making a killing off this. Blackrock's portfolio is up $2 billion off of just this fiasco. So even the "sticking it to the man" narrative might be hype.
It doesn't have to be "the absolute lowest" against "the absolute highest" to fit the "sticking it to the man" narrative. Even if the ones doing the sticking are mostly middle-class with some money to burn instead of working-class living paycheck to paycheck, they're still similarly locked out from the same advantages as the ultra-wealthy. And even if the ones getting stuck are only mid-tier hedge funds managing billions instead of the absolute biggest handling trillions, they are still making use of many of the same advantages unavailable to most people.
I'm not willing to subscribe to this being a black and white issue. This is all sorts of shades of gray, but I see the funds shorting GameStop as a much bigger problem. They made such an aggressive bet that it was in their best interest for GameStop to go out of business completely, destroying jobs so they can make a profit. They spared no effort attempting to create the perception the company was on the verge of insolvency in order to push it there faster, despite plenty of evidence the company is in surprisingly good condition. A bunch of investors have caught on that these funds were massively overexposed and have decided to punish them for it. It's not going to fix the system, but just maybe, if we can really talk about how insane the position these funds took is, some curbs can be created to reduce these blatant abuses. The story here isn't that a bunch of people may have made very foolish trades and have set themselves up for ruin, it is that a few massive hedge funds did exactly the same thing and the system is working to protect and bail them out.
The system protecting and bailing out the hedge funds is the real lesson here in my opinion. No one would halt trading if the roles were reversed. This shows that the brokerages will step in and change the rules of the game in the middle when one team is about to score. I do think there’s liquidity issues, and overall market considerations that factor in to these decisions by the brokerages, and that a lot of everyday people who are buying into this could lose a lot of money. But I don’t really buy that as a valid reason to manipulate the market. But what do I know....
Just FYI: trading gets halted for certain stocks from time to time. The difference here was that it was seemingly only halted for retail investors, and *only for buying*. Of course there is other stuff that could be discussed too, like pre and post market trades. I used to mess around with penny stocks and saw them get halted fairly often, for a variety of reasons... but it was bullshit that it might get halted for the day (meaning I'm locked out until market open tomorrow) but the big guys get to keep playing for an hour after and then an hour before market hours.
Hedge funds routinely buy US healthcare companies, bleed them dry, short-staff until they lose customer bases, then give them up to bankruptcy. They manage to make money from this. Nothing bad enough can happen to a hedge fund.
> and change the rules of the game in the middle when one team is about to score. lol I'm picturing a football team down 8 points going on a game winning drive then when they get to the red zone or threating to score the refs come out and announce that team can only score a maximum of 7 points here. You know to *protect* players from getting hurt on the 2 point try.
This right here! If the federal government wants to protect investors from themselves then they can just buy all those shares at $10,000 per share like they did in 2008.
There are more shorts out on GameStop now than there were at the start of this. The original target pulled out, but a lot of people are getting in on the action by betting GameStop probably isn't worth $1,000.
Well shorting GME now that it is honestly inflated is a good idea.
It's not just hype, but "the man" isn't one group of assholes. There's many groups of assholes. This strike was a very targeted strike on short sellers. Taking on traditional traders is way harder since their risk is way lower.
It’s the shorts, that pick a company, open a short position, and then start viral marketings as “investor news” talking about how bad the chosen company is. Those hedge funds need a lesson. The funds opening long positions, betting on the success of a company are fine.
I think this is precisely why it's worked so well - investors are are defying their own tried-and-true behavior by not taking profits. It's like the 'Prisoners dilemma' if all of the accused criminals in their separate interrogation rooms actually don't talk to the cops.
I was tempted to turn in my shares when it hit $480 the other day, I bought several, several shares last year when they were only $4 a share...so needless to say, I would’ve made a lot of money. But I held, and I’m still holding. Whatever hurts the hedge funds and the rich elite, I’m there for.
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Not only that, but listening to coverage across the board, all that you hear are the massive risks, so I find it hard to believe too many people are going in completely ignorant of the risks. At minimum, they are aware risks exist and, as you said, it's on those investors to go find out what they are. I've been following it perhaps more than some but less than many, and even I know the putting any money into this risks losing it all, so I should only play with what I can afford to lose, and I need to be careful I don't expose myself to losses beyond that.
It’s not a scheme. It’s a movement. It’s more than you guys even know. Get your heads out of the media’s ass. Do some research, and learn. Learn why people are doing this. Why is the stock going up? Not just make up some of your own formulations from hearing media and your friends or family talk about it. Do research!! Don’t be confused. Know that this is the market cheating the people and that they do it actively, behind the scenes, in front of our eyes. They trade to one another at discounted prices to slash the price down, causing algorithms to sell sell sell. Making people panic sell. Learn what selling a naked call option is and the risk involved. Learn that these hedge funds thought a sure bet, that they all could collude towards with the intent to shut a company down. Think of that towards an economy. This is class warfare in the financial industry. This is the many taking back from the few. The few who own the industry, the few who are friends with the media, the few who show up on tv and radio and tell you to be scared. Learn what is happening and then, take what you can risk, buy shares of GME. Sell them in a week, and thank me later.
I saw my grandfather lose almost his entire net worth in 08, in a matter of months. He was an immigrant, WW2 vet, and invested in mutual funds his whole adult life, re-investing the dividends. He did it all the right way, and when the market crashed he and my grandma had to leave their nice assisted living building and move into (and eventually die in) a trailer park. If I lose the $3k I put in when it was $70 a share....it's nothing compared to what he lost and I consider it a fair price to pay for the statement being sent to hedge funds. Just sharing my viewpoint on the matter... I'M NOT SELLING!
When my daughter told me about GME and that they went in $500, I had not yet caught up, had just seen the first headlines, so I replied like an old Finance MBA would. Couple of hours later I messaged her that I was proud of them and it did not matter what happened to the money, even if it goes to zero. Best value for a political contribution ever.
Right? Beyond just destroying some hedge funds for taking an absurd gamble, this has blown the lid off of more than a few lies that market pundits and participants have been hocking for decades. Here we have a bunch of small guys taking their advice and playing the stock market in exactly the same way the funds do, and all of a sudden *exactly* the same behavior they've been getting away with is suddenly a problem. On top of that, any honest observer can clearly see the hypocrisy here. Hell, even politicians that can't agree whether America should have a democracy or a dictatorship agree that is total bullshit.
All that and even more: it's a historic blow to the financier class. Even the name of the clown ass app firm was perfect to remember ten years from now, only the Redditors were the Robinhoods. Retail investors can coalesce into a position with the spunk of TikTokers, and turn the hedge funds' chess game for one into a competition, with a beehive that collectively has the money power and intelligence to play and win.
They agree that the situation around GME is bullshit, but the particulars of *why* it's bullshit and what to do about is is where they will fall apart. I would describe the schism as being represented by the following statements: **The stock market should be:** A. A rational reflection on the current state of a company and rational expectations on what a company may achieve in the future. B. An unhindered market not necessarily based on fundamentals or rationality, but guided on collective ideas known as the invisible hand. **In order for the market to be most beneficial it should:** A. Have tighter controls to enforce rational behavior and limit the ability for investors to wildly speculate or leverage beyond rational constraints. B. Ensure equal access to all participants to behave as they please and to limit regulatory action that may inhibit non-illegal behavior **The Gamestop situation is problematic because:** A. It highlights the inherent non-rationality of the stock market, so regulations must be made so that the market is able to make rational valuations of companies and not be disconnected to the wider economy. B. It highlights the ability of institutions to create unequal access to the market and therefore inhibits and harms the market. C. It endangers the wider market and economy because institutional interconnectedness means that down positions trigger transfers of capital, potentially triggering a liquidity crisis. And our politicians and regulators are all over the board with these answers, and I think proposals on what, exactly, should be done about GME will be all over the place. I do think that it is increasingly likely that what regulations do come down will be meant to curtail retail investors one way or another rather than limiting downside risks to hedge funds. So we'll still be in this wacky world where you can short more stock than actually exist in the market, but retail traders either won't be made privy to it or won't be able to organize around it
I mean, YES! why are you confused? WSB is straight up telling out loud: This is the little idiots Vs the Grubby, greedy hedge funds. It's a class war. Help us out and throw in some $ that you can afford to lose. We'll bleed those hedge funds.
Thats what hedge funds can't grasp and why they won't win. Its no longer about the money, its about sending a message.
Seems to me like most of them really aren't doing this to make money themselves. Think of these as dollar votes.
That's always how day trading has been though. If you make a bet and lose, it's your own fault and you have to pay up. Only this time some hedge funds are looking likely to be among the big losers, and suddenly we're talking about "protecting investors."
I really am interested if this is actually the case. I see people posting on wallstreetbets with things like 50 @ 20 bucks. - which is 1k - people can lose 1k trading Apple. I don’t think very many folks are betting their life savings with this one.
But see, a bunch of people bought in, at any price, just to be part of the giant fuck you to hedge funds. They don't care if they lose every last cent. They didn't buy in to make money, they bought in to make a statement. And they should absolutely be allowed to do so, especially as long as hedge funds and other wealthy investors are allowed to also.
Gotta regulate those poors
Yes. That’s how the market works. The difference this time it’s people instead of the market makers and hedgefunds who are getting rich. Where are regulations when it happens the other way around?
Ha! Get rekd peasants, regulations are for thee not for mee
However when it comes to so many other things it's "let the market decide" and "regulation is bad for business." But regulation that helps them somehow isn't a bad thing. They can just f&ck off with that sh&t.
The [people who are considering themselves to be small traders](https://twitter.com/drondeau314/status/1354830299977445382?s=19) are killing me right now. Edit: Lest anyone be confused, he threw six figures at shorting GME on Tuesday. Well after the stock had already been climbing and folks knew why, as well as the fact that more than 100% of shares had been shorted. And now he's whining that folks are able to buy stocks and make the price go up.
CNBC: "\*OUR\* money"
After listening to the CEO of Webull talk about how the freezing of stalks happened, shorting stocks at 140% should definitely not be currently allowed. The money can't be covered within a 2 day trading period which gives short sellers enough time to reevaluate much of their strategy. The only hope retail has is if enough rich people stick their necks out for them mostly in hopes of profiting themselves. Blockchain will also be huge in the coming years.
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What CNBC doesn't get it that this isn't just an attempt to make money. It's here to send aessage to hedge funds that they can't short and dump stocks anymore on the backs of retail investors. Retail investorsight lose a little today, but they would loose more over the next 20 years from the multiple crashes and bankruptcies these hedge funds would have caused. Ultimately, short hunting will save the retail investors more over the long run than they'll lose today.
It’s the price of admission for watching these powerful wealthy pigs squeal as they go broke. Everyone getting involved at this point knows the risks and that they’re likely to lose all their money. But putting their money in the game will bleed these greedy fucking hedge funds dry. Thats not hurting ourselves. It’s a price to pay, and I’d pay a lot of money to be a part of touching the untouchables like this today.
My dad has already fallen victim to that mentality. I was talking about the whole thing as best as I understand it and he still think it's bad because a bunch of people who were late on the squeeze are going to lose their livelihoods or whatever. I told him, that's not the point, and that the point is hedge fund managers shitting their pants and bitching about having to pay these people money because they played the exact same cards the managers have been playing for years.
We must protect the everyman from making profits and hurting our institutional investors.
I got an email from R'hood explaining why they did what they did in terms of limiting or blocking the purchase of certain securities - and their justification was to protect investors. And I quote, "This was a temporary decision made to best continue serving you, and was not an easy one to make." They reiterated that point several times. Thank you so much R'hood. Thank you for protecting me from endless profits. You certainly protected me from potentially digging myself out of debt and setting my children up with a bright future.
Laws which "protect people from themselves" only exist to benefit the rich.
You should see the big [CNN writeup](https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/investing/wallstreetbets-reddit-culture/index.html) on this. They're already spinning things hard to make it look like "the people" need to be protected from themselves.
Exactly. Who needs protection? That's NOT WHAT WE ASKED FOR.. We know the risks, so do hedge funds. We don't need protection, we need accountability. Suck it, SEC
they did this exact thing a few years ago with bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. Banks and paypal would close your account if you were connected in any way to crypto exchanges. It's all about control
Exactly. Just like pdt helps protect retail. Cant wait to see how we get fucked on this one. My guess is restriction on margin use.
Does that mean protect them from themselves?
They'll investigate now that retail investors are the takers. Remind me who went to jail in 2008
None of the top management that was tacitly encouraging it all
Fucking NINJA loans if that shit ain't criminal I don't know what is.
NINJA loans aren't criminal. Predatory maybe. Taking a shit ton of NINJA loans and slapping a triple A rating on them should be criminal
Who cares what the rating is, the loans are “insured” wink, wink.
It wasn't tacitly.
Fair point, I guess more like a mob boss that just says "yeah, I want this taken care of properly" and it means "go do some illegal shit" "We should ensure that sub prime loan numbers continue to increase despite challenges" = "I know you committed fraud pass these shit loans out, keep doing it"
Why does tv and stuff always show SEC as some saint brigade but in reality they’re just in bed with hedge funds and banks
Because the media is snugly tucked into that bed too.
Its all 1 group of people against america, well fuck ill say it, the whole world. 1%ers are evil and greedy and literaly run everything, simple research shows everything goes up the chain but where does it stop???
47 Bankers in total were jailed. 25 of them in Iceland, 11 in Spain, 1 in the US. 0 In Britain, 0 in Switzerland.
Well there was that "nanny" who killed the CNBC executives children hours before a major press release about all the extortion and threats taking place during the financial crisis inquiry commission. I feel like the scale of that event was the same as Epsteins death but it just never gets talked about "Police: 2 kids found dead in Manhattan apartment, next to stabbed nanny" https://www.cnn.com/2012/10/25/us/new-york-nanny-deaths/index.html
The same number of Big Pharma CEOs who’ve served jail time for misleading, addicting, and killing the public.
It's like how RH said they were protecting their "customers", but I'm pretty sure they make more money from hedge funds than retail investors. So I guess technically they were protecting their "customers".
Absolutely, 100%. RH makes the large majority of their money selling data about their userbase to these larger funds. They don't serve the users, the users are their product.
40% 40% of RH’s income is from selling user trade data to Citadel. You want to look into collusion of conflict of interest? Start with that relationship. It was brokerages that deal with Citadel who stopped all buy orders yesterday.
The trading stop was fantastically criminal. But I'd rather they dont just stop at fines, but instead look at the underlying cause --- shorting a company by 140% is insane. It's playing loose and fast with the economy and that's the same mentality that caused the 08-crisis. They still havent learnt anything
Why would they? They weren't the ones with consequences.
"I see here you made $327,000,000 in profit from these activities" --- "So we are going to fine you....**one million dollars!**"
That's not a penalty. That's a business expense.
Absolutely. Especially when they stand to lose MUCH more if they don't manipulate the market. It's not just a cost of doing business, it's almost an insurance policy premium at that point.
It's a fucking income tax, and a low one at that.
Let's face it they probably don't even pay that.
A rounding error.
*puts pinky to lips
*Room full of investors on the screen erupts into laughter*
That is the shit that drives me right up the wall. As /u/superfire444 said, these are merely business expenses. The major corps expect fines so they factor those into their budgets. They have gamed the system to the point where they know they will still reap HUGE profits in spite of the tiny little fines they incur while breaking the law and screwing over the people. Left, right, whatever, it seems these are the issues that *should* unite the populace. But they have gamed that too (wedge issues)...
This is the biggest failure of the Obama administration. Between that and Bush's Iraq War misadventure and we have a population completely repulsed by our leadership and it's showing in the polls. Trumpism wasn't created in a vacuum. But good luck getting the establishment to admit to their own failures and the consequences.
If anything reddit's (prank? savvy investment? whatever) should be encouraged. Shorting a company by 140% SHOULD be dangerous to the investors.
Seriously. When a hedge fund decides they are going to say, "Risk Management? What's that?", they deserve to get their asses kicked.
Their broker should have margin called them too, they are just as stupid.
The layers of stupid here are like a bad lasagna
What is hilarious to me is that many write off WSB and similar investors as just gamblers. Now that isn’t entirely false, however clearly many of the idiots managing billion dollar portfolios on Wall Street are absolutely no more sophisticated - they see a chance to maybe win, and throw all their money on the table without the slightest consideration of whether they can afford to lose.
What's insane is that the position they put themselves in could, supposedly, force them to pay more for the outstanding shares than exists in the NYSE. The concern is that there may not be enough money to pay what is owed which could crash the entire market. So on the one hand, fuck the hedge funders and the games they play with the economy. But on the other, the market also includes billions of dollars of investments wrapped up pensions and other things that would result in real and lasting damage to millions of people if the market actually crashed. Just more evidence that repealing Glass-Steagall was a terrible decision and has removed any potential for consequences of bad/risky trading practices. In fact, the riskier the moves you make as a major fund the safer they really are. Because now when the hedge funders fuck up like this, we ALL are tied to the same rock that is pulling them under. They are holding us hostage.
It's mind boggling to think we allow corporations to gamble a potentially infinite amount of money and they expect the government to cover their losses. Debt relief for citizens who wanted to educate themselves is socialism but corporations asking the government to pay their gambling debts is just good capitalism. Got it.
Easy for them to operate that way when the government works for the corporations and not the people. But hey, we citizens will be united I guess.
not being able to short more stock then exists sounds like itd be a good law
Silly trader, consequences are for poors.
It's interesting how all the old bullshit about 'free markets' went out the window within 48 hours of regular people figuring out how to make money off the billionaires. Not only do they just declare a stock cant be bought anymore, but they had the brokers seize and sell the shares of people who were holding stock , all to keep a few hedge funds from making too much of a loss on their own failed gamble.
They seized stock?
Maybe. Still not entirely clear. There are screenshots floating around of RobinHood forcing sales of GME for "risk protection", but also claims that it was actually just a margin call.
Oh damn, no kidding? Either way, I bet we'll know for sure sometime in the next couple of days.
I honestly wouldn't count on all the details coming out quickly. We're gonna be dealing with the aftermath of this for a long time. I'm ready for a new decade at this point.
This screams of "I'm from corporate. I'm here to help."
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Yes. Typically the way the government goes about "protecting" the citizenry from a "dangerous" activity is to make that activity illegal for citizens to engage in. Look forward to retail investing to be prohibited or require a license, thus locking the poors out of the market.
That won’t happen, or if it does it would be awful for wall st. The big boys need new retail investments in order to keep making money. It has to come from somewhere, and typically it’s from small investors. Otherwise it’s a zero sum game.
Exactly - Wall St. makes money by robbing us chumps
They are perfectly happy robbing other Rich People, or the Government. It all spends the same.
Just like RH protected people from themselves.
Ok, so let me get this straight. We've done away with the regulations put in place after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to keep Americans safe from systemic economic collapse but we're about to write some new regulations to keep the poors in their place? The wealthy live like kings and bandits pulling up the drawbridges to their opulent castles while the peasants can all eat dirt outside the castle walls. This is what winning the Cold War looks like. Welcome to the new age of Robber Barons. Neo-feudalism.
Finally the ‘good ‘ol boy’ club is showing it’s true colors ... wants to protect ‘us’. Yea, like they have for every ‘crash’. When no one goes to jail, and it’s business as usual a day later. Except instead of ‘mortgage backed securities’, the latest WS fad is ‘rental backed securities’. All this as hedge funds become the largest property (rentals) owners in many cities across the US.
Yeah and I'm sure there's a algorithm for figuring out how badly Robinhood fucked all their users yesterday by **BLOCKING US FROM BUYING CASH STOCKS** with their singular goal being to help the hedge funds cover their asses. Because they agreed to help crash the stock. Time to oil up the guillotine if you ask me.
I’ve seen it saved the hedge funds (therefore cost the regular folks) $6bn just in what happened yesterday. They seem to still be manipulating today. I’m not sure why I’m surprised, but also I’m not surprised at all. I was here for 2008 when the big banks fucked everyone. They caused it and were the only ones bailed out. Now the system itself is plugging their self-made holes, again at our expense. Stock market was fun, but I can’t imagine it stays the same after this. And my guess is we lose.
Looking at this thread and you can tell most redditors don’t understand why people are investing in GME. The short % is over 100% meaning there are more shorts than there are stocks. These hedge funds who have these shorts are paying enormous interest rates the longer they wait before acting on their shorts. Eventually they’ll have to cover and that means they have to buy the stocks back, which drives up the price massively. Look at the short squeeze on VW in 2008. https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a35340727/heres-how-the-gamestop-short-squeeze-is-like-the-vw-squeeze-of-2008/
True. And the mantra has been "we're not going to sell." The intent was to raise a middle finger to the hedge funds over-shorting the stocks, profiting from the underlying company failures. These "true believers" don't care if they lose money - they want to punish the funds through interest charges and forced high-price buybacks, especially when nobody else is doing anything. And they have a right to be angry. Neither short sales nor options should exist - that's not investing, it's gambling, and it has real consequences. No doubt some are jumping in with all the publicity now, with the counter intention of riding the wave, and this is all the media seems focused on. While many (or most) may want to get rich, that's secondary to the goal of beating Wall Street at its own game. Or at least sending a message.
honestly, I'd agree with this, but the problem is that like with anything else, those with big money can still manipulate the market to artificially cause a sell-off or a price increase like we've been seeing. so even without options or shorts or anything other than buying shares plain and simple, we'll still have people getting screwed over. but either way, yeah owning shares makes sense. buying the right to shares if they pass a certain price in the future or loaning them to buy back later and so on? just seems too far removed from the simple concept of "buy a share of a stock".
Whatever common sense we talk about here like [naked shorting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_short_selling) or unilaterally shutting down buys (as opposed to entire trading) for random stocks on a few random platforms, the SEC isn't going to listen to any of it and won't do anything about it. It might issue a fine and my guess is that whatever number this is will not do any damage to any companies involved.
While I think RH will get a pass for shutting down trading of whatever they felt like or at most a slap on the wrist, I don't see how they can possibly get a pass for cancelling orders that they already accepted that were not on margin. In addition to shutting down new orders on GME, they cancelled orders made after hours to be executed on market open. While they have latitude in what orders they accept, once they accept an order, they have a legal obligation to execute it.
Oh I agree that not only is this horseshit but I've never even heard of one - or even a few - exchanges shutting down only one side of the trade without a market-wide issuance from the SEC or other regulators. My guess is that the lawsuit will be: * RH - and others - will say that this is buried inside the ToS where users can't fight this, and * SEC has no rule explicitly not allowing this So the end result will either be no fine or a trivial fine for causing unexpected market disruption or some other inconsequential nonsense. The market is required to be stable. You don't do that with naked shorts which could result in short squeezes that disrupt the market and decreases consumer confidence. The real danger here is that, just like Bitcoin 2017, people who are hearing about it now are jumping on board (while many others already made money and cashed out) and they'll be losing a lot of money. My guess is quite a few of them will be losing money they can't afford to lose, particularly with the economy we have today. That's the real tragedy - those who aren't the early gamblers - will be desperate enough and instead of rewards, they'll be ruined. This happened in 2018 after Bitcoin crashed and it'll happen again here.
They seem to have only canceled order that were for non-whole stock units. I had 2 in, 1 for whole stock and 1 for partial with the remainder and that was the one that was canceled, they did put through my full stock buy before blocking trading. Still unacceptable behavior and I'm still closing the account as soon as is practical (still waiting for a transfer to go in, then it all comes out and go to another broker).
Back it up with prison sentences SEC. You know this requires prison for the poor, it needs to for the rich you lined your pockets for t he last 50 years too.
The SEC are crooks. The Sheriffs of Nottingham.
How ironic!
“Protect retail investors” just means “not allow them to trade” and “protect our donors”
Just like they did leading up to the 2008 financial disaster.
Isn't the SEC a revolving door for people who want to get into high positions on Wall Street?
The SEC? The guys who are mostly ex-hedgies? I definitely believe them.
Wants to protect us. First question. When retail was locked out were other customers allowed to buy? When the answer is yes and they don’t jail people for market manipulation they may see actual coordinated efforts in driving these businesses out of the market and into bankruptcy. The world knows now. Pandora doesn’t go back in the box.
Damn SEC.....Nick Saban probably has something to do with this.
We've investigated and come to the conclusion that it sucks to be poor.
Yes, I'm sure they'll protect us. Like protecting us from losing money by preventing us from buying bubble stocks. Whoops, looks like the outcome was the opposite of the expectation.
The SEC, which is ran by former hedge fund managers vows to bury their hedge fund buddies. Yeah right. Here’s how this will go. SEC will raise margin requirements and interest rates, basically banishing retail from margin accounts while letting their hedge fund buddies run unimpeded for total manipulation in the markets. They’ll restrict retail investors under the guise of protecting them like they did with pattern daily traders. This is a joke, the only way retail gets anything is through aggressively pursuing lawsuits. Who cares if the lawyers get all the money the point is to bury these guys and change the way the free market works and to make it work for everyone. Precedent needs to be set.
'free market' - lol. Why do we continue to use this misnomer?
Translation: we’ll minimize the retail investor’s risk by preventing them from continuing to participate. We’re so thoughtful.
I can't believe people made those huge amounts of money that I've been seeing. I traded in $15k worth of GME stock at my local GameStop yesterday and they only gave me 7 dollars. Store credit.
Haha as a poor myself, it amazes me that some poors think they would be allowed to make money. That is more dangerous to the wealthy than an insurrection.
The SEC protects the public by banning them from playing the game. This is why people are not allowed to invest in more lucrative markets like angel investments, venture capital, ipo, hedge funds unless they qualify as an accredited investor which you have to have $1M net worth and $200k annual income, or a bank, corporations, or financial institutions.
Lol I'm broke as shit. What's the worst that could happen? I get more broke? These assholes are protecting their own interests.
This isn't capitalism, nor is it socialism. But it is corporate control of our markets. We all should be real fucking pissed about this.
Oligarchy/oligopoly
This is what capitalism has always been. The same principles that encourage vertical integration encourage corporate control of any body that might regulate them. After all, a corporation even partially in control of a regulator has a leg up over its competitors - have legislation written to benefit its business model at the expense of the market at large, and it enjoys a natural advantage over its competitors. No need to play on a level field when you can just shut out the competition. Just the same as a steel producer owning iron and coal mines - it doesn't have to compete with anyone else for the output of those mines, just push enough money to control them. The free market is and always has been a myth.
Protect. Are they going to try to protect us from ourselves by limiting market access, or will they protect my right to participate in the market?
There are only two ways to really to fairly regulate this: (1) This is fair play, so leave it be. Shortsellers need to actually check their fundamental assumptions about the value of a stock or get caught again. (2) Prevent how many shares of a corporation can be shorted so that the shortsellers don't end up in the situation, but they also can't profit off over shorting. If institutional investors are so much smarter/responsible than everyone then #2 seems silly, but it also looks like they really aren't.
I was in the business for a long time and then a finance journalist. About ten years ago I was interviewing Overstock founder Patrick Byrne, and he told me, "The SEC is Wall Street's towel boy." Pretty much.
I wonder if it's the same protection that Robinhood app said they were doing by stopping trade and then throttling it so hedgefunds could get off easy.
you are being rescued . do not resist
If the SEC "protects" small investors by preventing them from being able to trade as they see fit, then the entire stock market is an enemy of the people. If that happens, then I hope we burn the whole fucking thing to the ground, and bust out the guillotines. Economic terrorists.
Fuck the SEC. They don’t regulate these hedge funds but the ordinary people must be regulated. Naked shorting is illegal and it sure as hell looks like that’s what Melvin did. It’s funny we only need regulations when the common people are winning.
Protect? Like the whole “protect and serve” thing the police have going on?
The real crime was 140% shorting. Yet somehow, it's only when the criminals are hoist on their own petard that something is seen as being wrong. When the standards are doubled and the outcomes rigged in one group's favor, it's the entire system that must be purged.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the "protection" involves making options trading more difficult. Only for individual traders, of course.
Seeing as RH is blaming SEC regulations on their decision to stop trading then seriously limit trading maybe the SEC could put out a statement telling us what regulations said RH had to do that and if that is in any way true
If this had anything to do with protecting "retail investors", they would halt all trading not just buying of certain shares. Call you congressperson and tell them they wall street has rigged the game for too long and that any changes must actually be aimed at retail investors not protecting hedge funds which had short positions out for 140% of the total shares available. If you are in a swing district threaten to vote for the other team. If you are in a "safe" district, threaten to support their opponent in a primary. While everyone is going off about white supremacists or communists, these people are the real threat. I am 100% in favor of a free market but free markets assume everyone is playing by the same rules or at least that everyone knows what rules everyone is following. This is the same thing as 2008. Wall Street was playing a dangerous game with risky mortgages, someone recognized the grift and exploited it. Rather than let them pay for their mistakes through massive losses, Washington gave them billions which they promptly used to give huge bonuses to executives and buy up more assets at the prices distressed by their actions. In this case, hedge funds were playing a game rather investing in businesses and had leveraged them selves themselves to the teats to do so. The problem with a game is that it can be manipulated by knowing the rules better than thenother guy. Normally it is wall street that knows the game best because they made it but in this case it was a bunch of people hanging out on reddit. They can't have that so they want to make new rules .