GameStop Short-Sellers Reload Bets After $6B Loss | Hacker News Reader

GameStop Short-Sellers Reload Bets After $6B Loss

bloomberg.com

54 pointssschueller23 comments

Melvin capital is in over its head. They have no idea how many people are willing to loose $100 just to stick it to them. HODL

they should rename it Mervyn capital

It's been really fun watching this. HODL.

HODL?

It's a joke on "hold", meaning don't sell.

Lol. I always assumed it was Hold On for Dear Life.

>They have no idea how many people are willing to loose $100 just to stick it to them.

...or maybe $600 stimulus checks? Plus a bunch of gambling addicts who have been missing out on sports betting because of corona? Is there anyway to know how many shares are in the hands retail investors vs. institutions?

How many people are going to lose their investment though? Melvin and others are obligated to pay and over 100% of the shares are still shorted. At this point it seems like the concern is whether or not they can pay out.

I don't know much about trading so I'd like to hear anyone with better insight.

Most of them are. That's what people here aren't getting: These people have a point they're making and feel like making themselves heard is a decent use of some spare change.

Alright, you convinced me. I'm in, you sons of bitches.

why would anyone be short a stock with short interest that high? you're just begging to get stomped

all the funds getting trashed are getting showed up as amateurs....by actual amateurs!

short trades are incredibly dangerous, you need a trade to go negative, but quickly before too many others also short. real, quality short opportunities are so rare that I just use a simple rule...never short.

yeah, any "uncapped downside" situation should be avoided, especially with other people's money.

They are betting on the market being irrational and then coming to their senses? Come on, the level of activity there, it's obvious it's not happening.

Everyone in that stock is there for one reason, and two reasons only - to squeeze melvin dry and make money.

Any downfall will happen AFTER the first condition is met.

"why would anyone be short a stock with short interest that high" is kind of funny, in a "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" kind of way. They short the stock because the fundamentals say to short the stock, regardless of the games being played. The short interest is high because the underlying company is in very bad shape. It should probably already be bankrupt.

Short trades are dangerous, and dangerous in a new way. The old maxim remains true that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Or in this case, retail investors will pay to enjoy your suffering longer than you can remain solvent, and consider it a cheap price to pay.

Still... if I had bigger appetite risk, I'd short this stock myself. The price is obviously too high, and there's a ton of money to be made by shorting it. But the horizon on that profit is longer than I have the stomach for.

Confusing that Nasdaq still "opens" but has pretrading before the opening hours?

A limited set of professional traders can trade after hours but retail traders cannot. Why not just switch to 24-hour trading?

I've always been curious about this aspect of the markets. Is there a good reason for this special status/ability? From my naive point of view, it just looks like a small group of people are allowed to game the market by reacting to news that occurred during off hours before everyone else.

Look at the link in my sibling comment before stomping off mad about the 1%. You, too, can massively increase your risk by trading after-hours simply by opening a Fidelity account. I highly recommend that you not do that.

...but retail traders cannot

I generally stay away from after-hours trading, but I would have sworn I'd traded after-hours on Fidelity in the distant past, so I looked it up:

"At Fidelity, you can trade listed equities and OTC equities—excluding pink sheets and bulletin board stocks (i.e., those that are not listed on an exchange)—during extended hours." https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/active-investor/extended...

Why not 24/7 trading? Because after-hours aren't going through the "markets", but through Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs). The rules are different (Fidelity requires all orders to be limit orders, for example). So the best summary answer I can give is: "it's not 24 hours because normal trading and after-hours trading are on separate platforms, rather than after-hours being an extension of normal trading".

>after-hours aren't going through the "markets", but through Electronic Communication Networks (ECNs)

I wasn't aware of all the differences, but I think another more abstract answer to the question of "why not 24/7" is that the whole point of a "market" is to bring people together to trade, and 24/7 would reduce liquidity.

I remember reading that volume is very much not evenly distributed through the day so one might ask why not reduce the hours instead, have like an hour to trade in the morning and an hour in the afternoon...

Retail traders can trade in the AM and PM sessions. Maybe there is some additional privilege of professionals, but anyone can trade before and after the regular session.

Wondering again if this kind of short operations by funds can have benefits other than their own profit...

It creates a market for exchange of these securities, with the associated speculative nature.

Why do you need it to benefit anything other than their own profit? It's acceptable as long as it doesn't hurt a third, unrelated party.

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