This is text-book illegal activity.
There is no logical derivation of GameStop's financial books that would warrant the kind of stock price it has.
It is very very clearly market manipulation, and these exact sorts of manipulations are commonly prosecuted.
Hedge funds are so used to being the only tool on the block, they overextended, and for the first(?) time the retail side is fighting back.
The professional investing world have so many advantages over main street that it's not even funny. They've got everything from frontrunning, colocation, free money, and leverage(10x), 'unsophisticated' investors only can dream of this. And when they do go belly up, tax payers bail them out, meanwhile the bonus machine keeps churning.
But it is funny and good when main street actually catches them with their hand in the cookie jar.
How is this different from Bill Ackmans attack on Herbal life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQc6L4ieMwo
How is this different from all the FUD Tesla has gotten over the years? Which CNBC has happily broadcast for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-YgFDAroeI
That was shorting. That is LEGAL.
> How is this different from all the FUD Tesla has gotten over the years?
Tesla was specifically investigated by the SEC when it tried to push short sellers out - and they paid an undisclosed fine for that ILLEGAL activity.
Is it? If I have the money to put a short squeeze on someone by myself, with my own money, is that illegal? Isn't that what some people do all the time with smaller numbers?
(honestly asking)
Pump and Dump schemes have been illegal forever. This is no different.
Furthermore, if you're arguing that it's illegal because it's done in group, then I don't understand what legal basis you are using for that. I also don't understand why you'd say it's "very different" from doing it on your own. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that legal to do on your own, but illegal in group (some things are more illegal in a group, but that's not what we're talking about)
I think it's very risky for the investors but I don't know whether the SEC has stuff that would cover this.
And even if there were a law, if you somehow have your thumb on the social media hype button then how would you enforce that law? Makes me think nothing unruly is going on, just a bubble that will inevitably collapse and make Musk etc. rich once more just like during the dot com era. Some people only know how to make money through theft and I'm not surprised we've found ourselves here after the last 4 years.
If i tell you GME has a new product line that will increase their wealth 10x - that seems like manipulation. If i say to you i'm buying GME and you should too, with clear disclaimers that this isn't financial advice but rather a meme - i don't think i manipulated you.
By "normal" definition manipulation requires some about of deception/etc. I don't think "anyone" (within obvious reason) is being manipulated here. It's very clear what the community is buying into.
So i come back to what "manipulation" is defined as in the stock sense. Is it meaningfully different?
Why is one okay but not the other? Right because rich people with connections are the ones being burnt right now.
Is there a requirement for stock prices to be logical? Wouldn't that would ban all sorts of hft trades?
If only value investing was legal, the stock market look and operate very differently to today.
Edited to add: ultimately the law should be there to prevent fraud, not to restrict capital ownership and financial autonomy to a handful of cronies. You know, what they call a free market.
Incidentally, if this had been a properly regulated market to begin with, the price inflation would not have been possible.