Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

So they're going to show Wall Street who's boss by gambling away their grocery money? (Some will make out but I suspect the vast majority will lose big--money at least some can't really afford to lose.) I have trouble conjuring up a lot of sympathy but that's almost certainly uncharitable as I'm sure there will be stories of serious individual loss.

View on HN

I have seen very little evidence of people investing money in the stock market that is not budgeted as “gambling” (ie disposable income). WSB embraces the idea that memetrading is gambling. This is not a surprise to anyone but a few outsiders.

But it kind of goes against the story that this is “the people” against Wall Street. “The people”, by and large, do not have a ton of spare gambling money sitting around. “Upper middle class folks with spare disposable income vs Wall Street” isn’t quite as persuasive a hook, though.

But one could argue the upper middle class's interests are aligned with the lower class. So it's “upper middle class folks with spare disposable income on behalf of everyone else vs Wall Street”, which is such a mouthful that "the people vs Wall St" is probably close enough.

Certainly. It takes money to make money. That rule hasn’t changed yet.

Many of societies big issues are intertwined so hopefully addressing one partially addresses many. The golden rule is particularly nasty: those with the gold make the rules.

Then you have not been paying attention to WSB for very long. It's full of degenerate gamblers, so many loss porn posts come from people saying, "How will I pay my rent this month?"

Most of the time, WSB is a community to commiserate about losses and lie about gains.

I feel like a lot of that sort of rhetoric on there is highly highly sarcastic. Half the time “how will I pay the rent?” Is followed by something along the lines of “my wifes boyfriend will never forgive me” the very next sentence.

"How will I pay my rent this month?"

That's something I'd say to be funny, especially on reddit.

I am with you historically, but people seem to be taking this way more seriously than previous similar shenanigans, so I'm re-evaluating my prior dismissals.

This is not just a WSB thing anymore, it was front-page news on every news service yesterday.

One of the most popular posts on WSB right now is somebody bragging they're putting their entire life savings in GameStop. I personally know people buying Gamestop that shouldn't be. It's pretty scary.

You must be missing a rash of people outside of the wsb sphere trying to create accounts with brokerages, have no idea what investment is, and trying to buy GME or others.

Those are the ones who would be left holding the bag when the music stops.

Nobody is gambling money away. The sentiment is that they are knowingly _throwing_ it away to send a message.

Are we talking about cutting your own nose off to spite someone else's face?

Is that any different to taking a day off work to go to a protest? Both situations have you losing money in order to bring issues to light. Same with union workers going on strike.

Except if I were to protest it is focused on that one employer / hits them.

Meanwhile this financial system is hardly just a monolithic monster and plenty of big institutions will make money too.

I think the populist ideas / results around this are all weirdly misguided.

Citron mainly is one focus for sure. I'm sure someone knows why Melvin Capital is targeted.

Yes, it's different insofar as the money you're losing in this protest is going directly into the pockets of the group of people you're protesting against. Very illogical way to protest.

Yes, because here they not only lose money, but also all the money they lose is gained by the exact thing they protest against. It’s as if they went to protest Amazon by working at their warehouse for free.

Not sure I understand the metaphor, but I think so. Here's a good intro to the mythology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=AsTCB0ud2zM

My partner and I were so entertained by reading WSB last night we bought a share at $350.

I don’t particularly care if it goes to $10 tomorrow. I don’t expect to make money here. It’ll be fun to watch for a few days, maybe weeks.

We just felt a lot of solidarity with the sentiment over there, and are happy to make a small contribution to the squeeze.

It feels kind of like contributing to a Kickstarter with low chance of success.

But you know, there’s a nonzero chance it goes to $1000 before the shorts can wiggle out. That’s what makes it exciting.

In general, since watching what they did to Tesla I have no sympathy for shorts.

So you're saying they're even dumber than they appear at first glance? Sorry, but pissing money away (or actually likely giving it to some Wall Street institution) to send some ill-defined "message" really can't be called anything but dumb.

Even as an econometrician, I would never call it dumb. It's a virtual incarnation of Occupy Wall Street. These guys are probably spending less than those who protested several years ago did. Heck, you can buy a stock and still go to work. No need to forego weeks of labor.

I guess I find it really weird and unfocused and so mixed in with people who are greedy/stupid that the whole thing just seems absurd.

I think the absurdity is why it's grown as big as it has: a bizarre combination of conditions achieved critical mass and has exploded into this unplanned, unprecedented paroxysm of pure absurdity that nobody would have predicted because it's so irrational, so stupid, yet it's happening.

You just said anyone who has ever contributed to a presidential campaign in their life is a moron. I don't see how this can be interpreted any other way, no one pisses away $100 to the Libertarian candidate expecting he's really going to save over $100 in income tax or reduced regulations the next year...

I would say that giving money to a libertarian (or other) candidate is a very clear message that you favor their policies compared to the alternatives. Yes, $100 isn't going to move the needle but neither is your individual vote in the vast majority of cases.

Do you know how this whole thing started? It seems you're just coming in and dismissing the whole thing, when the person who started it with $50k is now sitting on gains of $50m and even people who bought in yesterday are up almost 2x.

And some people who can't really afford to buy Powerball tickets every week. And a few of them hit it big. Doesn't make it a rational choice from a purely economic perspective.

The biggest flaw of conventional economic theory is that "people are rational".

Do you see all trading on the stock market as speculative and basically gambling?

Seeing it that way makes budgeting for it a lot easier (for me): I fully expect the loss of any and all money I'd bring into a casino, treating it as an admittance fee paid in exchange for the thrill of the tiny possibility of winning big, whose occurrence would probably influence me to double down and inevitably lose everything.

I hope thinking this way about retail investing reduces the risk of YOLOing one's life savings on individual stocks.

even people who bought in yesterday are up almost 2x.

Not anymore, they're not. Such are equities when the price becomes detached from reality. Any moorings one wishes to try and tie the price to, those are gone now.

As they say, past performance is not an indicator of future gains.

I can see all the pressure being applied to me to sell. Clearly some very rich and influential people want me to sell. This alone is enough to convince me not to. I don't care if it's dumb or it will go down to $0. I'm not budging.

Yeah, before today I'd have likely dismissed such comments as "conspiracy theory" but, RobinHood literally disabled the ability to buy, or even search for these stocks on their platform.

Very paternalistic to assume that people are gambling away their grocery money and should be stopped now that the short squeeze has become much, much more likely. Meanwhile ANY other security also has the chance to go to 0, but RH doesn't stop you from buying.

I don't think he's arguing FOR stopping the trades. I think he's worried about the folks participating financial well being.

We worry about that (people's retirement savings and so on) anytime we see market corrections, a given company go under, and etc... it's not an unusual concern.

It seems like concern trolling tbh.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean but I guess that would men that regulations are 'concern trolling'?

When I see 'concern trolling' I usually think of it as just a term slapped on something to hand wave and ignore it.

That's elitism. Which is fine, it's a legitimate position, to believe that you have knowledge that others don't, and others should be protected from themselves. And the Law can step in to enforce this protection. You can apply that to stocks, "gambling", drugs, sex, porn, hate speech, misinformation, and everything else.

And there are a number of countries that have that philosophy in legal form. I'm glad to have a choice NOT to live in those countries and I suspect most on HN are similar.

We have laws about scams and etc, is that elitism, or just that the population doesn't want scams?

I don't care if Robinhood bans trading or not. Don't have an account with them and likely never will. Aside from some fairly obvious things (states generally shouldn't advertise their lotteries for example), people should be able to do whatever they want with their money. And it's probably pretty fruitless to try to stop them from doing so in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com