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Comment by pyrrhotech | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe they disallowed opening of new positions. I.e. if you are currently long, you can sell to close your position or if you are short, you can buy to close position, but you are not allowed to open new longs or new shorts.

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But something like 99.9% (guesstimate) of the RH users happen to have long positions opened. So they're allowing something to the tune 99.9% of longs to close by selling, and 0.1% of shorts to close by buying (I take it the big shorters like Melvin Capital aren't shorting on RH).

This is so close to "allowing sells but not buys" that it is blatant market manipulation.

I think it all goes to show that manipulation is a fact of life, and especially of markets. There's 0 doubt that both sides are trying to manipulate to make money from the other. Maybe some folks on WSB believe GME is fairly valued at $80 or $100, but no one with half a brain truly thinks that it's worth $400 or $4200.69 or whatever price they want. I think it'll fall right back down to $20 once this sorts itself out eventually, and I think most of the WSB crowd thinks that too. The only reason people are buying at those prices is to try to force a short squeeze, to effectively steal money from the hedge funds by forcing them to buy at irrational prices as they get margin called.

Now the hedge funds are of course trying to prevent this by calling favors from the brokers and putting out fake news that they've already closed out. Both sides are using manipulation and displaying the worst parts of our markets, our capitalism and even our character for the whole world to see.

At the end of the day, humans are greedy beings. It's totally natural, and we need to accept that. But as we accept it, we need to figure out ways to regulate that greed so that it is a force for good overall. Capitalism is based on greed, but that doesn't mean it's not the best economic system. On the whole, a group of entirely self-interested individuals can still work together in a sense to grow our economy, build new technology and make the world a better place.

> The only reason people are buying at those prices is to try to force a short squeeze, to effectively steal money from the hedge funds by forcing them to buy at irrational prices as they get margin called.

Go ahead and explain how that is stealing?

So we should roll over and take it?

Each trade is two way right? Who is buying the retail orders being forced to sell? Does being able to sell (to those already short, who can close their position) not seem like blatant manipulation to help those already short?

Or if only retail is unable to open new positions, why are institutional investors allowed to open new positions and profit from the moves while retail cannot?

Sure, but paraphrasing Rick and Morty, that sounds like blocking only buying with extra steps.

Clearly this arrangement only benefits short sellers.

So what?

That is unfair? If my short position blows up, I pay. Nobody halts buying because I will have to liquidate everything.

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