Meme Stocks Lose $167B as Reddit Crowd Preaches Defiance | Hacker News Reader

Meme Stocks Lose $167B as Reddit Crowd Preaches Defiance

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What is way more interesting is that the media can be weaponized by hedge funds, in that many (all?) outlets were incorrectly reporting, that r/wallstreetbets was hyping silver instead of GME now.

To me the whole story certainly brought up a few things worth regulating. Why can brokers just arbitrarily decide to stop trading specific stocks? Why can different entities lend stocks for the purpose of shorting against the interests of the very owner of said stocks? Isn't shorting more than (or next to) 100% of the free float of a company too big of a risk for the whole system and how can we circumvent that in the future?

Before the whole thing, I had the impression, that stocks are safe. Not necessarily their price, but the stocks themself. I was aware that they are a separate asset and don't belong to the assets of the broker. Little did I know that brokers could still just lend them out and that I would only get a maximum of 20,000 € back over here in Germany, in case shit actually would hit the fan. I want to be able to print out my stocks and physically put them somewhere or put them on a blockchain! How is it possible, that in 2021 I could actually lose my ownership rights to a company, because someone else is using it to gamble?

You're spreading r/wallstreetbets misinformation. They WERE hyping up and trying to squeeze silver at the same time, or preparing for right after GME squeeze, but when the GME outrage broke mainstream, r/wallstreetbets very quickly changed into conspiratorial fashion with complete denial:

"we never hyped silver, keep buying GME, it's a distraction, FAKE NEWS!"

Here's four highly popular r/wallstreetbets threads that were pumping silver at the time.[0][1][2]

They even deleted the evidence on [3].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6fgbn/the_...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6novm/the_...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l76885/the_...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l68ill/the_...

The world is running into serious problems with rampant misinformation on social media echo chambers / filter bubbles.

You're leaving out the aspect that this was all extremely time sensitive. Those silver posts were no longer relevant to the situation.

This video explains exactly what the hedge funds are doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI

Once the media reports broke saying "Redditors now buying silver!", there was no one on WSB actively discussing buying silver. The more likely story is that the hedge funds researched recent WSB discussion, saw some talk about silver, loaded up on silver futures options, "leaked" a hot new WSB story to their media shills(maybe even providing the same references as you did), and the media ran with it so they could report a "scoop". Loading up on the futures options probably drove the price up, giving more credibility to the fake news story. Then they probably unloaded their long positions and shorted silver since the price was temporarily propped up by the news-watching suckers who ran out and bought it. If you look at the $SLV chart from last week, the price movements would support my hypothesis. They probably did this because they needed short term cash quickly, and wanted to distract from $GME.

Aren't all of those threads older than 5 days? I actually visited r/wsb during the last few days to watch the show. While I cannot be sure, that there were no threads about SLV, I am very sure, that to this day GME was the stock being hyped. There was not a sudden switch from GME to SLV like reported today.

Yes, and that's why you're misinformed because you just observed the last few days of their denials, but why are you spreading this if you didn't observe the whole past two weeks or did some research to back up your claims?

Jan 21st, 12 days ago GME started really being pumped. Then 6 days ago they just started simultaneously piling onto silver pumping threads, along with GME. When the GME outrage started due to the buying halts on Jan. 28th, there was a huge flood of activity, and people piled back entirely onto GME that day, but at the same time reporters were combing through the previous threads, that were pumping silver, and started writing articles assuming silver was the next pump. They weren't making anything up, they're just some hours behind the top threads of WSB because of how chaotic the activity is.

The timing here is actually the most important detail. What I am saying is: It is not the case, that r/wsb decided today to drop GME and invest in SLV instead, like the reports suggest.

I am actually relieved, that there were indeed stories about it and it was not totally made up. I still find the timing worth noticing.

From some links I saw over the weekend, the idea was to buy physical silver. Some coin places over the weekend were all out, however true or not that may be. The SLV stock may be someone else trying to fly under the guise of r/WSB's growing mass confusion to buy-low-and-HODL anything.

They're not just some hours it feels, they're some days to a week behind. I've been following this one for a week or two now, and silver was never the mainstay. It was there in small quantities, but generally drowned out by $GME, and even $BB and $AMC. Maybe sometime it would be fun to do some analysis of relative mentions of $SLV and other silver related things as compared to GME/BB/AMC.

Selective reporting is one of the more sneaky forms of bias after all. No need to blatantly lie when you can paint a different truth with parts of the whole.

On an aside, popular is an interesting way to describe those posts. 14k peak upvotes with many of the ones cited at 4 digit upvote totals. That's not what I'd call popular, especially considering the rapid growth of the sub.

I’ve been on the sub as a lurker for about a year now. GME posts or otherwise the most commented topic was to buy GME. I actually never seen a DD on silver on wsb, maybe it did come but must’ve been removed by mods.

I would look at wsb daily for the past 2 weeks. On the Monday when I googled $GME to check the price all the google news snippets that came up were “Reddit dumps gme for silver”, etc. Then I go to wsb and it’s all gme talk. And everyone is saying silver is a lie.

After reading the news articles I started to think that they are just jumping between tends now but I knew it didn’t sound like wsb. But if you were an average non-wsb reader it would definitely dissuade you from buying right at the time when it hit is maximum mainstream news spread.

So as a wsb follower I never even saw a silver article on Reddit. It was definitely manufactured by the media to divert attention.

I don’t think it’s so unusual either in that the upper class elite who own and manage the media networks need to put their money somewhere to get the best returns. And the chance that themselves or friends of theirs were looking to lose huge amounts from the squeeze at one of the hedge funds, is pretty good incentive to say “can we run a story to take pressure of gme”.

A coincidence that a war on powerful connected hedge funds ends up with the media clearly planting stories and broker platforms preventing trading. If you thought: oh I am an average joe I don’t want to miss out on this and you had robinhood you could only buy one share at 300. Instead of say dropping 10k. Is this sensible? That’s irrelevant though.

So yes it seems like a conspiracy...but there is good evidence it was not.

But we should think about other explanations:

- media wanted clicks and they knew FOMO of missing out on the next thing would be a big hit. But how they found the thread for the original story is a mystery. They saw a small story was getting huge clicks so gave it more visibility.

Would be interesting to trace back at what time the first silver article was written and by who and which outlet.

the forum normally has hundreds, maybe thousands, of posts each day that all are some stupid bet on an option or another. To act as if SLV was the next hot thing is incredibly stupid and misinformed. It's like if I went into the politics subreddit and found one thing that is anti-Biden (there is basically zero upvoted threads anti-Biden) and everyone reported reddit hates Biden.

Apparently the reason Robinhood halted purchases of $GME was because they received a middle of the night call from the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) demanding $3 Billion immediately[1]. The NSCC refused to explain exactly how the $3 Billion was calculated, and they eventually settled on a much lower number in exchange for RH (and other brokerages) agreeing to halt purchases of specific stocks (the stocks that were shorted by the hedge funds).

After some research into the NSCC, looks like they're a very opaque & private company ran by a bunch of former hedge fund guys[2]. Also, their board of directors appears to include some active hedge fund guys. Considering this is all it took to block millions of retail traders, I'd say we have a very serious situation that needs to be investigated. Especially considering the trades involved were extremely time sensitive (e.g. put options set to expire worthless unless the stock dropped dramatically, stalled purchase momentum, etc).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M7X2dsW_Xw&t=5m25s [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/15236Z:US

You know why a stock typically goes up whenever Wall Street “research” upgrades it? Their sales team spam calls all of their clients. I don’t understand how that’s any different from what happens on r/wsb. It’s really not the “DD” that matters but creating flow. Why firms like Merrill Lynch was feared. The whole industry is a complete joke and Wall Street doesn’t like the fact that their little complex is getting disintermediated even further as machines and self-directed individuals take over.

> I was aware that they are a separate asset and don't belong to the assets of the broker. Little did I know that brokers could still just lend them out

AFAIK they could lend them only if that is a part of the contract between you and your broker. My broker has a separate optional amendment to the brokerage contract for that, which is required only if i wanted margin account instead of regular brokerage account.

This video explains exactly what the hedge funds are doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMShFx5rThI

Another question: Why is it legal for Robinhood and other trading platforms to sell out their users’ trades to hedge funds that front run them using High Frequency Trading?

Personally, I feel like all those news orgs should be liable for something. Blatantly lying to a huge audience in an attempt to influence the market to me feels like blatant market manipulation, especially in time-sensitive situations.

If anything, this should be an eye opener to many. The media isn't your friend, and hasn't been your friend for a long time, if ever. Journalism is dead, and primarily exists as a tool of manipulation far more insidious than any government run propaganda campaign. They don't exist to report what has happened, or to inform; They exist to shape opinion and control their readers.

> They don't exist to report what has happened, or to inform; They exist to shape opinion and control their readers.

That's been the case for some time now, but there will be major pushback from many HNers, who believe we're attacking a pillar of our democracy.

And yes, an independent media is an important part of a democracy. But most of our mainstream media are party-affiliated, not independent. They're party mouthpieces. And both parties are highly influenced by our major corporations, particularly the finance industry.

Between a warped media, swarm-mind on social media, and societal upheavals like pandemics and rioting (at the Capitol and elsewhere), we're reaching a tipping point. I wish people would turn off their TVs, and their Facebook+Twitter. It's probably our only chance of avoiding the chasm we're fast approaching.

The really disappointing thing is that a lot of desperate people who had just some extra stimulus money and no more assistance thought they could possibly win something. I'm not saying desperate to demean anyone, just that the failed state does spur some in despair to try anything. They thought they couldn't possibly lose if so many are in on the big mental error that'll destroy Wall Street.

If they bought low, like $50-70, sure, that's not a complete loss yet as of today's $90 close. But there are those who went all in above $300 last week hoping to see the moon. This one kid I read tossed in $18,000 of his savings at the peak and currently down $9,000. Another young one is YOLOing his shares and willing to ride it to zero instead of just calling it quits. What could at least be some slim yet fair gains relative to last week or less of a loss will simply worsen with this attitude. Gamestop isn't like AMC where the current dip one can ride out a bit and possibly break even or gain.

It's one thing to be struggling and another to lose more money. It's not like credit debt when at least the money borrowed went somewhere. This is pretty much cash grifted out of naive hands by both sides. Easy to miss an opportunity and forget, harder to deal with losses especially as the US government can't even agree if a future stimulus check is coming or going.

Oh well. Back to SPY.

I thought this was about Melvin Capital shorting more than 100% of the float. They start losing money and media brings up: what about the pensions? Those poor people blah blah. Yea, Melvin Capital why the hell would you do that to pension funds. Is that the risk profile for such things?

I don't understand the reporting on this subject. Why would anyone think that GME, AMC etc would stay up?

The dominant WSB narrative appears to be that the real short squeeze hasn't happened yet, the falling price is due to market manipulation, indicators showing that shorts are back to 50% instead of last week's 140% are all fake, and it's going back to the moon anytime now.

Needless to say, it's requiring increasing levels of disconnect from reality to believe that this is actually the case. Here's a lengthy but interesting WSB analysis of the various theories:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/lbaktb/sobe...

My favorite bit:

Argument #4: Market manipulation shenanigans didn't work, and retailers didn't sell off en masse, creating the liquidity shorts need to close cheaply.

Claim: Price dips happened during low volume trading (short ladder market manipulation etc), and the longs are holding fast.

Counterevidence: THE MOTHERFUCKING $300 PRICE DROP YOU DUMB FUCKING NUGGETS

Not to be rude to a new account, but I have spoken to legitimate investment managers (who are licensed to have assets under management) who believe there is a still a reasonable possibility of a squeeze occurring (refer to the 800 strike on the GME options chain [1] [2], specifically the volume and open interest on those contracts, and the ongoing failure to deliver shares reports from the SEC [3] [4]).

That's not to say WSB isn't....exuberant. They are, but that doesn't mean everyone in there is delusional. Maybe it goes back to $5, maybe it goes up, but it's pretty hard to say between retail, institutional, and what is going on behind the scenes. We departed fundamentals and technicals a while ago, and it's not easy to pick out the signal from the noise.

Disclaimer: Not an advisor, not investment advice, comment is for educational purposes only. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GME/options?p=GME

[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GME/options?strike=800&strad...

[3] https://www.sec.gov/data/foiadocsfailsdatahtm (most recent zip file, extract and grep GME)

[4] https://wherearetheshares.com/

No offense taken, I agree there's a non-zero chance that GME goes up again. However, alleging that the ticker price is "fake" or that the short interest analytics reports are all shills etc is veering pretty strongly into QAnon territory.

No disagreement. As a cohort grows, you're always going to get more outliers. Hard to police a crowd that big. My intent was to stress that it is possible to separate the logical thesis from the conspiracy speak, which is necessary when you have 8 million users shouting into the same void (up from ~2 million a few weeks ago).

    THE DIP IS FAKE. LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE BUYING COMPARED TO SELLING. RELAX AND HOLD.

this summarizes whats happening. ppl are in their own bubble, rejecting anything that threatens their own flawed version of reality.

I mean, "hedge funds and my shitty broker are complicit in securities fraud, which is why I lost $65,000 on an $80,000 bet" certainly sounds a lot better than "I was late to the party and got hosed."

Or "I was the greatest fool."

Either it's someone in a bubble, or someone trying to prop up the price a little longer so they can liquidate the last few shares they own.

This bit immediately reminded me of qanon.

yeah looks like quite a bit of HN folks actually bought into the meme stock and now they are furiously downvoting anything that suggests that they might not have been as smart as they've been brought up to believe.

"“Anything can turn sinister if people go in with the wrong education and intentions,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade."

In other words, leave it to the "experts."

Interestingly across all of the lauding for the Reddit short squeezing (about how it was a populist uprising against Wall Street, blah blah blah and other similar fraudulent non-sense), it's being almost universally ignored that the Reddit crowd is doing nothing more than performing rampant pump and dump schemes on stocks. They're going to leave GameStop to die by the side of the road and they will not care one bit as it gradually implodes back down toward where it was, it's on to the next pump and dump, GME will be yesterday's forgotten news.

There is nothing glorious about what's going on, there's nothing honorable about pumping and dumping stocks for a quick buck. If it were Wall Street behaving this way (as they so often do) it'd be properly called despicable behavior.

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