If Melvin Capital isn't bankrupt after all of this, there might just be A LOT of broke redditors who cashed in their lifesavings on this gamble.
What's the proof that any retail investor actually bought GME?
How many retail investors actually bought GME?
How much money did they win or loose?
Using inspect element sounds like too much trouble when you can just use fake money instead.
I'm not saying I feel strongly either way, but I think peopel on the internet lying is a pretty simple explanation.
On their free time they do tutorials about their process, their tools, etc.
Saying that they are a retail trader is like saying that Warren Buffet is a retail trader when they trade with their own private money and not the money of their clients.
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Also, you can just open a paper trading account and trade with fake money. Then the screenshots look real.
I do this all the time when I need to explain an options play to somebody. Just switch to paper trading, give yourself a million $, and enter the trade.
If I had to show somebody in a podcast how to trade, I would open a paper trading account just to put an amount of money that would be reasonable for that person, so that they can better get a feeling of what the wins and the losses look like.
I find the memes there funny, and I like interacting with the people and just talking dumb stuff.
I think most of the screenshots that get posted are fake, and that most people that frequent it also mostly do because they find it fun.
Not necessarily inspect element, but also screenshots from paper-trading accounts, etc.
If you follow the stock market, it is a relatively random place, and train collisions do often happen, so it is nice to have a place to talk about those with people that find them funny, and that also find "let's put out this fire with gasoline" funny.
Is that proof enough? that's up to you, but I doubt most people have seen "proof" that hedgefunds have been buying up shorts either, we just trust that we aren't being lied to by whoever is doing the reporting (and I personally find that to be plenty sufficient).
See e.g. https://fortune.com/2021/02/02/robinhood-gamestop-restricted...
"Clearinghouses are SEC-registered organizations that act as the central depository for securities. They keep a record of the stocks owned through a brokerage. Clearing brokerages, like Robinhood Securities, are members of clearinghouses."
"The amount required by clearinghouses to cover the settlement period of some securities rose tremendously this week. How much? To put it in perspective, this week alone, our clearinghouse-mandated deposit requirements related to equities increased ten-fold."
https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/29/what-happened-this...
i have no idea why people think robinhood is a clearinghouse, that doesn’t make sense. they don’t want to do that! they want to do PFOF with execution or make settlement take 0 days so they can further take advantage of retail or whatever. being a clearinghouse sucks. no one likes you. banks don’t want to do your job.
Citadel says you were right to ask these questions:
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i9SnRzR8AM1...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit...
The main takeaway is that the flow was, essentially, net 0. So retail (or the bit of retail flow that Citadel saw, anyway) wasn't buying GME more than selling, in aggregate.
Also aforementioned impact on robinhood and other retail brokers.
I call BS. Selling a huge amount of shares and then buying them again will not generate a profit.
When you have millions reading a forum saying "BUY THE DIP" and you can create a dip, then you probably stand to make a lot of money.
> A short ladder attack is when a stock goes down for totally valid, normal reasons, but the bagholder realizes a conspiracy theory is preferable to admitting to a dumb trade."
Also, I like these tweets by Jima Chanos (@Diogenes), well-known short-seller:
> Can anyone explain to me what a “short ladder attack” is? I have seriously never heard the term before this week.
> Now I know why I had never heard of a “short ladder attack”...Because it is complete gibberish.
Let me google that for you. OMFG, what's this 2014 article that details how this works?
https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/309...
The short ladder attack actually is a stupid conspiracy. It's the idea that you can paint the tape by trading back and forth with a conspirator, but do it at a price that's lower than fair market value. This is impossible. If you try and buy at a price lower than fair market value you aren't going to be matched with your conspirator, you're going to get matched against the order book at the best possible price. So to ladder down you need to control the entire demand in the market. It's absurd.
Isn't that what they did with robinhood/others restrictions?
https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/lbib0x/the_myth_...
1. buy gamestop stocks
2. call in SJWs to 'fight against the bad guys (hedge funds)' by buying gamestop stocks
- they relay this message to others
3. watch price go up, thanks to campaigns from SJWs
4. sell off when the price is right (feels highest)
5. watch the price go back to normal valuation - you can't expect this high price to continue forever.
6. watch people who were fooled by SJWs cry over their lifesavings
this is a financial crime, though the victims fell for a temporary 'feel good' moment... so I guess they 'paid' their lesson?
as for Robinhood, blocking 'buy' seems to be a protective measure that backfired too much. Robinhood's branding depends on how it can explain this well...
edit: I agree that it's not a 'financial crime' by law... I just mean it's a detestable and almost 'criminal' campaign.
How so? I may be ignorant, but isn't that just the way the stock market works. Sad, yes. Crime though?
but this time, there's no 'fradulent' element, so I guess no.
If there were promises of earnings, it might have been.
Though it'll be really difficult to make a law preventing this without hurting beneficial actions.
I think you'd be hard pressed to make that argument on either side.
there's a Korean investment channel that explains how people were gullible, and it's really funny to hear the fiascos...
...but not when I'm the gullible that is!
the whole premise of the campaign is to 'fight against the injust hedge funds' (by burning your own money, that is)
Where this hedge fund idea came from, i'm not entirely sure. I think it was just a game when someone woke up and explained that this massive amount of shorting could not be covered if everyone bought shares. At some point that just spiraled into some altruistic hedge funds are evil marketing thing.
I just find it amazing how so few people actually go on WSB, but have a garbage pail of opinions. Seriously, less then 5 min on WSB shows how incredibly wrong the media has been regarding that community or their motives. Mark Cuban, Kevin Oleary and a few others are backing what wsb are saying due to the exposure they generated of how manipulated the stock market is. This isnt, "this is the mob ruining the market". This is, "oh boo hoo did the wrong people manipulate the stock market and it hurt the hedge funds?"
There will be regulations on this. The trick is to regulate the market so the average schmuck can have a more level playing field instead of the cards stacked in the hedge funds favor.
you iterated some famous people who are supportive of WSB, but... so what? Are they 'the wise ones of the stock market'? Are they financially supporting financial damage-takers?
They're just famous people, and that's all.
I agree that making a more level playing field is good. But that should be done by congress and law makers, not by burning gullible people's money.
Part 2, again, you've never been on WSB for even 1 minute. At every part of this venture, everyone says this is a terrible profit venture. Everyone on wsb shows off their losses and calls it "loss porn". The only gullible folks are the ones listening to the media. Namely CNBC. Theyre the ones pushing the profit narrative, not wsb. This was more to screw over predatory short sellers and to help a few struggling companies people like. AMC for example, got to leverage their boost in stocks to have a fighting chance to survive through 2021. Effectively holding off bankruptcy for now. Gamestop is now able to position themselves to fight through the next few years.
And is 'loyalty towards a company' for having few shares a good thing? loyalty towards what ends? towards massive financial damage?