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Comment by nprz | Hacker News Reader

> that means a ton of people are losing the life savings they dumped into this out of excitement as it crashed back down

Can you provide a single case of someone losing their entire life savings by YOLOing it on GME at the top?

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The Washington Post had an article yesterday about someone who was apparently $400k down on GME (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/gamesto...):

> The Reddit poster Volkswagens1, who declined to give his name but said he lives in the Pacific Northwest, showed The Washington Post an image indicating roughly $400,000 in potential GameStop losses from the day but insisted he would not sell.

> He said he’s poured most of his saving and checking accounts into the stocks and spent the last week “doing as much research as possible,” including sacrificing sleep and calling in sick to work, to make sure he was staying on top of the market’s moves.

(There's also a quote about him doing this because he's been poor for too long, but my take is that if you have enough assets to face a $400k loss, you weren't poor before you entered that position, even if you may now be).

$400K is 1/2 the average cost of a house in Seattle. I'd suggest there's an argument that if you can't own (no mortgage) a house in your area, you're still 'poor'.

Still not a great move to dump your entire worth into meme stocks.

You cannot cite the average cost of a house while dismissing the idea of buying a house using a mortgage. Mortgages are a part of the housing market and are part of the reason prices are what they are. If there were no mortgages prices would be lower, and the market would be structured completely differently.

> if you have enough assets to face a $400k loss, you weren't poor

It’s not clear to me this has sunk in w ‘Volkswagens1 nor the loss has really been faced. I’d bet the sober second thought will come after this article was published

Looking at this guys posts it seems like he’s down $400k from the peak, but remains above his initial investment.

I suspect the stories will emerge once the GME price truly tanks. No, I don't think it'll be millions of people, but reading the level of delusion in that sub I don't think it's going to be tens of people either.

It doesn't even have to be big sums. Just someone who only had say $2,000 trying to make a quick play at the peak but ended up with less than $2,000 after all is settled. That'll turn some away from stocks for a good while.

Assuming this person is legit (which is a huge assumption given it’s a stranger on Twitter), they appear to have sunk 90% of their worth into AMC: https://twitter.com/23michaeljam/status/1356785696959209472?...

The thing that kills me is the handful of responses of people defending it by basically saying "people will go to the movies after covid", without the context of where AMC was at before covid. Even during it's best years, AMC wasn't worth what people think it will be. It's just a complete lack of reasoning.

> “I have $6k in $AMC that’s like 90% of my money.”

That could be a lot of money to him, but it is not a lot of money compared to what an average worker earns in a year. A probably-young guy losing $6k on a risky stock bet is not life-destroying.

Also, depending on when he bought he could actually be up. And even if he bought at the top, it would still be worth something like 40% of that.

So strange that YOLO has come to mean the opposite of what one would do if worried about the fact one only lives once. But I guess that's true for much slang.

YOLO has always meant, you only live once, gotta try everything. Not you only live once, make it last as long as possible and never do anything dangerous or with possible (probable even) negative repercussions.

Some choices are mutually exclusive. It seems common, but in my view (intentionally?) ironic, to use the term in those contexts.

There is this example [0]. Maybe not their whole life savings, but still a sizeable chunk. I'm sure there are a LOT of other people in similar scenarios now, who may not have fared much better.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/lavx...

> For context, I just turned 21 ... and am on track to graduate soon as a software engineer.

A 21-year-old soon-to-be software engineer losing $25k is not a life-changing tragedy.

I definitely saw someone bragging about using their $20,000 line of credit from dental school (I assume this is intended for living expenses) to buy GME stock.

That's kind of worse than YOLOing your life savings, because if this prevents them from continuing their education, it just fucked their life.

Here's one: https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/lamgp6/give_it_to_m...

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