WSB is a bit of a toxic cesspool at times, but I'm happy to root for the underdog. I went all in long for GME at about $340. We'll see what happens tomorrow!

EDIT:

Several brokerages are not accepting new open positions as of Thursday morning before hours. The stock remains highly leveraged.

End of day EDIT:

To my knowledge, the cancelled orders are only on margin positions, not cash positions.

Robinhood has announced they intend to let people open cash positions in GME tomorrow.

Andrea Ocasio-Cortez will be streaming tonight at 8:30 PM to talk about what's going on.

Friday EDIT:

More ladder attacks, but they've been unable to lower the stock price below $115, which is important because of the number of call options expiring today in the money at that price. EOD likely to see huge bump from exercising of these call options.

DIAMOND HANDS

This is so fucking dumb.

This whole situation is terrible. Wall Street has always been bad and manipulated sales etc..., but having people drive an asset bubble that they know is a bubble for the express purpose of manipulating the market to this level is a recipe for all kinds of disasters. I've never seen it happen in such a self-aware way. It's one thing to do a short squeeze when you're a single institution and can coordinate the strategy but to have it crowdfunded...

Maybe this leads to increased regulation, which would be a good thing, because people are going to lose a ton of money if this kind of thing keeps happening and it won't only be big evil institutional investors. Anyone left holding the bag during the inevitable collapse is going to be hurting if they put in more than they could afford to lose.

Man, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Just had an hour-long text debate over this on Discord, so this is all still fresh in my mind, but here we go.

On the one hand, Melvin Capital was way over-leveraged, and deserved to get screwed over in this way. I'm glad some people made decent money from this, and it's fun seeing irresponsible analysts flip out over this.

On the other, I'm still not a fan of the stock market as a whole. Yes, people made some money from this, but on the whole, the system is broken, and the only new thing about this is Reddit utilizing this instead of a hedge fund. I'm concerned this will lead to a whole new wave of people on the internet going "sEe ThE iNvIsIbLe HaNd WoRkS." It's also concerning seeing financial folks trying to regulate and lock more people out of the market in response to this.

Fuckin' drown me in hedge fund tears.

If the people who get the short end of the stick here are billionaire Wall Street hedge fund managers, having been memed into insolvency by a bunch of self-proclaimed idiots on Reddit, then as far as I'm concerned, enjoy destitution, nerds, shoulda got a real job.

I am by no means an expert (nor a lawyer), but the stock market generally always struck me as a sort of rich person perpetual motion machine, an economic device that does literally nothing productive where, if you have enough capital to start off with, enough knowledge in extremely baroque market trends (or enough additional money to hire someone with that knowledge), or alternatively just barely enough odds at a lucky win to convince regular people they have a shot, then it just churns away turning money into more money without actualy doing anything. Except, oh, every ten years or so it explodes and launches everyone else into a recession.

It's dumb, that's a lot of words to say the stock market is stupid, and I'm kind of okay with it being obliterated by 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters pooling together their power into the kind of market force normally reserved for blandly-named corporate firms.

@asylumrunner: The idea of the stock market is that it's a way to provide capital to companies that do various productive things, and secondarily serves to allow investors to have a regulated place to make investments (so they're not just buying random stuff from flimflam artists.)

There's also something of a casino function, which has gotten worse in recent decades, and is manipulated by a lot of wealthy people and institutional investors.

In this particular case the institutions getting screwed are not very sympathetic and I don't cry for them, but this kind of thing never ends with that. There will be individuals putting their life savings into this bubble who are going to get screwed very badly when the stock falls. There may be pension funds and other important functions who invested in the hedge funds and are now going to get screwed. It's not just some evil stupid billionaires and finance bros.

And if this becomes a trend there will be more victims. Companies will be driven out of business and people will lose their jobs. Other companies won't be able to function well.

Capitalism obviously has a ton of problems, and the stock market has been broken for a very long time, but introducing even more chaos isn't going to improve things in the long run.

Look, I’m just filing this in my brain in the same place I remember what year the Cubs won the World Series on the off chance I get sent back in time with a bag full of cash. I’ll be the richest Terminator out there.

I have nothing to lose, so I'll catch the next wave tomorrow, on Circuit City Liquidators Inc or whatever the F it is by then. I'll put in maybe $100, ironically made selling games I got from GS on craigslist, games I wasn't gonna play again and whose value was only gonna go down. Literally opening a community credit union account today to be able to do this. I've lost a ton of fake money before, $3,000 in Verizon rewards when they shut down their program but the month leading up to it their servers were crashing constantly leaving me unable to cash out with gift cards and mini golf tickets. I can handle losing a few hundred video game bux.

It's hilarious. Sad for the people getting in late and putting in their life savings but like, that was never a smart idea.

But yeah, I have no qualms with some old fogeys who have been doing nothing but educated gambling while telling others "no u can't do this because reasons" getting shafted out of some money.

I remember when I learned about the stock market growing up and thinking "wait, isn't that ripe for exploitation?" and thankfully now we have WSB to prove that yes, it was.

I look at the stock market the same way I look at company valuations: this is stupid made-up money.

@mikewhy: WSB is not proving that the market can be manipulated. Market manipulation has been going on more or less openly for as long as there has been a market. The Gamestop situation is a blown out version of a known strategy called a "short squeeze" that usually large institutional investors use against other institutional investors.

The difference here is that the short squeeze is being crowdfunded and is a collective action instead of one big rich person or institution doing it.

People think this is great because the little guys are beating the big guys, and in this particular case that's sort of true and I shed no tears for Melvin Capital. The problem is that these kinds of frenzies never end well, and WSB is going to get way out over its skies at some point. Either the institutional investors will adapt and fight back or they'll just spread themselves too thin or one group will turn against another etc... And given the returns people are seeing there are going to be a lot of people putting way too much money in.

This is a recipe for all kinds of potential car crash scenarios with real world implications. It may be that its contained to this one particular frenzy and it will be a few thousand people who end up financially ruined, but it could also get much worse.

The bubble is always the best party in the world until it pops.

Yeah, "let the markets burn" would be a wonderful sentiment if the vast majority of retirement funds weren't tied directly to it. And if interest rates weren't so low that dumping money in a savings account doesn't even keep up with inflation. The sad truth is if you have money to save, putting it in equities markets is about the only thing that makes long-term financial sense.

But, sure. Watching short sellers take a bath is always good for a chuckle.

as someone who has a natural aversion to both reddit and the stock market- i keep getting 3 sentences deep into explainer articles re: this whole situation...and then my eyes glaze over and i give up.

getting serious flashbacks to all things 'block-chain.' i just don't have a mind for all this internet-communities-collide-with-money-manipulation balderdash. and much like consuming fossil fuels to 'mine' digital currency- this is all vaguely depressing.

As long as the people putting their money in know what they're getting into, I'm all for it. The point that this kind of event always attracts people who don't know the risks is well taken though.

I remember making some money off GME back in the Wii days. Guess I should have stayed in.

i run a store and feel like these people are all investing in me personally and frankly it feels good

I think it's sadly predictable that the people who got mega-rich off of a totally deregulated market now scream the loudest that regulations need to be set in place so that no one ELSE can become rich/take away their wealth using the exact system they set up and benefitted from all these years.

The more I learn about this, the more plausible it seems that someone is attempting a "legal" (read: unable to be regulated or checked) way of initiating crowdfunded short squeezes. Regardless of the intentions, the consequences and dangers are real. Lessons are being learned from this, and not necessarily by your favored underdogs.

The fact that this wasn't a one-off and the trend keeps moving to other devalued companies doesn't help. Neither does the utter failure to accurately identify and understand that the people egging this on the most might not even be Americans with a vested interest in the safety of the economy. But that certainly doesn't discount GameStop's history of predatory and risky behavior to try something "viral" like this, either.

Fantastic if this raises awareness and lights a fire under someone's ass to stop this kind of behavior regardless of who engages in it, no matter how powerful or how many. But I'm not expecting a fairytale ending to this, because this isn't really even Robin Hood or anything. It sounds like the SEC is looking at this and saying "Oh, shit. This was a major blind spot. Why wasn't anyone looking at the poors?" And I get how encouraging that is, especially when a big hedge fund is one of the first very visible victims.

Personally, I think this is an offshoot of the larger amoeba that has been tapping into people who (wrongfully or ignorantly) consider themselves oppressed and therefore collectively try to make a difference that still somehow manages to only benefit their group. You know, instead of participating in Occupy Wall Street or anything back when they could have made a difference if they really cared about this stuff in the abstract sense. It's not like the WSB crowd exists in a vacuum or that their membership doesn't overlap with other problematic groups and movements on the net.

The timing—immediately after a large number of assholes with a decent amount of power suddenly became disaffected—is not lost on me, either. Also, Elon Musk is basically a human red flag.

However, fucking LOL at the "Join the revolution by participating in the most capitalist behavior possible!" people. Honestly.

@mikewhy: The problem is that the stock market isn't "stupid made up money." It's made up of very real money from very real people - most of whom are relying on a certain level of performance in order to, you know, actually retire and be able to live at some point.

As far as the popular sentiment around these parts that capitalism and all who engage in it are evil, vile hellspawn that deserve nothing but a slow death, I'll point out that my broker is actually a very nice person (an evaluation that has nothing to do with the fact that I made 18% last year).

I also have an extremely hard time believing there isn't some sort of long-con going on here. After all, we don't know that the people who started all this going actually bought stock at that point. If you wanted to make a real killing, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard - all you'd need is an internet mob.

1. You start a thread on Reddit essentially asking "Wouldn't it be funny if we fucked over this hedge fund by driving up an otherwise worthless stock?"
2. A bunch of gullible idiots on Reddit buy a ton of stock and drive the price up to unrealistic levels. You don't buy any of the stock.
3. Instead, once a suitable peak has been reached, short the stock just like the hedge fund was doing. Except you're shorting it at $350 instead of $5.
4. You start another Reddit thread under a different username asking "Wouldn't it be funny if we fucked over the people trying to fuck over the hedge fund?"
5. Enough of the original Reddidiots sell their stock to drive the price back down. Even if it dropped by half and was still grossly over-valued, the mob gave you enough room in the price that you still make out like a bandit and the hedge funds still lose out. Some of the Reddidiots make a little money. Most lose big.

@therealturk: “crony who benefits from the stock market doesn’t want to see anything bad happen to it, manages to slide their sick gains into an internet post, news at 11”

They made the subreddit private, probably because they couldn't enforce the rules with all the interest in the forum + DDOS attacks. It's important to enforce the rules to avoid an SEC violation.

It's a hell of a story. I appreciate the hit hedge fund people are taking, losing at thier own game but I worry about the fallout of this. Odds are, it'll benefit the hedge fund people more than not.

Basically this. Once the squeeze momentum drops, the stock is going to plummet like an airplane redlining back to Earth. Anyone that's not at the front of the line is going to be left with a bag. It's 2017 cryptocurrency hype all over again.

Retail investors only have power in mass. As soon as the momentum is gone, so are the leading market movers. This is going to get ugly as hell.

Like many investment management companies, Melvin Capital engages in immoral, though not illegal, business practices that actively hurt people. They provide nothing of value to regular people, their mere existence and regular operations place doubt on already struggling companies, and they prime businesses to be swallowed up and foreclosed on by vultures like Bain Capital.

Everyone mentioning their concern for retirement funds being tied to the stock market, thank you. I agree that its a travesty that a person's right to live in their old age is tied to a potentially volatile market with no guarantee of returning on their investment. It's sickening that investment companies can hold these people's lives hostage when faced with the prospect of regulation or a market downturn.

I agree with a lot of the takes in this thread, but I gotta admit the ride has been a highly entertaining use of $200.

Look, Hedge funds, and big Wall Street speculators in general, are bad for capitalism and society writ large.

But.

Anybody claiming this is a scrappy underdog story is veeeeeeery optimistic. Turning over the keys from one unregulated, self-interested group (traditional Wall Street types) to another (randos on Reddit) does not constitute an improvement.

It's 2021. A group of extremely online, frequently misinformed populist types gathering in an obscure internet subculture to "stick it to the man" should be setting off alarm bells loud enough to wake the fucking dead.

There's just no way this ends well.

ETA-- This times a million.

The saga continues. Discord bans wallstreetbets.

I really struggle to feel anything but satisfaction from the events of the last few days, even though I haven’t invested anything.

It’s fair to worry about retirement funds amidst a situation like this, but this entire situation was created by billionaires actively trying to fuck over GME stock in the first place. They were already betting on GME stocks to fall low enough that they can make money off it, which IMO is more disrespectful and scummy than anything that this mob is doing. GME stocks would be worth $0-1 right now if the hedge funds had their way. Also I would imagine GME stocks aren’t a large part of most peoples portfolios but idk, I’m not investing, I could be completely wrong about that.

Of course this isn’t going to last forever. Of course Wall Street is going to do everything in its power to shut this down and this probably won’t happen for another decade or so, but the amount of people I’ve seen posting “finally able to afford my sisters Lyme treatment”, or “gonna be able to afford a motorcycle for my dad, I’m crying right now” or “went to the store with my gains and bought 10 Switches to donate to local children’s hospitals”, etc. is instantly more positive than anything the people that manipulate stocks as a career have ever done, and it makes me happy to see something like this do good for once, rather than adding another decimal point to a Wall Street traders savings.

If I had to think of a downside it’s that I’m sure they’re going to (unfairly IMO) crack down on retail investors out of spite, and make it harder for a normal person to make ANY money from the system, even though it’s the same thing that’s been happening for decades but reversed, because they can’t accept even sharing a sliver of the pie.

Can't say I've ever invested based on memes but maybe I'm the idiot. I feel bad for anyone buying it before the crash.

@mikewhy: There is something truly hilarious about essentially saying "You all say Wall Street is bad but my broker is very nice!"

The notion that "underdogs" are getting rich on this makes me laugh. Assuming they got in at the very beginning, somebody would have had to invest (and been willing to lose) north of $50,000 to see anything approaching a million dollar return. To see even six figures would have required an upfront investment of more than $5,000, and that's not necessarily anything to sneeze at either, considering the risk involved. Bottom line, the folks that are seeing huge returns were already wealthy.

I'd also agree with others who have said this has effects beyond the "douche-bro" Wall Street crowd. Anybody that has invested in those hedge funds - directly or indirectly via a pension or retirement account - is having a very bad week. There is an inherent risk in any investing, but I can only imagine how I'd feel to see my life savings and/or retirement go down the toilet thanks to a bunch of dudes on the internet dicking around.

I see this as a pretty sad situation all around.

i find this silly all a bunch of rich jerks are upset that a bunch of people played the game better then they did.

I can't wait for that gamestop stock to explode and get to a "normal" price point. 300 bucks for a brick and mortar store is way to much Really hope this helps gamestop in the long run. Hmmm next up Nokia stock? Anyway I have being enjoying my recent journey through Robin Hood apps. It's a fun past time if you got some money you wanna loose, kinda reminds me of the WoW auction house...

Yeah. It is nice to see the nonsense that is the stockmarket get nonsensed into even further nonsense. Nonsense.

But... people are lying to themselves if they think this is some epic "steal from the rich" epic. It is a bunch of rich folk who can risk thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars on a hunch taking advantage of a bunch of fools gambling their life savings and "normal" folk who are going to make small gains that will probably make their taxes slightly more annoying next year.

Its the modern day pump and dump scam (not to be confused with cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes) except that by saying "for the lolz" they avoid any chance of liability over spreading false rumors.

Its rich people dicking over rich people. Great for the folk who can get something out of there but... this is the exact kind of shit people think it is striking back against.

@gundato: In my experience, I don't think most people are celebrating this as a rags to riches thing, more so just as a "see? This is all horseshit" thing.

oops sorry everyone we can't afford those 1,400 checks after all, we've gotta bail out these hedge funds

I don't think it's about the money with these people. They just want to stick it to Wall Street.

Fuck hedge fund managers. I just think that someone will find a way to weaponize this sort of meme-ification of the stock market in a bad way. The democratization of stuff is good. The meme-ification of things...less so.

As the Wu-Tang Clan once said, "diversify your bonds".

I hope that this whole mess will lead to more people and institutions spreading their investments around and more regulation of the markets. It's good that more attention is brought to the vulnerabilities and fragility of the stock market.

@berfunkle: All the comments about all the cars and whatnot they're going to buy tells another story. Anyway this was my first time checking on reddit in years and what a cesspit that forum was. I wonder if that kind of language is common or if it as a result of all the new members. I'm staying out of all this but it is fascinating to watch.

As long as people are playing with money that they can afford to lose, I'm delighted about all of this. Even if they end up losing, regular people taking an interest in stock trading and learning lessons is good so that it's not just billionaires holding all the companies. It's about time somebody calls out these profiteering assholes who have been doing this for decades and if regulators really come after the little guys then that's all the more proof that the system is rigged, as if it wasn't already obvious.

Wanted to jump in here. All this is is proof that people working together (even for a bit of profitable chaos) can beat actually knowledgable individuals.

The stock market wasn't created when social media was made and with everything that's happened over the last couple years, it goes to show how quickly people can mobilise for cause regardless if it's valid or not. Goes to show how social media does provide a voice (and a bit of collective power) when maybe 15-20 years ago, something like this would have been near on impossible.

No one wants the GameStop stock, let's be real here, but they do want justice on a system that doesn't work for them. Collectively, even with small buys, together these people can move the market and make a statement. I don't feel they shouldn't be able to do that.

When you buy a stock, you are making a calculated bet (hopefully), just because people are making bad bets (lets be honest here) it doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to. It's like the big funds were having a party and the 'collective' showed up, spilt beer over the speakers and used their car radios and kicked up the volume. No they weren't invited but you can't argue that it was an open gig anyway.

I feel sorry for that guy who was new, made a calculated short at hit new job and then because of reddit (or whatever) probably lost his job and everything else. It's not your fault, but also, the system needs fixing.

Kinda bummed that I didn't buy what I planned to when it was under $5. But that's my experience with the stock market, it's easy to look back and think about what you should've done.

This whole thing is nuts.

Again, this specific sentiment is just making me really sad...

A lot of articles are attributing this to users like Senior_Hedgehog and DeepFuckingValue. Individuals who have been part of the "amateur" stock market speculation community for years and who have already made a LOT of money.

This is not some anti-intellectual crusade where a bunch of average joes managed to beat them high faluting college kids. This is some rich mother fuckers who more or less posted their stock tips in a newsletter/magazine that a lot of people read. This is "knowledgeable individuals" fucking over other "knowledgeable individuals" and using people's investments as ammo.

But it also gets a bit murkier than that when you realize that this is literally a pump and dump scheme. Except instead of cold calling grannies and customers of a firm about a hot stock tip it is telling random people under the guise of "let's do it for the lolz. But seriously, go to this site and make these orders. Also, use my referral code and we both get free stocks!"

For the folk who have managed to make some bank off of this: Good for you. Hopefully you gambled responsibly. Hopefully "normal" people don't get too hurt by whatever happens with all those hedge funds that shorted the stock. But this is not some case of The People rising up. This is yet another in a long line of examples of charismatic conmen convincing large groups of people to do their bidding in a way that allows for obscene profit.

In a perfect world, this would lead to a LOT of reform and regulation. But maybe we'll get to see who the next Michael Douglas or DiCaprio is in five or six years.

As Marx noted "Capitalism manufactures crises." Recessions, depressions, etc... are fundamental to the system's function, which is why it has to be tempered with regulation. This gamestop short further demonstrates that the stock market is not the economy, but it sure can affect the economy. A bunch of redditors did what boiler rooms and hedge funds have been doing forever and its news.

I will continue to enjoy the outrage of people being like stop you can’t do this to us this is what WE do!

@gundato: I didn't mean every person involved was uneducated. I just assume a lot of these moves were probably done by people who don't often make moves. Yes I'm sure people who jumped in who do this normally or even organised this and probably made money somewhere. I actually don't know and can't research now as the reddit/discords have been removed.

I agree that it sucks people will lose money on this but at the same time, I wouldn't advise anyone to invest money they might need tomorrow. I think 'gambled responsibly' is probably a good term here and I hope so to.

When all the organizers are people who probably could do this for a living, I don't think it matters if it was your buddy Bill who told you to totally check this out.

This was a mob following the orders of a few key players. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes it doesn't

But the big thing is: People DO invest money they might need tomorrow. That is the point of investment and why I specifically called this "gambling". I don't know the breakdown of Melvin Co or whatever the big hedge funds getting hit are, but those kinds of companies tend to have a mix of clients. Some are monocle wearing monopoly mother fuckers. Some are Dee Reynolds pissing away what little money she has because she wants to get rich.

But many (most?) are just companies and folk with 401ks and investments in the hopes that they don't need to work until the day they die. And I REALLY hope that whatever shenanigans the hedge funds use to escape responsibility for this don't dick them over but... this is america.

I am even more torn up than Natalie Imbruglia on this. On the one hand, I enjoy seeing systems get completely broken in easily forseeable ways. On the other hand, I can't help but think that most of the people who are benefitting from this are the assholes who always benefit. We just have a bunch of folk porudly fighting on behalf of Pepsi because this will totally make Coca Cola salty.

One thing (of many) about this I don't understand: what does the actual endgame of this look like, though? Even if you ruin some shorting plan, which doesn't seem objectionable, the rise of GameStop stock prices won't keep rising unless people keep buying, it's not like GameStop was in a great position before this started and that seems unlikely to change. So isn't it just a bubble that will inevitably pop, losing a lot of people their money in the process?