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[Maximum Spin]

Never mind, you’re being contrary to be contrary.

I'm really not. This is a complete misunderstanding of the kind of person I am. Not that I'm surprised or expect anything else, of course, I just... ugh, whatever. Look, if I say something, it's always because I mean it.

[Kagus]

Aren't we past Phase 1 already? I mean r/wallstreetbets already discovered the money glitch, we should be well on our way to having the cars fall out the bottom of the roads now.

Sinkhole swallows car in Philadelphia.

I was waiting for something like this to get posted...

[bloop_bleep]

I've seen a sudden change in tone in the top-voted posts on r/wallstreetbets. First in the top-voted posts there was a bunch of DD, camaraderie, arguments and calls to hold even if it goes cheaper, statements about "sticking it to the man" and how it's not about money that much anymore, "not selling!", explanations of why the stock price seems like it's going down because the shorts were trading shares to each other for low prices to manipulate the apparent price (while the actual price the shorts would pay if they covered is much higher) -- paper thin volume, very strangely round-number orders, and the GME and AMC graphs being basically copies,  how the "silver craze" is actually manufactured by the media to try to pump the price of a commodity of which one of the hedge funds has a big stake in, and various memes about diamond hands and wives' boyfriends.

All of a sudden the top-voted posts changed to how the people who were still holding GME are suckers and idiots who didn't listen to sound advice, how this isn't a "movement" (completely contrary to what people were saying earlier) and it's just a bunch of greedy people trying to make a quick buck.

At the same time some new mods that were instated deleted some popular posts that were arguing to hold and were not very favorable to the hedge funds' position. And in "new" (so not top voted posts) there were many people talking about a coup of the sub. Also the sub member count seems to have skyrocketed to like 8 million recently. Hmm...

So yeah, it seems like the hedge funds have hijacked the sub with upvote bots for their own purposes. It makes me rather sad and angry.

Also just so you know, every media who was pushing "reddit traders are moving on to silver!" are either bought by hedge funds or gullible and irresponsible with their reporting. This includes obvious contenders like Business Insider, Fox Business, but also stuff like CNN.

[Starver]

The world of finance operates thusly:

1) Things operate by established principles,
2) Someone tries to take advantage of that to game the system by inventing some new system,
3) Other people also do that new thing*,
4) This becomes a newly established part of the principles, return to stage (1).

Everyone is trading for what things are worth now? Establish a futures market.
Everyone is trading upon shares going up? Work out how to benefit from them going down.
You have to arrange for your buying and selling to go via a person shouting at other people in the middle of a noisy room? Establish electronic trading.
Trading is communicated rapidly via a copper networking cable? Fibre optic cables!
Fibre optics limited to the speed of light in glass? Line of sight microwave relays...


It is no surprise that someone tried to trick the system by effectively crowdsourcing market-manipulations (a "wetware botnet", you might say). And that opened the floodgates for the (other?) established traders to get in on the act.  They were probably thinking about it anyway, but hadn't actually tried it (successfully) until they noticed it.


Two ways it could go, now:
A) Firms like PwC/whatever establish a whole lot more diverse electronic presences in reddits, chans, etc and monitor (perhaps even occasionally participate), ready to react, nudge or even assume/presume authority when something happens. As much as they can currently do within the rules.
B) The rules get changed substantially to prevent such spoiling (but also probably a lot of the newly discovered legitimate dabbling, that can't be discerned from the trolling they're trying to stop).


Either way, it won't be the last. Both further similar 'wild west' economics (the paying/gifting-in-kind of social media Influences is another problem, especially in the helath-and-beauty fields) and whatever The Next Big Thing turns out to be.


* - If it didn't work, the original won't do it for long. If it does, they keep on doing it, get noticed by others, etc.

[bloop_bleep]

But I don't think GME was concerted market manipulation when it rose. That was legitimately a bunch of people going "we like the stock!" and mob-mentalitying and increasing the stock price.

Also it is possible that the GME squeeze has not yet squoze.

[Frumple]

Like... there's apparently folks looking down the barrel of legal action specifically because of that, though, from what I understand? It actually does seem like a fair amount, if not all, of the GME rise did involve concentrated market manipulation.

It's pretty definite the big financial folks are largely coming away from this like bandits, in any case.

[McTraveller]

After much pondering on similar situations, I think this would all be partially solved if we had new laws that tax all gains from trade (e.g., "buy low sell high") at much higher rates than wage or value-add income.  (Value-add income here defined as, I buy raw materials or components for $x, turn them into something else and sell for a higher amount $y.)  Yes I do understand this would impact "basic" things like supermarkets, since they are resellers and don't usually produce things, unless they have a bakery or butcher.  So bakery/butcher services would be taxed less than the shelves.  No tears lost on Amazon either.

This would avoid the complaints of double-taxation on dividends, since it would divide dividends into two categories depending on if the dividends were earned from production versus dividends earned from buying low and selling high.

I'm also not sure if losses (due to buying high and selling low) should be allowed to offset buy low-sell high gains. In some ways it would be good to not offset them, forcing people to make less risky bets, but on the flip side if people are only willing to fund "sure things" it would likely stifle research investment that might not pay off.

You'd have to also impose record keeping requirements so that you couldn't simply hide trade profits as wages; or, put another way, wages should be taxed at the rate of the underlying activity: wages sourced by trade profit should be taxed higher than wages sourced by value-add.

The law would probably need to be reviewed to avoid other loopholes I've not been able to think of in a short period to "hide" trade income as value-add income (e.g., by calling it "value added financial services" or something).

Basically the idea is you want the tax system to encourage investment in activities that actually increase production or productivity, not "investment" by hoping financial instruments are attractive.  Basically get rid of all the stuff that isn't investment but should really be called a gamble.

[bloop_bleep]

Like... there's apparently folks looking down the barrel of legal action specifically because of that, though, from what I understand? It actually does seem like a fair amount, if not all, of the GME rise did involve concentrated market manipulation.

It's pretty definite the big financial folks are largely coming away from this like bandits, in any case.

It's not. It's people talking about how they like the stock on a public forum. I also heard that the SEC is looking into this but that's completely wack given the real concerted manipulation happening by the hedge funds.

[voliol]

/r/wallstreetbets has clearly changed compared to some week(s) ago, but the scary part is we don’t know the proportion of each cause. Information manipulation/votebots by big corporations is clearly a part of it, as they have the motives (WSB was a force to be reckoned with) and the means (money can buy most people, and reddit accounts), and little to lose doing it. The rapid mod replacements reek of a takeover by someone.

At the same time, the movement might have died down due to human hype reasons. With the GME stock dwindling (disregarding why) a fair amount of people of the movement kind might have given up for that reason and left the sub, effectively silencing their own voices.
In the last week, I’ve seen utter nonsense being spouted, in the line of ”We should only try to make money on a personal level. Those trying to cooperate to make the market a better place for common investors are against the spirit of wallstreetbets!”. Sure, those accounts could have been bought, as could the upvotes, but I’ve also met people that stupid in real life that had not been bought. Some comservative types against any percieved change, even if the counteraction brings along an equal change in the other direction, but also otherwise reasonable people unaware of their own interests. Neoliberalism does that to the brain.

[Maximum Spin]

Also it is possible that the GME squeeze has not yet squoze.

Regarding this, certain wsb people have provided their own resource at https://isthesqueezesquoze.com/

It should not be treated as entirely authoritative, because there are various ways the statistics listed can be counted which give contradictory answers, but they are right that the squeeze hasn't squoze.

[Random_Dragon]

How long until we see corporate assassins? :v

[martinuzz]

Ask any murdered environmentalist or civil rights advocate that tried to stop <insert major oil company name here> a pipeline from being built in <insert third world country of choice here>

[Frumple]

How long until we see corporate assassins? :v

Decades/centuries ago :V

Dunno how common it's been for the financial or tech markets in recent years (overt violence is more direct resource extraction groups shtick), but corps offing people through various means is a thing older than living memory, heh.

[Vector]

pinkertons say hi oh ho ho ho ho ho

[thompson]

I have no doubt Wallstreet has (at least attempted to) infiltrate the sub-reddit. That being said, the reason for the moderator switch could easily be due to Reddit covering their ass.

Fact is, GME’s price was crazy. The shorts who couldn’t hold on have likely already sold. Day traders were piling in and have come to dominate the price action. These amateur  penny-stock tactics only work for stocks that trade in small volumes (Tesla is a notable exception here, but that one is a very professional operation). GME isn’t a small volume stock anymore. Many redditors were probably selling, and the would-be stock manipulators trying to encourage others to hold on so they could get another swing it. Some people almost certainly got burned.

Fact is, a few % of America’s population control over half the wealth. Compare the numbers and you’ll realise how naive the Wallstreetbets movement is. It’s likely Reddit simply didn’t want to be liable when the countless users, buying into the movement in good faith, inevitably got severely burned.