Gamestop?

[NW-Bound]

I think this is all going to end, badly.

For whom? For the participants in this short squeezing melee, or for everybody including bystanders like ourselves?

 

[W2R]

I think this is all going to end, badly.

I have that feeling, too. I am not involved, but I suppose that a lot of the Redditors that are in the middle of this are young and perhaps a bit naive and idealistic. Watching this happen is like watching a basket of little kitties being surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves. I hope they are able to get out without being divested of their entire net worth by hedge funds, Robinhood, or whoever.

Or hey, maybe they are as brilliant and skillful at this stuff as they think they are. I am just remembering how [-]much[/-] little I knew when I was 20 or so, and projecting.

 

[RetireeRobert]

For whom? For the participants in this short squeezing melee, or for everybody including bystanders like ourselves?

Everyone, including bystanders.

I am using whatever surges come along my way in the meantime to lighten up on my investment positions which I accumulated last spring in the Covid market sag. Until last spring I had been largely in cash for 2 or 3 years.

If/when the bull market finally corrects, I will have a bunch of cash again to put back in, in dividend paying stocks. This is all inside my IRA accounts, so taxation is a gladly ir-relevent consideration for these moves.

 

[JoeWras]

I have that feeling, too. I am not involved, but I suppose that a lot of the Redditors that are in the middle of this are young and perhaps a bit naive and idealistic. Watching this happen is like watching a basket of little kitties being surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves. I hope they are able to get out without being divested of their entire net worth by hedge funds, Robinhood, or whoever.

Or hey, maybe they are as brilliant and skillful at this stuff as they think they are. I am just remembering how [-]much[/-] little I knew when I was 20 or so, and projecting.

I knew everything at 25! Today I realized I knew nothing.

A lot of the redditbros are very determined to lose it all. Many were using their $600 stimulus so they feel it could be lost. Good for them! They are putting their idealism to work and I admire that. Just like here on the stimulus thread you read that a lot of people are giving the stimulus away. They are using found money for something different.

The problem is due to FOMO, the second wave of people of all ages came through and they may not have gotten the memo. A second issue is how many fronts in this war can you run at once, and who are the leaders? If you are holding firm on GME, do you have ammo to work on silver or Blackberry? I have a friend who works at Blackberry. I hope he cashes out.

BTW, GME is $132 at 8:40 EST this morning, down 40% overnight. Today's action should be interesting. I really don't know how this is going to go. Social media mobbing can be unpredictable. There could be other platforms other than reddit where battle plans are being made. Who knows?

 

[pb4uski]

.... If everyone stopped using margin accounts it would almost be possible to stop short sales.

So since there is a lot of short sale activity does that mean that there is a lot of margin account use? I've never used margin in my life and was under the impression that margin account use was pretty low?

It's still odd to me that stocks (and I guess bonds) are one of the only things that I can think of that one can borrow and sell without owning it. What else can you do that with... not real estate or collectibles, etc. Does anyone have an apartment building in a dodgy area I can borrow and sell?

 

[NW-Bound]

If everyone stopped using margin accounts it would almost be possible to stop short sales.

So since there is a lot of short sale activity does that mean that there is a lot of margin account use? I've never used margin in my life and was under the impression that margin account use was pretty low?

To open a margin account, you agree to have your shares loaned out for shorting if someone needs it, even though the purpose of the margin account is to borrow money if you need it.

When they say margin account use being low, it means not too many people currently borrow money to buy stock.


PS. When I bought a new vehicle a month ago, I paid cash. It took time to sell shares in my Roth account and to do the transfer, so I just borrow the money from a margin account. The latter is linked to my checking account, and the transfer was immediate as I clicked "Go". Transfer from another institution would take a couple of days. Very convenient, and it cost me only a few dollars in interest for a short few days.

My brother needed $100K for a deposit when he placed a bid on a house being auctioned. He also got cash from his margin account the same way.

 

[sengsational]

Not holding up well into AH.View attachment 37586

Probably $25 by the end of the day. The hedge funds appear to be out of the woods...at least the ones that didn't blow up earlier. Well, that was fun. No new rules needed.

 

[NW-Bound]

I knew everything at 25! Today I realized I knew nothing.

A lot of the redditbros are very determined to lose it all. Many were using their $600 stimulus so they feel it could be lost. Good for them! They are putting their idealism to work and I admire that. Just like here on the stimulus thread you read that a lot of people are giving the stimulus away. They are using found money for something different.

The problem is due to FOMO, the second wave of people of all ages came through and they may not have gotten the memo. A second issue is how many fronts in this war can you run at once, and who are the leaders? If you are holding firm on GME, do you have ammo to work on silver or Blackberry? I have a friend who works at Blackberry. I hope he cashes out.

BTW, GME is $132 at 8:40 EST this morning, down 40% overnight. Today's action should be interesting. I really don't know how this is going to go. Social media mobbing can be unpredictable. There could be other platforms other than reddit where battle plans are being made. Who knows?

USA Today has an article on the Redditor kids.

“I haven’t gotten too much sleep. I’ve never done anything like this before,” says Lin, 21, who put $30,000 in AMC options last Monday and bought 35 shares of GameStop in the frenzy.

Lin, who works as a purchaser for a food distribution company, said his brokerage account peaked at nearly $280,000...

Lin also plans to also keep holding his current positions. His investment hit a high of $277,000 midweek, then on Thursday, it dropped to $80,000...

“This investment is either going to zero or a million dollars. So I’m going to keep holding,” says Lin...

See: https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...s-users-discuss-gme-short-squeeze/4310623001/

 

[Time2]

The run on Silver seems to have been a flop.
I was ready to pull out my coin collection from the late 60s.

 

[JoeWras]

I'm going to just guess here... I think a lot of mid-money finance people are going to be paying a lot more attention to social media trends and try to front-run some of these ideas. That may ruin the fun.

 

[LRDave]

Probably $25 by the end of the day. The hedge funds appear to be out of the woods...at least the ones that didn't blow up earlier. Well, that was fun. No new rules needed.

No way $25 by the end of today.....

 

[Sunset]

So since there is a lot of short sale activity does that mean that there is a lot of margin account use? I've never used margin in my life and was under the impression that margin account use was pretty low?

It's still odd to me that stocks (and I guess bonds) are one of the only things that I can think of that one can borrow and sell without owning it. What else can you do that with... not real estate or collectibles, etc. Does anyone have an apartment building in a dodgy area I can borrow and sell?

I generally get margin approval for all my accounts.
Not for option trading or for actually borrowing from the broker to buy something external.
I get it so that when I buy a stock/fund, I don't have to worry about funding the account in 2 days from my bank as some banks can take an extra day or two to transfer money.

 

[Montecfo]

The new shorts are making money. The kids losing money.

For long-term. Investors it is a non-event.

 

[MichaelB]

The new shorts are making money. The kids losing money.

For long-term. Investors it is a non-event.

I wouldn’t call it a non-event. It had plenty of entertainment value for us retired folk.

 

[garyt]

The run on Silver seems to have been a flop.
I was ready to pull out my coin collection from the late 60s.

The Reddit guys believe the run on silver was an inside job to take money away from GME. Nobody there ever mentioned it as a target and they were in fact telling people to not buy silver.

 

[Born2Fish]

The new shorts are making money. The kids losing money.

For long-term. Investors it is a non-event.

I wouldn’t call it a non-event. It had plenty of entertainment value for us retired folk.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the ongoing play-by-play in this thread.

I wonder what's on tap for Chapter 2?

 

[garyt]

The new shorts are making money. The kids losing money.

For long-term. Investors it is a non-event.

Lots of those kids made money if they got in early. This started with GME at under $3 a share. The Johnny come lately's got killed.

 

[Montecfo]

Lots of those kids made money if they got in early. This started with GME at under $3 a share. The Johnny come lately's got killed.

Sure. But I was speaking to now.

And the fact that you have to get out to make money is exactly why these strategies have a limited shelf life.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

The Reddit guys believe the run on silver was an inside job to take money away from GME. Nobody there ever mentioned it as a target and they were in fact telling people to not buy silver.

This game is probably over. The Reddit /wsb folks are up to 8.3 MILLION members...so, well simply too much noise for it to be effective anymore, at least the way they were playing.

. There could be other platforms other than reddit where battle plans are being made. Who knows?

There were a few Discord forums going pretty hard, but there were advocating the pump and dump method and well, we know how that tends to go.

I am thinking that a lot of the Reddit "bros" are wishing they had cashed out @ $300 and not $100.

 

[sengsational]

No way $25 by the end of today.....

Looks like you're right. I watched the slide from 100 to 80 this morning but by the time you posted, there was some pretty obvious support, and it's back at 100. I still think it's headed to $25...just a matter of time.

 

[Koolau]

My hope is that the post mortem will let us know who won and who lost - and by how much. It's mild curiosity on my part and I have no dog in the hunt. I don't particularly like any of the players. I do think there may be lessons to learn and hope folks learn them. I hope what ever is learned leads to more stability for us long-term investors - but I'm not counting on it. YMMV

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

I knew everything at 25! Today I realized I knew nothing.

There's that old poker saying: If you can't spot the patsy at the table, then the patsy is you.

 

[Markola]

^^^ I suck at poker. That’s why I prefer to own the table. And the casino, and the parking ramp.

 

[dunkelblau]

This was the latest TD Ameritrade message I got regarding many of the stocks mentioned in this thread.

TD Ameritrade Trading Restrictions on Stocks

Securities with trading restrictions

We have placed some restrictions on the following securities. These restrictions will not prevent clients from making basic buy and sell transactions. This list is as of January 29, 2021, 4:30PM ET.

• AMC, CVM, EXPR, FOSL, GME, NOK, BB, BBBY, FIZZ, GSX, IRBT, NCMI, TR, UONE, VIR, NAK, NAKD, DDS, KOSS

Well these pups are sure taking a thrashing today... I hold six of these mostly bought months ago and missed the bus, so as they say, "easy come easy go".

On the flip side, I noticed a runup in VXRT over the past few days and I prepared to dump it this morning. It started quietly but the outlier at the open was SAVA which is another of my holdings. Thought I was lucky to get out at 40 and change (bought at 1.40 a year and a half ago so nearly a 30x return), but an hour later this thing exploded into the 70s. As I was kicking myself for my lousy timing, VXRT crossed 20 and I was out those shares too. These shares cost me 30c apiece a year and a half ago. Shoulda waited on these too. For some reason these poorly timed sells bother me more than the crash at the other end of the pool.

(In)famous billionaire Mark Cuban has addressed the troops in an AMA ("ask me anything") this morning:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/lawubt/hey_everyone_its_mark_cuban_jumping_on_to_do_an/

Selected quotes (boxes framed in orange):

What has happened the past few weeks with WSB has all happened before, it was just the big guys doing the battling. The only new thing was WSB traders took them on .

There was only one thing that messed you all up: RobinHood and the other zero commission brokers that everyone used didnt have enough capital to fund the fight.

If you can afford to hold the stock, you hold. I dont own it, but thats what i would do.

So again, the more people shorting the stock in the company i own the better

There will be a point in the stock where wall street starts saying "I told you so", let that happen for a few weeks.

Then hit them again, at a broker with the financial strength to never have to shut you off

 

[r3saving]

My hope is that the post mortem will let us know who won and who lost - and by how much. It's mild curiosity on my part and I have no dog in the hunt.

Same; I wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole but it's certainly interesting to watch.

As for a post mortem; A film deal is already in progress. I'm certainly interested in the whole story and hope it's accurate and complete when it arrives.

https://deadline.com/2021/02/netfli...centineo-scott-galloway-makeready-1234684568/