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It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

Honest reporting on shorter-term trading activity and ideas
Gilgongo
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Re: Thoughts on the meaning of WSB?

#382528

Postby Gilgongo » January 31st, 2021, 7:06 pm

dealtn wrote:my view is today's downtrodden and age disadvantaged aren't suffering as much as previous "youngsters" did.


Forgive me, but if you can't live well because of injustice, then that's a bad thing that we need to do something about. Or at the very least pretend concern :lol: To say that people in the past had it harder is a total non-sequitur unless you imply we should ignore the issues of the present because of that. But that's flat-out immoral!

I can't even ... where does this thinking come from??

dealtn
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Re: Thoughts on the meaning of WSB?

#382533

Postby dealtn » January 31st, 2021, 7:18 pm

Gilgongo wrote:
dealtn wrote:my view is today's downtrodden and age disadvantaged aren't suffering as much as previous "youngsters" did.


Forgive me, but if you can't live well because of injustice, then that's a bad thing that we need to do something about. Or at the very least pretend concern :lol: To say that people in the past had it harder is a total non-sequitur unless you imply we should ignore the issues of the present because of that. But that's flat-out immoral!

I can't even ... where does this thinking come from??


Again, where have I said ignore the issues of the present (or what will become the future, present)?

There are members of society, at all times, that suffer from (perceived) injustice, and there are numerous choices about how that injustice is highlighted, and potentially resolved. I am not denying such.

I am not the one making claims, with seeming certainty about "corruption", "injustice" or immorality. Those are all very strong words.

My view here is that situations are complex, and that the current generation is not the only one to have had problems, and perspective of this is helpful both in understanding this, and doing something about it.

How relevant this is to this board is far from clear, but in the absence of PD it seems we are seeing an overflow into other areas of the site.

dspp
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382537

Postby dspp » January 31st, 2021, 7:36 pm

Moderator Message:
There was a thread on this [wsb/GME] on Retire Investing which got - quite reasonably - alerted, so I have merged both the running threads into here on Trading, and left a shadow in place over there. regards, dspp

GoSeigen
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382557

Postby GoSeigen » January 31st, 2021, 8:17 pm

dspp wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:
dspp wrote:You may find these "Anatomy Of A Short Attack" papers interesting,

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets ... dicted_in/

https://seekingalpha-com.cdn.ampproject ... ort-attack

http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/Co ... Stock.html

The top one (reddit) links through to the others and is a readable summary, abstract is as follows,

"Abusive shorting are not random acts of a renegade hedge funds, but rather a coordinated business plan that is carried out by a collusive consortium of hedge funds and prime brokers, with help from their friends at the DTC and major clearinghouses. Potential target companies are identified, analyzed and prioritized. The attack is planned to its most minute detail."

etc, YMMV

- dspp

What sort of axe do you have to grind here?

GS


None in particular, I'm just interested in what is going on and the longer term background behind it all, and what implications it might have for the future. Half of me wonders whether the shorts' standard ripostes of "nothing to see here, capitalism & the free market doing its thing, move along" is correct. The other half rather suspects there is / has been (equity) market abuse by the shorters going on in broad daylight for a long time. (Clearly commodities and forex markets have also had their moments over the years, but I am not so interested in them). One can make valid arguments both ways. Even if there is nothing untoward going on here, the cries of "something must be done" which are originating from both camps may result in changes that in turn may affect all of us.

regards, dspp


Okay, I think you have to be careful though. In some places, like the above reply, you're lumping all shorters together, then in other places you refer (correctly IMO) to "Abusive shorting" which I think no-one is defending. I would guess that in common with other abuses the majority of people are shorting quite legitimately most of the time, and the abusers are just a few, perhaps regular, offenders.

I am a shorter and fail to see what is wrong with my shorting activities. I mean, with some assets I think you'd struggle to explain why shorting is bad: e.g. why can I legitimately go long GBPUSD but if I short USDGBP I am evil and trying to bring down a country's economy??? Shares are really no different. Yes, I know you're going to start talking about naked shorting, but really....??

GS

dspp
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382584

Postby dspp » January 31st, 2021, 10:08 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
dspp wrote:
GoSeigen wrote:What sort of axe do you have to grind here?

GS


None in particular, I'm just interested in what is going on and the longer term background behind it all, and what implications it might have for the future. Half of me wonders whether the shorts' standard ripostes of "nothing to see here, capitalism & the free market doing its thing, move along" is correct. The other half rather suspects there is / has been (equity) market abuse by the shorters going on in broad daylight for a long time. (Clearly commodities and forex markets have also had their moments over the years, but I am not so interested in them). One can make valid arguments both ways. Even if there is nothing untoward going on here, the cries of "something must be done" which are originating from both camps may result in changes that in turn may affect all of us.

regards, dspp


Okay, I think you have to be careful though. In some places, like the above reply, you're lumping all shorters together, then in other places you refer (correctly IMO) to "Abusive shorting" which I think no-one is defending. I would guess that in common with other abuses the majority of people are shorting quite legitimately most of the time, and the abusers are just a few, perhaps regular, offenders.

I am a shorter and fail to see what is wrong with my shorting activities. I mean, with some assets I think you'd struggle to explain why shorting is bad: e.g. why can I legitimately go long GBPUSD but if I short USDGBP I am evil and trying to bring down a country's economy??? Shares are really no different. Yes, I know you're going to start talking about naked shorting, but really....??

GS


You are quite right, and indeed if you go back to the start of this thread I made the point that I think that shorting can be a useful market activity within reason.

This evening I was explaining it to one of the starving whilst cooking supper and used the following analogy, "When bodies die we rely on worms etc to decompose the corpses and return them to productive ecological use. Shorters serve the same purpose in the market, hastening the end and recycling companies through their actions. But none of us are very keen to live in a world directed by enormous worms, and in the same way so we have an interest in keeping shorts to an appropriate size and useful task.". Like all analogies it is not exact.

Provided shorting is both useful and legitimate in the context of managed markets then fine. What I am less keen on, and have to an extent myself observed with TSLA, is that it can get out of hand to the point where it is less useful, and perhaps even illegitimate. Seeing the shorters' own weapons turned on them (scale, speed, contextual situation, co-operation) is interesting to observe, and it is hypocritical of the shorters who have been attacking GME to argue otherwise imho.

I expect some changes to take place in market regulation because of this. I do hope that shorts won't argue that trading should only be restricted to subject-matter-experts gambling money they can easily afford to lose, because it strikes me that wsb/reddit fits that description far better than the hedgies.

regards, dspp

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382687

Postby Adamski » February 1st, 2021, 10:48 am

Silver is the latest pump and dump, up 8.2% today. The reddit crowd buy the 3x leveraged version up 27.3% today. Some of the WSB people must be making serious money on the back of this.

JamesMuenchen
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382690

Postby JamesMuenchen » February 1st, 2021, 10:51 am

Adamski wrote:Silver is the latest pump and dump, up 8.2% today. The reddit crowd buy the 3x leveraged version up 27.3% today. Some of the WSB people must be making serious money on the back of this.

Interesting.

How are they buying it?

It's risky holding a leveraged ETF overnight.

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382707

Postby GoSeigen » February 1st, 2021, 11:23 am

Adamski wrote:Silver is the latest pump and dump, up 8.2% today. The reddit crowd buy the 3x leveraged version up 27.3% today. Some of the WSB people must be making serious money on the back of this.


This is stretching credulity. They are fantasizing that they are moving the market. Let them dream on.

GS

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382716

Postby dspp » February 1st, 2021, 11:44 am

With respect to GME I don't think the little people are playing on their own. It seems there is algo firepower & cash being deployed by the longs, sufficient at least to neutralise the corresponding algos of the shorts

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets ... ave_a_big/

That KS also is fairly clear about how long they will hold for and what to watch as their exit triggers ......... most likely algo assisted !

Over at TSLA there are a lot of "Teslanaires" who are chipping in and buying, and they've acquired a lot of anti-short experience and opinions over the last ten years. Some of them are rumoured to be Tesla-billionaires.

Risk management for shorts must be real tricky now.

regards, dspp

https://preview.redd.it/9micoqswusd61.g ... efce5f9b1f

dspp
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382738

Postby dspp » February 1st, 2021, 12:17 pm

Markets should be opening on the US for GME soon.

Should be interesting

https://twitter.com/kjetillstjerne/stat ... 75040?s=21

regards, dspp

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382755

Postby dspp » February 1st, 2021, 1:11 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
Adamski wrote:Silver is the latest pump and dump, up 8.2% today. The reddit crowd buy the 3x leveraged version up 27.3% today. Some of the WSB people must be making serious money on the back of this.


This is stretching credulity. They are fantasizing that they are moving the market. Let them dream on.

GS


From my reading it seems quite likely that the silver thing is a confusion play being deliberately run by the GME shorts to a) try to dilute the wsb firepower and b) harvest profit in silver out of the wsb crowd. The wsb crowd were doing some analysis of bot usage on the silver play, that rather linked it back to the hedgies.

regards, dspp

Lootman
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382758

Postby Lootman » February 1st, 2021, 1:13 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
Adamski wrote:Silver is the latest pump and dump, up 8.2% today. The reddit crowd buy the 3x leveraged version up 27.3% today. Some of the WSB people must be making serious money on the back of this.

This is stretching credulity. They are fantasizing that they are moving the market. Let them dream on.

Actually I think silver is a better bet than the zombie companies targeted last week. I have been bullish on silver for a year now as I thought it was undervalued versus gold. The latest bitcoin mania probably helped too, along with the weak dollar and the greater probability of inflation going forward.

Sadly I was only short puts in silver rather than long calls, plus long one silver miner.

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382865

Postby SteadyAim » February 1st, 2021, 7:36 pm

Advert on reddit from robinhood links to this:
https://blog.robinhood.com/news/2021/1/ ... -this-week

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. And that’s what led us to put temporary buying restrictions in place on a small number of securities that the clearinghouses had raised their deposit requirements on.

JamesMuenchen
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382876

Postby JamesMuenchen » February 1st, 2021, 8:55 pm

Here's an interesting article about some Essex traders investigated regarding their $700million win on April's -ve oil price.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... rs-pounced
All of this is perfectly legal, providing the trader doesn’t deliberately try to push the closing price down to an artificial level to maximize his profits, which constitutes market manipulation under U.S. law. Manipulation can result in civil penalties such as fines or bans, or even criminal charges carrying a potential prison sentence of up to 10 years. It’s also illegal in the U.S. to place trades during or before the settlement with “intentional or reckless disregard” for the impact.

Not sure if it translates directly to what the WSB guys were doing.

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382890

Postby BobbyD » February 1st, 2021, 9:46 pm

Adamski wrote:Silver is the latest pump and dump, up 8.2% today. The reddit crowd buy the 3x leveraged version up 27.3% today. Some of the WSB people must be making serious money on the back of this.


An interesting choice, given what happened when a bunch of Hunts tried to corner the market.

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382952

Postby Adamski » February 2nd, 2021, 8:23 am

Gamestop saga over? fell 33% monday, 50% below 28 Jan peak. Plus after hours down another 16%. That would be 66% below 28 Jan peak.

Highlights the risk for inexperienced investors who would have bought at the top. Got to feel sorry for many Millennials who could be sucked in and faced with big paper losses. (That's if doesn't reverse, mania is unpredictable!!)

At the end of the day, this is a pump and dump scheme as Gamestop as a business is not deserving of massive gains, as there is no reason to walk into a video game store, when you buy off Amazon, other online retailers or download.

dealtn
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#382953

Postby dealtn » February 2nd, 2021, 8:28 am

Adamski wrote:Gamestop saga over? fell 33% monday, 50% below 28 Jan peak. Plus after hours down another 16%. That would be 66% below 28 Jan peak.

Highlights the risk for inexperienced investors who would have bought at the top. Got to feel sorry for many Millennials who could be sucked in and faced with big paper losses. (That's if doesn't reverse, mania is unpredictable!!)

At the end of the day, this is a pump and dump scheme as Gamestop as a business is not deserving of massive gains, as there is no reason to walk into a video game store, when you buy off Amazon, other online retailers or download.


Why do you feel sorry for millennials? They are all grown ups, and for most of them it will be a cheap lesson in markets.

dspp
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#383079

Postby dspp » February 2nd, 2021, 2:31 pm

With thanks to dhanson865 on TMC, this image is from https://twitter.com/nxthompson/status/1 ... 9226671106 and source Ortex, note ytd and since we know that Melvin Cap lost about $3bn this may need updating (though I guess some hedgies will have made profits, so the net position may not be quite as bad)

.... and this says shorts have lost $13bn on GME so far this year ..... https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/13562 ... 85509?s=20

Image

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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#383657

Postby Adamski » February 4th, 2021, 2:40 pm

AJ Bell top buys shares today 4 Feb:

3. Gamestop 6.8%
7. AMC 3.2%

Also both figure in top 10 sells.. after the gme price has crashed the past week.

Has to be a pure gamble now, surely! Or greed or stupidity.

dspp
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Re: It gets even wilder [merged with GME/wsb/etc]

#384515

Postby dspp » February 7th, 2021, 4:46 pm

The GME roadshow may not be over yet, and the tallying up may not come public for a while longer. GME was at $20, spiked to £340, and is now $63. It is not obvious that the shorts are in aggregate profit territory at this price though they do seem to be trying to wait it out.

Here are some articles (rants ?) from another short attack,
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ ... o_of_axon/
https://www.reddit.com/user/TeaCupOverdose/
https://www.reddit.com/user/Rick_Smith_Axon/

I am Rick Smith, the founder and CEO of Axon Enterprise. Years ago, we were almost brought down by attacks from short sellers, and I'm passionate about short seller reform (an issue that has gotten attention thanks to Reddit's WallStreetBets)
"About a decade and a half ago, my company came under short seller attack. We faced a highly-coordinated PR and legal campaign, and it almost brought the company down. What made no sense was that our company was thriving, on track for its best year yet and consistently crushing analyst expectations. We discovered in time that the shorts had worked the media, contacted regulators, colluded with someone in our company, and timed their trades just before bad news broke. The damage was significant. More than a billion dollars in shareholder equity vanished, much of it into the pockets of the short sellers. These attacks can get personal, too. At one point, I faced death threats and moved in order to keep my family safe. I know other executives who have equally brutal stories about short attacks. But we don't talk about them. Our lawyers urge us to settle; our comms people urge silence. No one wants to be on the wrong side of a short attack. But seeing what WSB did these past few weeks made me want to speak out."

make of it what you will.

regards, dspp


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