[HN Gopher] Nine investors make $16B on GameStop stock squeeze
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Nine investors make $16B on GameStop stock squeeze
Author : jbegley
Score : 45 points
Date : 2021-01-29 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.investors.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.investors.com)
| sakopov wrote:
| Can someone explain how more than 100% of the float can be
| shorted? How is this even legal?
| beervirus wrote:
| None of them are selling. This is just silly clickbait.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I wonder if the entire process was "astro-turfed", as in
| agitators were placed in the right place, right time with the
| right messaging to generate a mass delusion.
|
| That would be fascinating to untangle, just as a psychological
| experiment and its results.
| slivanes wrote:
| I got my daughter to buy one GME share in her account using her
| money. We closed at $130 giving her a profit of $40, easily
| paying for her copy of Minecraft she wanted.
|
| I don't think there was any valuable lesson in this for her or
| us, just a bit of fun. We are trying to teach her about gains in
| the long term, i.e. reality.
| [deleted]
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Next week: "Nine Investors Instantly Lose $16B on GameStop Stock
| 'Collapse'"
| imtringued wrote:
| Loss porn is a thing. WSB loves losing money.
| paulpauper wrote:
| It is fun seeing other people lose money
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Schadenfreude, making me feel glad that I'm not you.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCQGQ5qBQTA
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Guh
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/dyaj4v/whats_.
| ..
| Rapzid wrote:
| More like "A disturbance was felt in the force as if 500
| thousand investors all cried out 'YOLO' before discovering
| their GameStop stocks are worthless after giving all their
| money to 9 other investors."
| wintorez wrote:
| The actual squeeze hasn't started yet.
| krustyburger wrote:
| I've been surprised to have seen this kind of comment here at
| HN more and more this week. The specific claim in this comment
| is one that is being made at /r/wallstreetbets, among many
| others. Over there, users seem to delight in repeating
| statements like this and not providing any supporting evidence
| or adding their own arguments. I think being an echo chamber is
| meant to be part of the fun of that subreddit at this moment.
|
| But why do this on HN also? I can only guess that the users
| here are personally invested in GME and are hoping to increase
| their own profits by spreading the word and convincing more
| investors to join in with them. If this is the case, it seems
| to be at odds with how Hacker News is generally used and I am
| surprised to see it being tolerated so much by the
| administrators.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Because it's technically true? Regardless if it's likely to
| happen or not the actual squeeze - the closing of shorts when
| there's no available stock to buy - hasn't happened (and
| maybe never will) yet.
| Aunche wrote:
| That's not something you can know for certain. It's
| possible that hedge funds closed their early shorts, but
| now, the mind-boggling valuation has inspired a wave of new
| shorts.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > But why do this on HN also?
|
| I have never seen HN comments get as bad as the past few
| days. There have been multiple 1000+ comment threads. I've
| seen oodles of comments that are just sentence fragments
| barely more coherent than "to the moon". Righteous fury and
| conspiracy theories abound. This has clearly struck a nerve
| and bridged the gap between HN and reddit more than ever
| before.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I've been in and out of this site for many, many years now.
| I came back a few months ago, having been away for quite a
| while. It was noticeably different even then. At that time,
| it was all about the US political situation. It's not
| necessarily that the focus has become more political --
| although it undoubtedly has -- it's more that the comments
| are skewing more towards memes and triviality. Sad to see;
| let's hope it's just a phase.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I was surprised at these narratives being repeated so many
| times here with only a few people refuting them:
|
| * GME was illegally shorted 140%, maybe by one company, and
| a stock being shorted 140% is somehow intrinsically
| bad/evil/shady. None of this really seems to be the case
| regardless of the utility.
|
| * GameStop was being driven to bankruptcy by hedge funds
| shorting it. I'm not sure what the logic is here.
|
| These narratives almost seemed designed to rationalize the
| manufacture of a short squeeze; something the SEC seemingly
| has some strong opinions about.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I am surprised to see it being tolerated so much by the
| administrators.
|
| I think its been a tough month for the administrators and
| they're more interested in policing more... serious...
| politics that keep coming up around here.
|
| Standard "HODL" or "Bitcoin hype" has been around Hacker News
| for a while. Hell: remember that this site is ultimately
| owned by YCombinator, a venture capitalist group. Hyping $$$
| talk is tolerated a bit more around here not necessarily
| because the admins agree with it... but because its adjacent
| to what they do.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I admit, given that dang usually downweighs duplicates and
| repeated posts on the same topic, it is unusual to have so
| many posts. I wouldn't read too much into it beside the
| obvious though.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Right now everything is speculation, nobody knows anything
| during the rally as the shares don't point to who owns what
| and who is shorting. So if anyone says the squeeze hasn't
| happened yet, it just their opinion.
|
| For all we know the hedgefunds got out of their short
| positions and retail is pumping the stock higher. Or
| conversely hedgefunds are still short and waiting for the
| rally to fizzle until it collapses and then they reap huge
| gains.
|
| Or it could explode higher like this week(the big squeeze),
| the point is nobody knows with any certainty what will
| happen. I never thought tesla in a million years would be a
| $800B company but I and many like me have been proven wrong.
| its whats great about investing, there are always surprises
| all the time.
| wintorez wrote:
| Sorry, I should have backed up my statement. Apparently, most
| hedge funds are actually doubling down on their short
| positions, believing people who are holding will sell. GME is
| still shorted more than 100%, so it's basically a game of
| chicken between short and long gamers.
|
| The problem is the shorts have to pay interest, so they need
| an out ASAP, while the sentiment of the longs is that they
| will hold indefinitely.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor, and I don't even
| have any of the shorted stocks. I'm just following the news.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| > I can only guess that the users here are personally
| invested in GME
|
| bingo
| wintorez wrote:
| I'm the original commenter. I don't have any of the shorted
| stocks. I only find the story fascinating. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| metalliqaz wrote:
| wouldn't it be a squeeze every time a short position has to be
| closed out?
| scarmig wrote:
| Question for those familiar with the industry: What actually are
| these large investors in GME doing right now? Like, suppose
| you're some investment manager at Blackrock. Is that even the
| title that'd be responding to this? Would there be escalations
| going up to some VP? Is there some a team figuring out an exit
| strategy?
| kasey_junk wrote:
| These are paper gains. None of these investors have closed their
| position. Most of them probably can't so long as GME is part of
| the index they are pegged to.
| Aunche wrote:
| https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...
|
| It looks like 10% is GME is held in FDMLX, a mutual fund that
| tries to invest in "undervalued stocks." Since Gamestop isn't
| undervalued anymore, they're probably in the process of selling
| right now.
| paulpauper wrote:
| This logic needs to die. People said the same about Facebook in
| 2011 and Amazon in 2010. Nowt saying that this is going to be
| the same as those, but up is up, gains are gains. This is a
| hugely liquid market. Someone can liquidate $1 billion of GME
| or hedge it without too much problems.
| spoonjim wrote:
| An index fund is constrained by its charter, not by market
| liquidity.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| OT, but I've _never_ seen anything autocorrected to
| `watthour! ' Isn't it supposed to be hyphenated?
| jandrese wrote:
| They're all in a precarious position. If they sell their shares
| too quickly it will pop the bubble and cause panic selling,
| crashing the price. They have to slowly trickle them out while
| generating a constant stream of HODL memes in order to not be
| left holding the bag.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| 3 of the top 4 on that list likely can't sell at all given
| the way their funds are incorporated. The remainder is a
| member of the GameStop board who probably will unload some of
| it, but would almost certainly need to pre-announce that he
| was doing so.
|
| The rest of the list are private individuals or hedge funds
| so can unload whenever they want. One of them, MUST already
| has.
| mikewarot wrote:
| This headline ignores the lesson everyone should have learned by
| now.... you don't instantly make or lose money in the stock
| market... it only happens when you open and close positions.
|
| Since it was all buy and hold driving up the price... few sold...
| Billions of stock certainly weren't sold.
| roywiggins wrote:
| _Somebody_ has to be selling to everyone piling in.
| crazydoggers wrote:
| It's mind boggling people don't understand this. Profit taking
| is what happens when the stock price drops. We've yet to see
| that happen... but my guess is that the institutional whales
| will tip the scales as soon as they decide they've taken enough
| from the Reddit crowd.
|
| There's already a sell wall... so you know they're gearing up.
|
| As other commenters noted, there were a lot of shares sold that
| traded hands. But the important thing to look at is not shares,
| but how much money moved into the security, and who now holds
| it, and who will be in a position to keep it.
|
| And these hedge funds that are supposedly feeling the pain.
| Most of them have got plenty of capital to manage this.
|
| Think if it this way... how many billions of capital was
| invested by retail investors... and how many of those are
| "holding" in order to "stick it to the hedge funds."
|
| Those billions are going to go somewhere as the stock price
| drops.. and I'm going to guess that most of it won't go back in
| the pockets of the retail investors when this all ends.
|
| So they basically just made a bunch of rich people richer.
|
| How can the hedge funds not being laughing?
| majormajor wrote:
| Your first point is very important, but your second is
| incorrect. Volume of trading has been very high, actually. And
| remember: you can't buy without someone else selling.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit...
| kasey_junk wrote:
| MUST unloaded their position for over a billion:
| https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20210128440/lar...
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| April 1, 2021 - Gamestop announces intention to acquire Apple
|
| edit: Jesus folks, this is obviously a joke. Lighten up HN!
| 1-6 wrote:
| February 1, 2021: GameStop starts preorder of KFC Gaming
| Consoles.
| ginko wrote:
| That's unrealistic of course, but I do wonder what GME's CEO is
| doing right now. Could they use the current high stock value to
| pay off debt by selling off stock or would that potentially
| collapse the current market value. Is there some way for them
| to take advantage of this whole thing?
| Tenoke wrote:
| GME is not really profiting or having a direct access to more
| money unless they issue more stock which is not so easy and
| unlikely. The ceo has made money as he certainly has stock
| but that's his personal holdings.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| Well at the very least, you have to assume full-time salaried
| employees have some sort of equity compensation. So this is
| basically an awesome lottery outcome for them. Hopefully they
| give the hourly employees some sort of nice reward for
| sticking around too.
|
| I don't see big opportunities to restructure the business -
| if the executive team could build a better business, they
| wouldn't be in this shape to begin with.
| hehehaha wrote:
| Pretty misleading considering that they're all institutions
| except for Ryan Cohen which I believe is also not a private
| stake.
| gruez wrote:
| This just goes to show how absurd some of characterizations in
| the media were. eg.
|
| Reddit's GameStop, AMC surge is the new Occupy movement
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25942863
| jldugger wrote:
| I mean, this is just a list of the largest institutional holders,
| not like, a list of people who bought out of money options and
| cashed in.
| paulpauper wrote:
| And a whole bunch of guys on WSB made a killing too
| ruggeri wrote:
| This story is ridiculous. Like everyone else has said, these are
| paper gains to (mostly) institutional investors.
| pbreit wrote:
| You might think IBD would understand the difference between
| realized and unrealized gains. And that it was reporting on very
| stale data.
| xwdv wrote:
| Is anyone on HN here holding GME shares? Today I said fuck it and
| bought 75 shares and put a sell limit of $1320. If it fills I
| will make a clean $78k worth of profit. If it goes to zero I lose
| about $20k.
| saalweachter wrote:
| What made you decide to jump in at this point?
|
| If I had a time machine I can imagine jumping in last week, or
| last month, but I feel like I've missed this bubble and it
| could pop any moment.
| [deleted]
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