[HN Gopher] Quest for Hollywood fame splits Redditors at heart o...
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Quest for Hollywood fame splits Redditors at heart of market frenzy
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-02-12 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| jabberwcky wrote:
| As usual the times is great at telling a story, but in this case
| one built entirely on a cropped screenshot. See
| https://i.imgur.com/KZGwIw9.png for the reality of the naked
| profiteering the mods were planning.
|
| I think it's more interesting how Reddit responded to it. Their
| willingness to quickly roll the heads of folk pouring months of
| their lives into moderation suggests perhaps they capitalize on
| these dramas to shore up control of their own communities. It
| makes a lot of sense from Reddit's perspective to not have any
| superstar moderators be seen to 'own' or have excessive user
| loyalty from the group they're responsible for. Such things could
| easily lead to exoduses or public spats with the admins that
| could be overall bad for the site.
|
| Also consider the public rationale ("we don't care why,
| disruptive folk will always be removed") applied to moderators
| when in both of these uproars, it was actually a single user
| ("SpeaksInbooleans") responsible for lighting the fires. AFAIK he
| is still a member of the group
| f430 wrote:
| After the GME fiasco the subreddit has not returned to its roots.
| The entire front page is about GME everyday.
|
| The consensus is that they are ready to give 1 star reviews on
| rotten tomatoes and imdb when the movie releases.
| chrisbolt wrote:
| It probably never will. WSB went from 2 million subscribers to
| almost 9 million in a week or two. Its 'roots' will always be
| outnumbered.
|
| https://subredditstats.com/r/wallstreetbets
| f430 wrote:
| it's disturbing how so many people in those GME threads are
| still waiting for the big short squeeze.
| Animats wrote:
| It will happen right after March 4th, after QAnon and Trump
| overthrow Biden and Trump is sworn in as the True Leader.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Just what is the conclusion of this market insanity? Some of
| these stocks clearly have no value. I had a friend of a friend
| who at a whim bought a million or so of some penny stock that
| went up 10X in a matter of days and cashed out.
|
| Is this the future of retail trading? An expensive game of
| chicken? I think many people, including myself to extent, believe
| there is always some NX stock around the corner. The FOMO is
| intensifying I guess. When you have stock like $SNDL almost
| double in literally a day it seems rational to spend your time
| trying to find the next one than to do the tried and true method.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Is this the future of retail trading? An expensive game of
| chicken?
|
| Isn't this how stock markets work? Actual company performance
| is just a relatively minor signal for the chicken.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but you would think reality would have more of an
| impact than simply speculation. To an extent the stock market
| is a game of chicken since prices are ultimately derived from
| expectations, but what happens when the expectations are no
| longer attached to reality?
|
| Buying a weed stock for example can be speculating on Biden's
| likelihood of legalizing it and the subsequent boom, but
| there are stock that literally have no products, a single
| employee and the entirety of the volatility is based on
| random internet musings. Pump and dump is nothing new, of
| course, but the internet's ability to cascade this surely
| will have some implications for better or worse.
| prewett wrote:
| Oh, reality will have an impact, sooner or later. What
| happens when expectations are no longer attached to reality
| is "irrational exuberance", aka "a bubble". We're in the
| mania phase of the stock cycle. It's starting to feel like
| 2001 again: pet supplies ON THE INTERNET!!! Big money, big
| prizes, big expensive Superbowl ad!
|
| Partly the problem is that we're at the tail end of the
| business cycle, partly the Fed has been keeping interest
| rates low so anyone that needs yield (pensions, etc.) has
| to move out of bonds into stocks, and partly retail traders
| have been stuck at home spending their vacation money on
| the Robinhood casino. And stocks are up 30% on the year and
| 80% from the local minimum in March, so now everyone that
| is short on money says "I should play the market".
|
| Give it a year or so.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Isn't this how stock markets work? Actual company
| performance is just a relatively minor signal for the
| chicken.
|
| In my experience, actual company performance is a very huge
| signal. You just need to zoom out and look at longer
| timeframes. The stocks with the highest prices and gains over
| the long term are those with the highest profit and growth
| potential.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Like Tesla? Wouldn't Tesla have to have a monopoly on the
| entire automotive industry to realise their P/E? And as for
| profit they don't make any at the moment, IIRC
| dEnigma wrote:
| Tesla just reported its first full-year profit last
| month, so that's no longer true.
| leoedin wrote:
| Tesla is probably overvalued, but it's also not as simple
| as Tesla == cars. They're also one of the leading players
| in grid level battery storage (a market that will be huge
| soon). I don't think any other auto manufacturer is
| involved in that.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Tesla still has to sell something like 21x more cars to
| match Toyota for example who they dwarf in market cap.
|
| Tesla are putting their eggs into cars which are
| extremely hard, and batteries which will be a commodity
| long before Tesla can extract enough value.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Is this the future of retail trading?
|
| Nope, this has happened many times throughout history. It
| doesn't really persist for many reasons, one of the primary
| being how many people get burned on the dump phase of the pump
| and dump. The people that bought GME at $300 are not likely to
| return for more sick gains.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| > The people that bought GME at $300 are not likely to return
| for more sick gains.
|
| Unfortunately that sounds a lot like saying "The people who
| lose all their money at the casino are not likely to return
| to the casino," which... well...
| Bakary wrote:
| It doesn't just sound a lot like it. It is literally
| gambling.
| cj wrote:
| For every 1 retail investor you hear talking about how they
| made a million dollars on lucky trade, there are 10 people who
| lost just as much without publicizing it, and there are 1000
| people who made _a lot_ of money simply buying and holding
| "boring" index funds for long periods of time.
| filoleg wrote:
| >there are 10 people who lost just as much without
| publicizing it
|
| Ironically enough, that's why I like the spirit of WSB,
| because people readily post insane losses and celebrate them
| just as much as they celebrate wins (tagged under "loss porn"
| iirc).
|
| Discovering it years ago was what, imo, gave me a solid
| mindset when it comes to losses incurred by trading. I don't
| think that seeing only crazy wins without any crazy losses
| would have set me on the right track or allowed me to keep my
| mindset healthy. The fact that people there treat crazy
| losses just as normal and worthy of positive attention as
| crazy wins is imo the biggest gem and differentiator in the
| whole thing.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I always think of this whenever a friend says they are trying
| day trading. A couple weeks later I will wonder how it went
| and realize it must have gone bad, because they would tell me
| if it went well lol.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > When you have stock like $SNDL almost double in literally a
| day it seems rational to spend your time trying to find the
| next one than to do the tried and true method.
|
| Sure, it _seems_ rational if you overestimate your likelihood
| of picking the right one in advance. Kind of like the lottery.
| chiph wrote:
| One of the reasons r/wallstreetbets got created was they felt
| that the buy & hold strategy wasn't going to work for them
| (hurt from the crash of 2008, were being taken advantage of,
| general disillusionment, etc.), so they'd rather bet big and
| hope for a winner. The culture there celebrates winners, but
| they also admire the people who go down in flames.
|
| Personally, I am getting "dot-com" vibes from the market, back
| when lots of people lost money day-trading on companies with no
| value. I'm selling right now, not buying.
| f00zz wrote:
| > "dot-com" vibes from the market
|
| Same, but with negative real interests rates all over the
| world I don't know where else I can park my savings. I've
| been buying low-volatility stocks in boring sectors
| (utilities, etc) that pay good dividends.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Just what is the conclusion of this market insanity?
|
| That this is all a game. Stocks are completely decorrelated
| from value production and are mostly purely speculative
| vessels.
|
| We're in a weird limbo state that will probably crash hard
| sooner than later.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How are they decorrelated? The most valuable stocks are still
| those of companies that earn very large amounts of profit, or
| have lots of potential to grow.
| munk-a wrote:
| In theory stocks for valuable companies are valuable since
| you own a part of something valuable - however for that
| value to be liquidated without a trade to another party the
| company itself needs to be acquired. It turns out that
| valuable acquisitions happen pretty often in the tech space
| due to how undervalued the network effect is by the stock
| market but - when a normal company is acquired it is after
| having shed the majority of its value. Exiting the market
| in the final sense really only happens with failure -
| instead it's closer to an act of better against the failure
| of the company in question - believing it will remain
| solvent for a long period of time.
|
| That, at least, goes for dividendless stocks - for dividend
| stocks the math changes a bit and more valuable companies
| are valued since there is an expectation that they will
| continue to pay current - or higher - dividends for a long
| time with individuals still able to leave the market by
| pawning off their shares. But, at EOD - it's essentially
| the same math but with a bit of extra fudging in one
| category.
| xwdv wrote:
| Wrong.
|
| This market can stay irrational longer than most of us will
| be _alive_. Let that sink in, this is the new normal. You can
| either sit on the sidelines waiting for things to become
| "rational" and then invest feeling safe making rational 4%
| gains a year, or you can get in _now_ and make _real money_.
|
| One thing is clear, when things rationalize and become
| "normal", many people who were investing now are _still_
| going to be sitting on their irrationally made gains while
| you dust off your cash and prepare to jump in.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > This market can stay irrational longer than most of us
| will be alive.
|
| What are you basing this on? It doesn't follow any past
| experiences nor any of what I read. Sounds like what people
| said right before it tanked hard
|
| > You can either sit on the sidelines waiting for things to
| become "rational" and then invest feeling safe making
| rational 4% gains a year, or you can get in now and make
| real money
|
| Or, like me, opt out of the FOMO and live life without
| injecting your money in a cancerous gambling machine no one
| understand and is being manipulated by things like reddit
| or Musk tweeting gibberish
|
| > many people who were investing now are still going to be
| sitting on their irrationally made gains while you dust off
| your cash and prepare to jump in.
|
| Like in 1929? Or 2008? I won't need to dust off my cash
| because there are plenty of other things to invest in other
| than stocks
| slg wrote:
| This is why the class warfare elements of the narratives around
| the whole WSB/GME situation have always seemed naive to me. It
| isn't that hedge fund people are any greedier than any other
| group of people, it is just they have greater opportunity to be
| greedy assholes. You give the WSB people an opportunity and
| unsurprisingly they turn into greedy assholes too. The people
| involved on each side are more similar than they are different.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Not necessarily. Attempting to force a sea change in the
| proportion of capital ownership _is_ undoubtedly class warfare,
| and further, perusal of WSB will find most GME posters
| expressing some variation of an intent to hold their shares
| until they 're either absolutely worthless or are in a position
| to force the aforementioned sea change (e.g., mass sells as
| prices that would ruin not only the hedge funds, but also
| brokerages and possibly banks).
|
| A popular (and not altogether unbelievable) narrative is that
| the DTCC forced the shutdown of share buys through its "margin
| call" on brokerages' collateral requirements (a sudden shift
| despite a week of unprecedented volatility in GME et al.) on
| the precipice of just such an "infinite short" scenario.
|
| The priorities of each group on the other side of a victory are
| clearly different: entrenched money will continue on as always.
| WSB would have paid off their consumer debt, donated to worthy
| causes, or invested directly in themselves or new ventures,
| without the limitation of interest-bearing loans or the
| judgment of denial-happy lenders.
|
| I think your entire comment is inaccurate in this context.
| [deleted]
| roywiggins wrote:
| And for every hedge fund that was short GME, there were several
| who were long and cashed in. Not exactly a victory for the 99%.
|
| It seems to me the "we'll all get rich sticking it to the hedge
| funds" stuff was some combination of sincere belief and pure
| window-dressing to get more people to buy into the pump. And
| for the people left holding the bag, a way to feel better about
| their losses.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > And for every hedge fund that was short GME, there were
| several who were long and cashed in. Not exactly a victory
| for the 99%.
|
| Mudrick Capital Management shorted GME at the peak and made
| at least $200 Million from the whole event. Mudrick Capital
| also benefited from AMC, to the tune of hundreds-of-millions.
|
| They didn't even punish the shorts: a lot of shorts sold at
| $300 or $400 and made bank.
| stouset wrote:
| "We'll all get rich sticking it to the hedge funds" was
| comically naive given that the entire strategy was to hold no
| matter what and never sell. Every time it would go higher the
| narrative just adjusted the target price upwards. "$1000 is
| not a meme" et al. As if the price would go up to infinity
| dollars.
|
| If you don't have an actual exit strategy--especially on a
| time-dependent play like a short squeeze-- _you're_ the
| sucker who's losing their investment.
| [deleted]
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Yeah it's super sketchy -- I wonder how many of the people
| encouraging the "class war" thinking had a stake in it, were
| long on gme -- including possibly institutional investors.
|
| (What, like institutional investors never use social media to
| manipulate markets? Legal or not? Now you see why it's not
| crazy for the FTC to investigate wsb, right?)
|
| But I think there is still a story here about why the "class
| war" narrative was so effective and popular... there is
| clearly an appetite for some class war... that can be used to
| manipulate people, or...?
| zests wrote:
| The parts of wall street that lost were part of the 1%. The
| part of wall street that won were the funds that managed
| teachers' retirement accounts.
|
| This is the narrative. It doesn't matter which narrative
| makes the most sense or is the most correct, it only matters
| which narrative spreads the most and the quickest. The
| narrative that wins will always be the victory narrative.
| aphextron wrote:
| >This is why the class warfare elements of the narratives
| around the whole WSB/GME situation have always seemed naive to
| me.
|
| None of the original WSB community that initially invested in
| GME subscribed to that nonsense. It was only ever about making
| money. The narrative was hijacked by the social media crowd
| that piled in on the pump two weeks ago and subsequently made
| the subreddit unreadable, and the media ran with it. It really
| reminds me a lot of what happened to 4chan in 2007 with
| "Project Chanology".
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > it is just they have greater opportunity to be greedy
| assholes
|
| I think that's the whole issue though. They wealthy have held
| on to a monopoly on ... wealth.
| colordrops wrote:
| Class is defined by wealth and leverage, not by greed. I don't
| think I've ever seen that definition before.
|
| > they have greater opportunity to be greedy assholes
|
| That is the definition of a different class of people.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| The only change I'd make here is by "perceived wealth" I know
| there's plenty of people who look rich and are treated as
| such that are a bad market turn away from losing everything
| because they spent all their money on looking rich.
| theknocker wrote:
| Everyone keeps trying to tell "journalists" that these moderators
| are widely considered frauds who were rejected by the community a
| long while ago, but I guess actually comprehending the thing
| you're reporting on isn't very useful for a journalist who is
| actually just running interference on behalf of the financial
| elite.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Kind of ancillary to the story, but can someone explain to me why
| "Hollywood" would even need any specific individual to be on
| board with a movie about this? It seems you could compose a
| character from many of the generic aspects without any specific
| viewpoint, and the entire point of this phenom was there wasn't a
| specific individual. I'm no screen writer but why couldn't you
| create the next "social network" or "big short" just from all the
| feedstock material?
| hluska wrote:
| I wonder if, in this case, they needed something akin to a
| translator to make it a little more accessible. I'm only in my
| early forties and have seldom felt as old or out of touch as I
| do reading WSB.
|
| I remember being young enough that urban dictionary was funny.
| Now it's reference material.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| They don't _necessarily_ legally -- not even if they _are_
| making the story about specific individuals. You don 't
| generally (in the USA) have a right to get paid for, or to
| control, someone telling a story about you, journalistically or
| fictionalized.
|
| But it makes it less likely you'll get sued and have to deal
| with it. And you've paid off the subject to not go to the media
| and be like "that's not how it happened at all, they are
| liars!" And I guess if what you did could be considered
| _defamation_ that 'd be a reason they could win a lawsuit.
|
| But it's kind of just how hollywood does it. Somebody could
| decide to try not to do it that way if they wanted, it's not
| clear it's strictly legally required in almost any case at all.
|
| https://www.indiewire.com/2019/09/hustlers-life-rights-holly...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/DfGxK
| cletus wrote:
| This whole thing is hilarious to me. And kinda sad.
|
| The narrative that this was somehow David sticking it to Goliath
| was laughable. A bunch of people spotted an opportunity and
| managed to profit from it. Good for them. But a bunch of hedge
| funds jumped onto the long side too.
|
| What's more encouraging the mass buying frenzy is classic Ponzi
| scheme material. And shock, horror I see there's a potential
| securities investigation. With all the people jumping in at
| $300+, someone was going to sell first and everyone else would be
| left holding the bag.
|
| Anyone involved in this pump and dump isn't profiting from hedge
| funds. They're profiting from the naive, uninformed, greedy and
| foolish who are jumping in on this far too late.
|
| Likewise, the narrative that Robinhood or its owners were somehow
| defending hedge funds also doesn't hold water. Robinhood Instant
| lends money so people can buy immediately. They borrowed nearly
| $1B to cover these loans and the buying frenzied posed a
| potential existential threat to RH.
|
| Calls for everyone to hold were equally self-serving and were
| never going to happen. Sufficiently large markets just don't work
| that way. Markets only work at all because eventually everyone
| acts in their own best interests.
|
| And now we have these David wannabees sparring over movie deals.
|
| I said at the time: this is a one-off. Hedge fund risk managers
| won't be caught out with so much open short interest again. I
| hope some of the paper millionaires cashed out and didn't ride
| this all the way up and then all the way down.
|
| But encouraging other people to buy when you already own is at
| best ethically questionable.
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| Maybe I've just reached a level of satisfaction or achievement in
| my life that I think the following, which I'm sure is no new
| opinion.
|
| Fame / wealth / etc. merely are avenues to lay bare the person
| you are inside to the world. All your material needs and short-
| term desires catered to, curiosities satisfied about what that
| standard of living is like, and when that's all achieved what
| really comes out is who you are inside. People get to find out
| who you really are. _You_ find out who you really are.
|
| Sure, money is nice, but you can only buy so much to satisfy your
| needs. Hedge fund billionaires and WSB college students who just
| made $10k on their stock trade have one thing in common -- money
| or fame alone won't solve what keeps you up at night after the
| money part of the problem is gone.
|
| I'm sure this perspective is just a product of my particular
| personality though. I'm sure there are people who don't find any
| problem getting gratification from wealth, or even better, are
| able to turn it into something productive for their and others'
| lives.
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