[HN Gopher] u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania
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u/DeepFuckingValue and the GameStop Reddit mania
Author : gangwolf
Score : 153 points
Date : 2021-01-29 15:05 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| TerribleHeight wrote:
| Hi Keith, what do you think about CytoDyn (cydy)? Their
| monoclonal drug Leronlimab has 3 different clinical trials with
| FDA and are FAST TRACKED. They've also applied for an upgrade to
| NASDQ. Current price $5.38. Their suppose to release results any
| day now on the COVID trial.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Add a . to the end of wsj.com to get past the paywall.
| Stevvo wrote:
| The "Bypass Paywalls" extension is also effective, although you
| may want to limit the number of extensions you run for memory
| usage or performance reasons.
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| Nice, thanks. FF on android
| jjazwiecki wrote:
| or safari
| anand-bala wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work on Firefox mobile.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Worked fine for me on Firefox for Android. To be clear you
| should do wsj.com./
| winter_blue wrote:
| It doesn't work on Chrome either.
| u678u wrote:
| I like Matt Levine's comment " The guy behind one of the greatest
| trades of our time was giving out financial advice for
| MassMutual, and somehow they let him go."
|
| edit I missed the best part of the quote "I hope he showed up at
| client meetings in a headband and sunglasses with a glass of
| champagne in one hand and a chicken tender in the other. I hope
| he was like "never mind life insurance, man, you gotta buy
| GameStop calls! Get those tendies!" And then I hope the clients
| were like "what" and MassMutual fired him and he just went and
| did the thing. "
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit...
| hehehaha wrote:
| Really helps discredit this notion of retail vs hedge fund.
| Most people who frequently make "DD" posts to r/wsb have ties
| to the financial industry and Wall Street. They either work
| there or have worked there. And yet they are critical of the
| Man? This is like ex-Facebook employees having a found-Jesus
| moment.
| hangonhn wrote:
| I worked at a hedge fund as my first job on the IT and Dev
| side. I will never put my money in a hedge fund. Just the way
| they spend money to boost the sense of self importance, etc.
| is nauseating. I once Fedex-ed a ream of printer paper from
| NYC to a partner on vacation in Miami because he was too
| entitled to drive to the nearest office supply store. I
| literally found a store like 10 minutes away but was told to
| just Fedex the paper. Then there were the allegations of PIPE
| and various other SEC investigations that always end up
| settling without any admission of guilt.
|
| There are quite a few genuinely good people in finance so
| don't be surprised to find good people doing good things who
| also work in finance but finance also attracts a lot of
| people who are amoral at best. I shake my head at the memory
| of one of the partners screaming at someone over the phone,
| "This isn't even illegal! How is it immoral!?"
| tootie wrote:
| I think this is almost expected behavior. Anybody who spends
| enough time in the trenches of any industry will come out
| jaded and bitter. In my limited time working on the tech side
| of some Wall St giants, 99% of the grunts are normal people
| with their noses in very narrow tasks. Tasks that seem too
| mundane to have any implications for the outside world. I
| even heard a top marketing exec at Goldman talk about how to
| shed their image as a "vampire squid". None of them set out
| to be evil, they just set out to earn profits. Same everybody
| else.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Some folks have no choice but to bootstrap at The Man.
| There's no startup accelerator for starting your own fund.
| hehehaha wrote:
| Yes, my comment was harsh. I am happy for the guy, really,
| especially as a Bostonian.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You can hate how the sausage is made and still work at the
| sausage factory.
|
| Banking has a healthier culture than tech when it comes to
| how much what you do to make your living defines you.
| TerribleHeight wrote:
| Hi Keith, what do u think of CytoDyn cydy? Their monoclonal drug
| Leronlimab has 3 clinical trials with the FDA and has a fast
| track designation. They've also applied for an upgrade to NASDQ.
| Current price is $5.38. Their suppose to release results on their
| COVD trial any day now.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| not really an interview. It wasn't clear they even talked to him
| at all?
|
| [EDIT: ok, they did talk to him, but this still isn't what most
| publications would call "an interview" ]
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've taken 'interview' out of the title above. Not
| necessary really.
| ksherlock wrote:
| "This story is so much bigger than me," Mr. Gill told The Wall
| Street Journal in his first interview since the unboxing this
| week of a volatile new stock-market game. "I support these
| retail investors, their ability to make a statement."
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| They seem to have gotten a couple of comments from him, then
| fleshed it out with remarks from his mother and a few other
| online identities, plus some simple background research.
|
| Nothing like I would expect for "an interview with...", which
| would normally be dominated by the subject's own words.
| f430 wrote:
| What makes WSB legal vs emails about imminent pump on an
| unspectacular stock?
|
| What stops somebody from purchasing aged reddit accounts and then
| pumping up, upvoting their own threads?
| seanalltogether wrote:
| matt levine talks about this very thing in one of his other
| posts on wsj
|
| > So if you buy stock with the purpose of pushing the price up
| so that other people will buy it, that's market manipulation.
| If you buy stock hoping that the price will go up because other
| people buy it, that's not market manipulation; that's just
| normal. Those things are not so different. There is a
| "traditional four-part test for manipulation that has developed
| in case law": (1) That the accused had the
| ability to influence market prices; (2) that the accused
| specifically intended to create or effect a price or price
| trend that does not reflect legitimate forces of supply and
| demand; (3) that artificial prices existed; and (4) that the
| accused caused the artificial prices.
| neuronic wrote:
| The law doesn't matter anymore because it never mattered for
| the rich. The normal folks still remember the 2008 bail outs
| were the criminal Wall St gang got off the hook using tax
| payer money.
|
| I don't really think the Wall St gangsters will have such a
| good time for that much longer.
| JacobSuperslav wrote:
| nothing. I'm in the social media business and I can tell you
| it's very easy to make $30-50k a month gaming reddit(as an
| individual) using farmed accounts and it's been going on for
| years. Not necessarily with stock schemes. they got next to
| none security when it comes to stuff like this. agency that I
| worked at a few years ago literally had thousands of aged
| reddit/twitter accounts in their portfolio. there are whole
| apps available for sale that manage your reddit farms including
| fingerprint faking, proxy management, captcha
| solving(outsourced to developing countries), etc. the market
| for it is pretty huge.
| sn_master wrote:
| Look at DFV's account. He's been talking about GME since
| mid-2019.
| findjashua wrote:
| web archive: http://archive.today/iP9IX
| devops000 wrote:
| I hope one day we will see an IPFS link
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| Why do people constantly have to re-invent the wheel? :(
|
| Freenet [0] has been providing censorship-resistant,
| anonymous, decentralized hosting for 20 years - and is still
| in active development!
|
| You could upload it to Freenet without any server whatsoever
| and it would stay online for as long as it is popular, even
| if your machine goes offline.
|
| And you'd be anonymous while doing so!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet
| prepend wrote:
| Freenet doesn't make money for speculators like ipfs.
| Making gobs of money is an important feature driving wheel
| reinvention, I think.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Thank you for sharing, I didn't even know this existed and
| no one brought it up during the deplatforming debate this
| month.
| junippor wrote:
| Wow ok. The value of HN has decreased to almost zero for
| me, but you've made it worth the month. Thanks for this!
| kevincox wrote:
| https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTW7sdBbZ1BXau8Cmrpv5srf38GZi1AiWWBBkv.
| ..
|
| There you go. It's not perfect though because a lot of the
| links still point to live assets. Captured the important
| bits.
| pmlnr wrote:
| What is stopping you from making and sharing one?
| motoboi wrote:
| How to generate one?
| t-writescode wrote:
| Compared to the general air I've been seeing about articles
| hating on a bunch of Redditors, this one is decidedly more
| neutral and seems to speak more about what is actually happening
| than "redditors bad, mess with stock, they evil".
|
| I appreciate that. Not enough to give WSJ $20 (!!!) a month, but
| I do appreciate it.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I'm honestly confused by the press around this event.
|
| I get it, /DFV started a short squeeze and got rich, that is
| great for him. I don't support naked shorting, it should probably
| be illegal (if it is not already) and it looks that was part of
| the reason this happened. Everyone has been suspecting for a
| while (especially here) that a lot of volatility in stocks like
| TSLA etc was due to Robinhood.
|
| As of 5:33 EST, I'm on CNN right now and the main headline
| "Inside the Reddit army that's crushing Wall Street" (And the
| reddit army isnt crushing Wall Street, it's crushing a few hedge
| funds that happened to hold short positions in a few stocks. ) ,
| so now a lot portion of America (and the world) is paying
| attention.
|
| Hedge funds blow up all the time. Enron blew up, basically all of
| the Investment Banks blew up in 2008, LTCM blew up. Why is this
| such a big deal?
| kzrdude wrote:
| But he didn't start a short squeeze, he invested in it before
| thinking it would be a short squeeze.
| afterburner wrote:
| > Everyone has been suspecting for a while (especially here)
| that a lot of volatility in stocks like TSLA etc was due to
| Robinhood.
|
| You sure about that? TSLA has a market cap of 750b. GME, _now_
| , is at 20b. Before this insanity it was a fraction of that.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I've also seen some speculation that Citadel may have been
| intentionally amplifying the short squeeze caused by Redditors,
| and then getting a sweet deal with Melvin capital by injecting
| money the latter sorely needed in exchange for a share of
| future revenue.
|
| I don't understand exactly how the math works out there to be
| able to evaluate if it was an extra good deal or not, but I
| find it credible that institutional investors jumping on the
| Reddit hype would be necessary in ordet to sustain the kind of
| momentum we are seeing.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I'm honestly confused by the press around this event.
|
| A lot of people wish they struck it rich, just like him. Money
| (to some degree) buys happiness. Gets you out of a job you
| don't like. Gets you more time with your family, less time
| doing stuff you don't like (like working).
|
| If the poor can "eat the rich" and "catch them with their
| shorts down" in a stock trade that literally millions of others
| are pouring into (check how many subscribers r/wsb has gained
| past 7 days), it's literal herd mentality.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| ya sure, i get it .... but he took a bet and won, He could
| have easily lost everything. For every winner in the options
| game there are probably 99 losers. It's call survivorship
| bias.
| afterburner wrote:
| He could have lost 50k, his initial investment, and
| considering he's young, and has a house, this would not
| represent ruin for him.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| If you are downvoting me, please say why.
| [deleted]
| sumedh wrote:
| > it's crushing a few hedge funds
|
| To be fair Robinhood also had to get extra funding to cover its
| liquidity issues.
|
| IB CEO also said they had to stop GME buying or else it might
| take down the system.
| eternalny1 wrote:
| He posted his daily update today, he has not sold his shares
| through all of this chaos.
|
| Talk about "diamond hands".
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l846a1/gme_...
| tedunangst wrote:
| A week ago he had 1000 option contracts, now he's at 500.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| This is one of the very, very few positive stories about how
| powerful the Internet can be to the masses. Keith is no different
| from Jim Kramer yelling on CNBC to buy some stock and watching it
| spike because their boomer audience raced to their landline
| phones and told their financial advisors to invest. It's just at
| a much faster pace, and old media is scared shitless of it, so
| they endlessly denigrate the people involved and call for daddy
| government to stop it.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think it's going to end well for retail
| investors.
| kgog wrote:
| So when he posted back in June, his GME holding was $121k.
| According to his YouTube video from then, that represented ~2% of
| his portfolio. That puts his portfolio at ~$6M.
|
| So much for "poor people fighting back" LOL.
| neuronic wrote:
| What kind of shitposting is this? That dude is one out of god
| knows how many.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| I'm not sure the HN crowd appreciates his style on this picture.
| I love me a bandana and am known to use some ironic wolf tee once
| in a while. I felt so inspired when I saw the photo and am not
| even joking.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| On wsb u/deepfuckingvalue showed he still holds 50,000 shares and
| 500 deep ITM call options. He has secured a profit of $13.8
| million dollars, and his remaining open position is valued at $45
| million.
|
| I would caution people to not quickly fall into the "if he's
| still in, I'm still in" meme. He has secured a $14 million bag,
| regardless if the stock goes to zero he's already secured a life
| changing amount of money, he can afford to weather the storm. If
| you're holding because he's still in and you haven't taken any
| profits you are nowhere near in the same position as him.
|
| A hodling mania has overtaken the subreddit that would make btc
| blush. Know that we don't know what kind of deals are happening
| behind closed doors in these two last days of manipulated
| activity. A sustained short interest does not necessarily mean
| that the shorts are holding their initial position, they could
| have closed and reopened at these elevated levels.
|
| The narrative has changed so quickly from this being a value
| play, to a short squeeze, to now militant activism via buying
| stock as a means to sticking it to the man. The rhetoric is as
| volatile as the price. The overall market is stressed, things are
| getting weird and I would not be surprised if this is the
| beginning of another stock market crash.
| acover wrote:
| Couldn't those with shorts buy otm calls to hedge the
| possibility of a squeeze?
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| OTM calls are super expensive because the IV is through the
| roof (it has been over 700% most of the week).
| tootie wrote:
| It says as much in the article. He literally just thought GME
| was undervalued on its merits. He had no intention of creating
| a squeeze or punishing Melvin.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Just because he's still in doesn't mean that it's actually
| worth $300 on the fundamentals. I could definitely see the
| argument that $20 was undervalued, but it's plain to see that
| the short-squeeze is now part of the calculation of value.
|
| There is no way that GameStop has an _actual_ fundamental
| value of $300 per share. That price is clearly inflated, and
| in a few weeks will decrease, probably to somewhere above
| $20, but not that much higher. The market will eventually
| correct, but $300 is an over-correction for sure.
| hehehaha wrote:
| The guy struck rich! Same with people who shorted crude last
| year when it went straight to -40. Billions were made.
| sumedh wrote:
| > He had no intention of creating a squeeze
|
| If I am not mistaken he did say in one of his videos that
| there is a chance for a squeeze to happen.
| ggggtez wrote:
| I believe this is CYA (cover your ass) language. Given the
| recent interest in the case, he's likely saying now that he
| didn't intend to (or that even if he intended to, he didn't
| think it was within his power) as a pre-emptive defense
| against litigation.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| ... and if bitcoin is any guide, people can hodl forever,
| bacause they are no longer doing it blindly. Who will blink
| first?
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The difference is the supply of bitcoin is fixed. Whereas a
| company can issue shares at any time. Obviously if the market
| cap stays at $30 billion for a long time, Gamestop management
| is going to start spending their overvalued stock like
| drunken sailors.
|
| First it'll be just to plug up the money their operations are
| constantly losing. Then they'll start going on acquisition
| sprees, giving out giant compensation packages, get into
| empire building. Maybe they'll buy a movie studio or a Vegas
| casino. That's a constant supply of new stock that will keep
| pushing down the price.
|
| AMC already took advantage of the meme madness by selling a
| huge chunk of shares to lock in some cash. That's why AMC
| didn't moon like GME. But give it a week or two, and GME's
| board will pretty much be forced to do the same thing.
| rcoveson wrote:
| > Know that we don't know what kind of deals are happening
| behind closed doors in these two last days of manipulated
| activity.
|
| As the saying goes: If you're at a poker table and you can't
| tell who's the fish, get up. You're the fish.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| A ton of people aren't doing any thinking for themselves. I'm
| pretty convinced there's some kind of organized manipulation
| attack going on within r/wsb.
|
| The same reason Parler got taken down for inciting violence
| without proper moderation, I'm seeing a lot of baseless claims
| from literally millions of people who do not understand how
| large/complex the financial systems at play are.
|
| I'm kind of worried Reddit could shut down r/wsb because of the
| amount of influential misinformation being spread.
| yreg wrote:
| Reddit admins have been rather supportive of
| WallStreetBets[0], even helping the mods with special
| technical support and tooling to handle the load of users.
| They seem to have a good relationship.
|
| Also kn0thing endorsed yesterday. He's no longer officially
| affiliated with reddit, but it still says something.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l7yc12/w
| sb_...
| dylanz wrote:
| There is no misinformation in there. It's average people
| buying, and the market is doing its thing. The eye-opening
| part of this is how brokerages like Robinhood are reacting.
| sumedh wrote:
| > I'm pretty convinced there's some kind of organized
| manipulation attack going on within r/wsb
|
| Do you have any proof for that? If not then arent you the one
| who is spreading misinformation?
| ggggtez wrote:
| I personally won't go as far as the grandposter here, but
| I'd be at least skeptical of any investment advice from
| random internet people.
|
| Even if this instance is not manipulation, I'm sure there
| are people on wsb that do try to make money through
| manipulating each other. I think that's just the nature of
| the internet in general.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I think this is sound advice. I still have some in, but I
| locked in gains such that if I lost anything still in I'd still
| be well up.
| yreg wrote:
| Well if a stock market crash triggered by this is realistic
| (which I agree is), doesn't it make sense to hold a bit of GME
| for insurance?
|
| I understand that there's no guarantee one will be able to exit
| it successfully even if it flies so high that it crashes the
| market. However I don't see a better insurance for people who
| don't have access to options/inverse etfs and don't want to
| sell their stocks.
| afterburner wrote:
| > Well if a stock market crash triggered by this is realistic
| (which I agree is), doesn't it make sense to hold a bit of
| GME for insurance
|
| What is the reasoning here? Are you under the impression GME
| wouldn't crash right alongside the market? This isn't BTC or
| gold we're talking about. It's just another stock.
| yreg wrote:
| Presumably the crash would occur after the GME price
| skyrockets and shorts (and then their brokers and clearing
| houses) go broke trying to close the short positions.
|
| The insurance pays up _if_ they buy your share.
|
| Do you have another idea how it could end?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It could end by simply crashing without shorts going
| broke. There's not much reason to believe a larger short
| squeeze is forthcoming.
| yreg wrote:
| Why would that crash the entire stock market?
| leadingthenet wrote:
| > Are you under the impression GME wouldn't crash right
| alongside the market?
|
| Well ... yeah. Today it hasn't.
| rzz3 wrote:
| That seems like sound logic to me. GME has been a vortex this
| week sucking up value from the rest of the market. Seems
| smart for the next few days/week at least until we learn
| otherwise.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| The problem for GME is that it will crash regardless if
| there's stock market crash or not. When a market crash
| happens you're much better off holding value stocks of solid
| companies.
|
| As of mr. DFV, I'm sure he'd like to close his position at
| the current price. But my guess is that he prefers to hold
| for his reputation. Since he already guaranteed more money
| than he would ever need, it's not a bad decision. The other
| option is that he believes it's going climb even more, which
| is possible. But don't assume people hold for any reason
| other than making money. Once the squeeze is over it will
| fall like dominoes.
| redkoala wrote:
| This isn't really the place for financial advice. Matt Levine
| does publish a newsletter that attempts to unpack the
| GameStop Reddit mania situation and what it means for the
| retail investors piling on.
| delaaxe wrote:
| You can always place limit sell orders
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(page generated 2021-01-29 23:00 UTC)