[HN Gopher] Quest for Hollywood fame splits Redditors at heart o... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-12 23:00 UTC)