Cuomo: 1. Vlad the liar: 0.

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The healthiest option might be if new legislation comes in to effectively stop the market-rigging but it applies to the hedge funds (and is enforced properly) just as much as individual investors.

Amazingly there actually seems to be some cross-party political consensus in support of that.

The funniest thing has been watching all these hotshots who normally rig the deck in their own favour getting completely outraged when it's been done to them. Err hello? Yes that is how we feel, most of the time. Welcome to the angry club, you heartless gits.

I do love seeing the big guys get outsmarted in their own game.

But, the whole business (pun intended) of stock markets is immoral. People making money just moving money around with no real product is detestable.

I was up all night last night laughing at the absurdity of it all (stonks...). Also spent some time looking at cryptocurrency. It will be really interesting to see it all play out.

It's amazing how easy it is to bring 2 opposing sides together: Ted Cruz agreeing with a Tweet from AOC:
https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1354833603943931905

Of course, there are the problems cropping up:

Source: https://gizmodo.com/google-deletes-100-000-negative-reviews-of-robinhood-ap-1846156699

Similarly, the newly appointed Treasury Secretary may have to recuse herself from involvement in any investigations, due to recent payments from Citadel, which was involved:

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/01/yellen-made-millions-in-wall-street-speeches-453223

I also understand there is a class-action suit against "Robinhood" related to their actions in preventing certain stocks being purchased, too.

Interesting times.

Well, briefly together, maybe...
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354848253729234944
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354879766843830272

AOC knows exactly what she's dealing with here, and she's right.

The Ontario Teachers pension fund made some money off one of the stocks targeted by these redditors. My understanding is Blackberry, Nokia, some retail stores and most notably Gamestop were all targeted. A lot of these businesses were on a downward trend and it appeared they were doomed to fail sooner or later. Gamestop was losing ground due in part to the changing trends in videogame sales going more and more digital. And I hated shopping there (Ebgames where I am) as I found there store associates to be rather pushy on sales of items I didn't care for or want. Retail stores were losing ground thanks to online shopping. Blackberry seems to be making some ground naturally due to a patent deal with Huawei and a deal with Amazon. They will be ok.

But the irony of the trading app predominantly used by these redditors doesn't escape me. They "stole from Wall Street" using an app or service called Robinhood.

I quite agree, KraftieKortie. The stock market is way too artificially high, much like what was the precursor to the great crash of 1929. Back then, stock speculation drove up the market. We are seeing this happening again with certain stocks. One of my good friends that constantly watches the markets has said the same thing about this issue.

For clarification, I am not a Wall Street investor, except for the amount that I must contribute into my teachers retirement fund (forced by the university, it is in mutual funds). However I do pay close attention to the stock market as it does tie into the commodities market that I do actively invest in. Over the past year, GameStop has been circling the drain due to mismanagement. They were nearly bankrupt. Any news about the company was bad. It was on the verge of being downgraded to a penny stock level. Then this week happened. The great jump of the value for the stock had nothing to do with the actions of the actual company. It was caused by the actions of those jumping into the market to directly influence the value of the stock.

It did do some redistribution of wealth, but at what cost? This event can set off a collapse of other unstable stocks. If you look to the crash of 1929, it is an example of what can happen when people start to invest just because they see something go up in value rather than due to actual market strength. It only takes one to start the cascade effect.

I personally see this as risky business to do overall, as this behavior will tend to infect other markets than just stocks. The country may be in for some hard times to come if that does happen. Some are now speculating that they will try this method with the silver market. It will fail, as it has a physical component linked to the values that stocks do not have:

https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2021 ... inues.html

Guess that the group plotting this move have never heard of what happened to the Hunt brothers back in 1980. They lost big on trying to corner that market. I remember that point well, as I was just starting to buy silver at that time. My old coin dealer sat on a 1000 ounce silver bar for thirty years as he bought it at the wrong time when the market was artificially too high . His financial loss was something I learned from.

This is a bit different as the concerted effort was to buy Gamestop shares to raise the value against limited timescale hedged bets. Mainly in order to stop the original players from doing the opposite - deliberately finishing off the business so they could profit from it. The majority of those involved know that in time their shares will go back down again, that's inevitable. It's only risky for those who've come in late viewing this as a genuine money-making opportunity, which was never the point. It was a making-the-predators-choke opportunity.

It may have started that way, but things change on this issue with the passage of time. As you mentioned, some people who hear of someone making a fast buck on that company stock will want in on the action. It will not end well for the latecomers left holding the bag. They will lose while others gain.. The predators are likely the ones who will not end up with a bust in that situation. They are like sharks in the blood red water, while the latecomers are the snacks. This situation is showing that the stock market is too easily manipulated by outside influences. It is not stable and headed for a major correction in my opinion.

Yes, the many small busts will have to be equal to the couple major big busts. Simple math. That's why I personally didn't make any attempt to shuffle any dollars around to try to get in on GME at all - far too risky by the time I heard about it and it's headline news everywhere.. likely nearing it's peak and then all the retail investors who bought in based on hype will be the ones holding the hot potato when the music stops. No thanks - too risky - I'll keep my eyes open for more stable/less risky opportunities.

As for the market being manipulated.. GOOD! Why should only the big guys being able to manipulate it at the expense of all the little guys? That's essentially what's happened here - a whole bunch of little guys banded together to use their collective purchasing power to make moves that typically only big players could game the system with before.

You may be right that this will result in new regulations.. the big guys won't let the regulators allow the little guys to have leverage if they can avoid it and help rig the game so their casino continues to fleece main street to payout on wall street.

As for overvaluation & volatility of the entire stock market as a whole and a major correction/crash - I dunno.. haven't been following it at all for the last couple years. You could be right, or maybe it's only certain symbols or sectors that are ripe for correction and the market as a whole is operating Okay and will continue to do so. Dunno tbh.

I believe they caught it in time this time.....but this sort of wildcat speculation leads to stock market crashes.

It’s capitalism gone haywire.

It's capitalism working exactly as intended. Free market supply & demand. No one says the demand has to be based on careful business analysis of the company's financials. It can be in high demand just to screw a hedge fund. That's capitalism. The markets don't have to exist solely for make benefit the great wall street giants of America - as Borat might say.

Obviously it's impossible for the price to stay sky high and a bunch of small players are going to lose their investments. Ideally it would be Millions and Millions of people each losing a few hundred bucks or so vs. thousands of people losing their life's savings - but only those who gambled on this will find out how things shake out for them & their decisions.

But it definitely hasn't gone haywire. It's capitalism in action. Supply/demand, buying/selling - the market is functioning as it's supposed to to facilitate trades. The only major difference is that some giant as*holes with deep pockets got shafted instead of almost always winning at the expense of the little guy.

But as for the entire thing? This sums it up quite nicely:

Me losing a few hundred bucks would be disastrous......

And me when I didn't have it to lose - so I wouldn't risk it.

But if these gamblers each have tens of thousands of dollars (or more) to invest, losing a few hundred bucks is a drop in the bucket & a completely acceptable loss just to stick it to some hedge fund as*holes. It would be for me! And clearly a whole lot of people also came to that conclusion. It's just my HOPE that the majority of the people eating losses are guys with pockets at least $10K deep and that they each only lose a few hundred bucks.. but I fear that there's going to be a lot of people who maybe had $1-2K to play with and they're going to lose most of it in an expensive lesson & setback in their financial lives. Live and learn, I suppose.

Risk tolerance & the ability to absorb losses changes when your capital/budget changes. There are a lot of things I can't afford because I'm too poor, but my friend can risk half a million dollars on a business project & hope that it works out and makes money when it's done. There are always bigger fish with deeper pockets.. but this story is about a metric s**t tonne of small fish who pooled their money together, so my hope is that when the music stops and losses are realized that the losses are spread out quite widely and there aren't too many bankruptcies besides maybe the big guy hedge fund jerks.

The stock market might be immoral....but it exists, and our economy depends too much on it.

We have to regulate it—otherwise, many rich people will become poor, and many poor people will become much poorer.

The other solution is just to dispense with capitalism altogether. Nice in theory, but disastrous in actuality.

I wanted to point out that the stock market can make or break a business, as it funds the businesses involved. When a stock goes down, it does not just affect those holding stock. It can reduce the funds within the company to a point that it cannot survive. This money problem happened many times in the great crash of 1929. Workers were out of a needed job as the bottom line dropped out of the market. That is why stock market manipulation is dangerous to do overall. Many feel that the pinch will only affect the rich owners, but that is not always the case.

One of my great uncles was a Wall Street investor pre-1929. He saw the crash coming and cashed out in gold. Much of his wealth was then hidden from the world (due to the gold act of 1933 that he violated). He was one of the few winners from the crash and bought up land when it became cheap. Most of his Wall Street friends did not fair as well. He lived his life as a normal person would, abet he never worried about needing money after that. I did not inherit his money or land, but only his wisdom from the stories he told me. That lesson was better than gold.