"I know I come off as a buzzkill" that's exactly why we're here Richard. No sensationalism, no ridiculous claims, no stock picks or clickbait. Just good, honest, educated looks at finance
There are so many P.T. Barnum's in finance and economics, anything to do with money really. Having someone calm and reasonable is like an oasis in a desert.
Normally, making a story like this where hedge fund managers are explicitly bad guys and retail investors as good guys would be a fine idea for a movie, but the fact that an actual investment cult spawned from this situation and they now essentially have a big budget film validating their sentiments worries me immensely.
@@NohandleenteredDan Olson makes excellent videos. Especially his financial videos about nft, the meta verse, and the finance cult. All of his videos are awesome though
@@shadeitplease7383 I have 0 interest in the 50 Shades of Grey series but I watched him talk for over 2 hours about how much those films suck. He's such a great storyteller.
You think that is bad? Crypto is a much worse cult. Basically the same thing here but instead of it being a single stock it is Buttcoin, sh!tcoins and memecoins. So GameStop amplified by 1000.
How can I get a more profitable investment in the market? If you are ruining and liquidating this bomb, do you cut it? After the last big fall, I lost a lot of money
Richard, I was able to earn CPE towards my CPA license in Illinois by listening to your podcast on LimiQ. Was a whiplash to see the plane bagel at work. haha
Take advantage of Blinkist's (today's sponsor) big promo of 7-days free PLUS a special discount of 60% on the Blinkist Annual premium valid only until November 21st: bit.ly/ThePlainBagelBlinkist
Please keep putting things in perspective, as party-crashing it might be! I think you can‘t emphasize too many times that there is no „magic“ or „secret“ in investing. Nothing can change that at first you ALWAYS have to earn the money and usually keep earning your money by work all of your life - and that‘s fine!
The problem is the film tried to create a story of good guys and bad guys. Of course there's nothing wrong with showing hedge fund managers as villains, but trying to show the retail investors as heroes is just not accurate. For all their blather about politics and sticking it to the hedge funds, they were ultimately just trying to make cheap money on speculative trading, exactly like the hedge funds do. And most of them got burned, because buying in to gamestop as it flying past $20 was just the dumbest of dumb money. There is definitely a movie in the gamestop and greater memestock shenanigans of 2021. But it isn't a story of heroes and villains. The events really need to be best told through a black comedy or a farce. A story of a fairly normal situation, a hedge fund shorting a small company based on a possibly over-pessimistic view, some small players speculating that position is too negative, and then it just grows and grows, as dumber and dumber money piles in, forcing everyone involved to have to address this craziness in their own crazy ways. It might be a harder film to make, and not as crowdpleasing for the populist set, but it would likely be a lot funnier, and more accurate.
Netflix did a really excellent documentary on the GME situation that looked at all sides of the issue and explained the complexity of it. I'd highly recommend that over "dumb money"
@@0DTEVIXCALLSthere was a brief part in tifa where he dunked on Robinhood's( and similar online exchanges like it) business model of basically move fast break things until consequences caught up to them, and Vlad trying to weasle his way out of admitting that his business model faced liquidity problem
Ignore this guy go watch it to be extremely skeptical dan olson view is from meltdowners extremely bias and intentionally excludes important data to mislead
Why watch this movie when you could watch This Is Financial Advice for free, which also gets all the information correct and is probably more entertaining too
It would be great if Folding Ideas did a follow-up on how the movie throws gasoline on the GMC conspiracy theories, and how the motivation for the movie (read, Hollywood greed) is despicable exploitation of the MOASS delusion.
@@PapaCharlie9 it would be especially great considering he originally got his start as a film "critic" (he has said before he does not consider himself a critic, but if someone were to call him that he would not correct them lol)
GameStop is what inspired me to take investing seriously now in my 20s, not chasing the the new hot stock or day trading but more search for true value stocks or contrarian investment for long positions. better now then never to start learning the right way to invest.
@@placeholderdoe I hope you're right, but I think you're wrong. GME cultists are convinced GameStop is a long term hold and that they're now value investors, because the MOASS myth is no longer sustainable since they've spent three years promising their friends and family they'll be billionaires any day now. This guy talks exactly like a cultist, but if I'm wrong then that's a good thing.
14:00 I think there is an important distinction to be make between "pausing trading on a stock" and "only pausing "buy-to-open" trading on a stock. The former is relatively common for volatile stocks, while the latter is perishing rare. Not only that, but the former is effectively trade-neutral, while the latter puts express downward pressure on the stock price.
Pausing trading of a stock is done by an exchange not by a brokerage. They don‘t have that power. It would be patently ridiculous to stop their customers from selling (especially since they price did proceed to crash shortly after). Given that you don‘t need additional collateral to close the positions the brokerages in question limited customer abilities as little as they could.
@@lennoo5682 That's not what happened in this case though. It was the brokerages, not the exchanges, that prevented buying the stock, while allowing selling. That's why people find it fishy.
@@funtechuDid you miss the part of the video where he explains exactly this? They couldn't afford the clearing house fees from so many people buying such a volatile stock at the same time. Of course they'd freeze buying but not selling
@@connormauk3210 You misunderstand. Typically in that situation, trading for the stock is paused. What is unusual is that they only stopped buying, not selling. None of the other brokerages mentioned did that - only Robinhood. And that's unusual.
@@connormauk3210 adding to your comment, it was even worse than just the clearing fees. Robinhood is ran on a system that enables users to be able to start trading as soon as they open an account: See during the period when customers were waiting for their money to be transferred from bank to Robinhood, Robinhood lets them act like the money's already there to trade, and Robinhood will foot the bill in advance and just subtract money from customer when the money arrives later. At the peak of the GME frenzy, the stock was trading at 3 figure prices, and hordes of people are rushing in on the FOMO, making new accounts and buying as much as they can and... guess what happened to Robinhood's liquidity during all that. It's very likely that if rh didn't shut down buying, soon they wouldn't be able to pay for their customers' buy orders anyway
One issue with your review, the GameStop employee doesn’t hate his job, he loves the store but just hates his boss and the corporate mandates. But he stays on at the end just with better conditions since his boss knows he doesn’t need this job lol
The best documentary on this by far was Folding Ideas "This Is Financial Advice" by Dan Olson. Same guy who did the Line Goes Up video on NFTs and Dead Malls video on Decentraland
Now look into the trading pauses in GME during DFVs livestream yesterday. They paused trading before he even went live with no market volatility trading.
So kinda fun fact, the actress who plays Riri (Harmony's partner) is the main character in Industry on HBO. Completely flipping her role and working for a large bank in London as a trader.
The Main shady thing during the Gamestop shortsqueeze was when trading was shut down. You never see trading shut down when the small guy loses and the big investor wins. Only the other way around, that felt a lot like a 'the casino always wins' moment where the games were stopped because someone unintended started to win. 11:00 Yeah this
I haven’t seen the movie, so take my opinion for what you will - based on what I’m hearing it sounds like this is one of those movies that’s not necessarily for people that are interested in the financial and political underpinnings of the game stop fiasco, but people who are angry at rich people in this country in general. The GameStop fiasco is just sort of their medium with which they’re painting. If that’s the purpose, I kind of wish they had just made a fictional story up entirely instead of trying to twist an actual and extremely complicated story into what they wanted. I include myself in the people that are extremely fed up with greedflation and and just a general tyranny of billionaires in this country, but I wish they wouldn’t use it as an excuse to gloss over, important factual and historical details. It really just further is the narrative that the poor people that are angry at the rich people just want revenge and don’t actually understand economics and finance nor care to.
"It really just furthers the narrative that the poor people that are angry at the rich people just want revenge and don't actually understand economics and finance nor care to." That because that IS the case. Hate to break into you. But most poor people are never gonna do what it takes to learn because they're lazy when it comes to learning in general. It's easier to be a victim. Anyone who's learning or knows the game, could tell you that this was not gonna play out the way they thought it would. The moment I learned that it's institutions and market makers that move the market and not retail investors, it became clear that poor people were just playing themselves. Hell of a show though 🤷
Especially since the only thing meme stock cults have achieved is an even bigger transfer of wealth from the lower and middle class to the richest people in the world. They aren't actually changing the world in any meaningful way other than making it worse by spreading conspiracy theories.
Have you seen "Other People's Money"? It's an early 90s movie with Danny DeVito. I don't know that it would warrant a movie review. It isn't that complicated. It is a fun movie though. DeVito gives a good speech in it.
Isn't the hold "hodl" thing pretty obviously something people say so they can be the first to sell when the price gets high enough? It's something a conman would tell their marks.
One thing you didn't mention, not sure if the movie does, much of the furor at the time was over the fact that the short interest on GME was supposedly well over 100% but there seemed to be efforts to hide this. Can you maybe elaborate on that aspect?
actually this is just a misunderstanding of what that >100% short interest means. Many novice traders who rushed in to buy into the shortsqueeze movement thought it meant that over 100% shorted means there are fraudulent shares being used in short positions, but what it actually meant is this: a single stock can be shorted for multiple times. Say Ben decided to short stock X, he borrowed a single stock X and immediately sold on the market to Jerry; but Emily also wants to short stock X, so she borrowed a stock, which happened to be the same one, from Jerry, sold it again to someone else. At this point, you can say that this single stock has been shorted 200%. Now imagine this phenomenon happening at a wider level, and you can see how a company's stock can easily accrue short interest over 100%, when many traders believe that its finances aren't doing too hot. If I remember correctly, the short interest around gamestop's stock at the time was something around 140%, which is a signal that the short position against the stock is staggeringly high, quite possibly recklessly so, and you could argue that maybe the analysis of this kind of recklessness caused people to stand firm in their hold position. But based on posts and comments at the time, it's more likely that people misunderstanding the number, thinking it's a clear evidence of fraud, that galvanized people's antagonistic sentiments against the hedge funds, and that kind of attitude is still very present today if you go look into their investing subreddits, where these novice traders still take financial documents, misunderstood what they meant and thought they found proof of fraud on the part of the short sellers, and double down on their efforts to buy stocks of declining companies.
Eg insider trading but turned a blind eye and call it something else basically legalized theft. Pfof insider info Dark pools to hide buys and sells. Hft fast front run after gather pfof data Algos automate trading. With all combined you get insider criminal stealing financial terrorists.
I remember buying some puts (like $1k) in the middle of the squeeze thinking this is absurd and then it kept going up and was like ok maybe I should sell, but then made a small profit even though the price of the stock was even higher 😅. That's very rare to see in options btw, but was due to "implied volatility" (the price paid for the options in general) offsetting the increase in stock price.
My dividend journey began when I realized that two particular expenses in my budget were always going to go up and never go down. The two expenses were taxes and insurance. I realized that the dramatic rise in both will need some added income. So, I started buying shares paying dividends. I can now see that this will be the path I need to take to make sure those two expenses will not overtake my future income.
FTX didn't buy the right politicians. They sold about $8b in crypto that didn't exist, while at the last counting Citadel has sold about $65b in stock it didn't own.
Thank you Richard, this was a very valuable piece of public service you did - clearing things out and giving your sane and rational and professional opinion about the movie and its emotional message. I'm sorry you had to say it like almost feeling guilty, but I'm glad you are doing this! I hope you don't get too much hate for being against the herd though. Keep it up, I really enjoy your balanced views and very informative videos.
him getting on public stream and analyzing specific stocks is like, a big no-no. I interned for a short period at a securities trading firm in China, and a big thing we got told about our online activities is that not only are we not allowed to casually give financial advice (i.e. buy this, hold that), under no circumstances should we talk about any specific stock/security. it's because it violates know your customer and the principle of matching risk preferences, when we talk to a general audience, we can't know everyone's financial profile and risk tolerance, and even licensed investment analyst shouldn't talk specifics to general online audience, they can only talk about broad concepts and general market analysis, not to mention we interns who weren't even licensed. I don't know if the US has similar provisions on social media use like in China, where a securities trader casually analyzing specific stocks on online platforms, if they got caught, will definitely get suspended for years or even barred from the industry for life. I do know that Keith got his trading licensed suspended tho, so make of that as you will.
I divide into three categories what people can do with securities. They can invest. They could trade. And they could gamble. The gme story is one of gambling. Perhaps the hedge fund side were trading not gambling. But retail money was just gambling.
I see it a bit differently, and worse. It really was just a big pump and dump scheme that was dressed up in a "common person vs the billionaires"story. But, both the retail investors flocking to game stop and the hedge funds that (ironically) made the most money off it, were just pushing the price up way beyond the fundamentals, and all but the least knowledgeable had to know they'd have to exit, with everyone left holding the bag. So, not a gamble, but more of a scam.
@@Hyperpandas I dont think I see the "scam". The hedge funds certainly were not trying to convince retailers to buy the stock. Perhaps you could argue the WSB were "scamming" other retail purchasers, but I think many if not most of them also lost money. I call it gambling, because the retailer investor had no "edge". They were just hoping that either there was someone more ":dumb" then them to buy the stock, or hoping (gambiling), that some type of short squeeze would happen. Anyway, peace.
@@buyerclub2 The hedge funds who came in later wanted more people to come in for sure, both because it helped pump up the price and they needed someone to buy when those funds exited. But the scam was also perpetrated by the organized retail investors, whether all of them knew it or not. Encouraging everyone to buy the stock with the sole purpose of propping it up is identical to a large fund doing the same, because the end game is to exit at the inflated price leaving everyone else holding the bag. It doesnt matter that some of them told themselves they were just sticking in to the (original) hedge funds with ridiculous short positions, it could only end in tears for whoever couldnt get out when it inevitably collapsed. That's what a pump and dump scam is. I think we're actually seeing the same thing (based on your latest comment), I just see it as more nefarious than you do. Which is fair, its just a matter of perspective and opinion.
Oh my god. I thought you had covered everything around the Gamestop topic already. But I couldn't find an extensive video about it on your channel. Turns out my memory wrongly attributed Folding Idea's "This is financial advice" to you lol
I'm curious...hedge funds lost a lot of money shorting at $13. Did anyone short it at $80 and make a ton when it dropped from the artificially high prices while it was being short squeezed?
This was my first time watching your channel... good job my man. 🤙 This might sound weird, but i really appreciate your word clarity. You have great prounounciation. 👍 Have you reviewed, "the worlds fastest indian"? My favorite movie of all time. ❤
9:49 asking price is $0.01 higher than the bid price. How does the broker make money in this case? He will buy at $13.43 and sell for $13.42? I must’ve mistaken something
the broker buy from a seller at 13.42, sell to a buyer at 13.43, and pockets 1cent/stock, the bigger the order the more money he keeps. Literally a scheme invented by, no joke, Bernie Madoff
@@sunnydong9069 but asking price is 13.43, where does broker buy a stock at 13.42? Bidding price is 13.42, means buyers only willing to pay 13.42 for it, right?
Yeah. They did a stock dilution that bought them some time, but as gaming moves further to digital stores, Gamestop’s having a hard time keeping up. People can buy physical copies of new games on Amazon as easily as Gamestop, and people trading in used games would much rather make $30 selling on Amazon than $3 from Gamestop, and buyers would rather get the game for $35-$40 rather than $50 at Gamestop.
Retail investors need to realize they are not buying stocks they are selling money. Hedge funds make so much because they buy and sell money. If you are investing in something you better be sure of 2 things that you will get your money back and you can get out of it if need be
The real funny thing is wall street best was basically laughing at DFV until the price starting going up. I haven’t see the movie but it sounds like the skipped over someone who also got in on GME early, Michael Burry. Yes, that Michael Burry.
I wish you'd explain the DTCC part a bit more. Why would disallowing buying solve any sort of margin problem that HOOD would have? If I recall correctly, GME was already not allowed to be traded on margin. So any purchase of the stock would have been with funds already in HOODs custody. What does volatility have to do with this at all? They'd have the funds to settle any buy orders.
It's a bit of a strange concept (and admittedly one I don't have work experience around), but settling trades doesn't just mean ensuring margin trades go through. Even settling normal trades comes with a risk of failure or non-delivery, which is why clearing houses are a vital part of the process. Think of it like a credit card company that checks if you have enough credit before allowing a purchase to go through; without that check, we'd run into some problems. This risk increases with the volatility of a stock, and so if Robinhood continued allowing buys for GME, the clearing house would have required higher fees to cover this risk. Now there is a valid criticism around Robinhood still allowing sell orders, but hopefully that clears things up a bit.
Playing game with marked cards on set up table where opponent use fake money, when you sacrifice money for which you had to give up your effort and time, is not the wisest strategy.
What annoys me the most with notion that the GameStop ordeal was some kind of "social movement" was that they weren't trying to fix any of the massive flaws or inequities in our economic system -- the ones we basically all agree exist -- they just wanted to be the ones cashing in on them.
Here is a massive point of vexation for me about this movie: They split-adjust GameStop's price. It's fucking excruciating. It is as if filming a motion picture about the Occupy-Wall-Street movement against the back-drop of the Twin Towers.
I mean that entire "stick it to the man"-framing echos (unsurprisingly) and ironically the dominant spirit of the whole issue (involuntarily or with intent by the film makers,...you decide) . What was that line from The Big Short about truth and poetry and people hating it!? Imagine this movie being totally 100% reasonable and not taking the cheering side of,...well "dumb money" (there is another hint in that choice for a title), how successful would it be? People don't seem to care as much about facts as they care about how they like to feel. It's this self-righteous conviction that blinds you in learning how stuff like this works for real. Great commentary and analysis,...will give it a watch!
Folding Ideas told this WAY better, with the actual story not the movie, plus a real deep dive into the ape culture. It was clearly a pump and dump though.
I'm good enough just listening to you describe that movie and just saved over an hour of my life for something educational. I think I'll read The Intelligent Investor again:)
Its a great commentary on, among other things, how people in social media silos create their own narratives as "truth", regardless of what the real truth might be. And at the same time, how this can completely work for said people, leaving them happy, as long as they can adapt the narrative to whatever future actually emerges. As well as also completely lead someone down a rabbit hole of nonsense that ends in disaster (families broken apart by COVID politics, for example, that are still broken to this day). Sound familiar? Combine stocks (well, money and economics in general), crypto, and politics together and half of America (at a minimum) has already fallen into this trap. The result is a fragility in the social fabric of society that more or less is guaranteed to break catastrophically at some (unknown) point in the future when reality diverges enough that no silo-bound narrative can rationalize what is happening. Some think the breaking point is already upon us, driven by politics in particular. -Matt
I will say, when I watched Dumb Money, I was surprised because it was better than I thought it would be at dealing with some of the more nuanced parts of what happened. I do think it would need more discussion on the fallout for it to be truly excellent, but all told it wasn't half-bad.
I love finance movies like the Big Short and Margin Call, it was kind of a bummer that this GME crap spawned the next big finance movie but I watched it eventually. It was a funny movie but the messaging was just so off. It’s glorifying a weird self imposed Ponzi scheme which is less a short squeeze and more a money suck from gullible retail investors. The emotional attachment people had with GME, the extreme exposure to a single volatile stock, and the obsession with ‘sending a message’ instead of earning a profit are some of the worst possible investing habits. That one girl who holds GME blames Wall St for screwing over her dad but it appears much more likely that’s related to PE or shareholder activism not shorting. Furthermore it paints Vlad Tenev and Ken Griffin as these big villains without bothering to go into any real detail on how brokerages or PFOF or any actual financial details work.
Don't apologize for this! People believing that the markets are magically and impossible to understand is why people end up not saving enough for retirement, or assuming that they'll be able to lotto their way to success, etc.
Yo, what's up everyone? It's your favorite commenter here with another video feedback. Today, I'm going to be reviewing out this video by the talented creator. Let me tell you, this video is absolutely amazing. I'm not even kidding. It's so good that I'm actually starting to feel a little empowered. I mean, how can someone be so talented? Seriously, though, this video is a must-watch. It's informative, entertaining, and just plain good. So what are you waiting for? Go check it out right now!
I wouldn't say rich investors go out of their way to close down a business, shorting still requires the share be bought and traded it's just they expect it to be a lot less than when they borrowed it. It's still scummy they can profit from a failing business and I don't fully doubt they aren't immune from being partly involved with their struggle (if someone says he bets you the first card on a brand new deck will be the jack of spades, you know he's going to pull a jack and you're going to lose money. ) Robin Hood pulling the stock did look sketchy, thanks for sharing why they were losing money but it's still dishonest offering access to stocks to the public then a meme gets pulled as people are having fun and rich short sellers very annoyed (hilarious). There are plenty of reasons not to let just anyone buy stocks, but I think part of it is you couldn't explain half of this to people when they're just dropping money into penny stocks and hyping up their friends to bet the same.
Robinhood in particular turned off the buy button because, unlike regular brokerages, they’d buy and sell stocks for you before making sure your money got through to them. It made them faster and easier to use than traditional brokerages, but also meant they could run out of money to buy a stock with. More traditional brokerages didn’t have this issue, and let people keep buying. Still, not a good look for that business model.
Wouldn't it be more fun to simply go nuts at a gambling casino? Personally, I'd empty my bank account and bet it all on number 12 at the roulette wheel.
I'm a little bit fuzzy as it's been minute but wasn't the main issue there was more short positions then there were total stocks to buy? (Multiple shorts on a single stock).
There's nothing impossible about that despite what the moron cultists tell you. A share can be shorted multiple times by multiple people, and in rare circumstances a company can be such a worthless dog that the short interest exceeds 100%, which can sometimes form the conditions necessary for a short squeeze. Dummies will tell you it's not possible to short a stock more than 100%, and that's because they're financially illiterate and don't know the first thing about how the stock market works.
My issue is with short selling, period. I can't sell a house that I don't own and buy it back later - that's an asinine concept. It's ridiculous, stupid, overcomplicated, and it obfuscates market data. It's downright immoral
It's not a total loss until your investment goes down to 0 or the investors liquidate their portfolio investments, only based on the reacting to fearmongering tactics that are used against the retail investor. Retail investor can profit from a long term time horizon portfolio too. ✊
The elevated price was a market distortion though, that didn't represent valuation fundamentals. It's like buying a house at 10x its actual value and claiming you don't lose money if you don't sell.
didn't a couple of companies people hedged their bets on have already gone bankrupt, like Sears and Bed Bath&Beyond? I would definitely categorize that as going down to 0
"I know I come off as a buzzkill" that's exactly why we're here Richard.
No sensationalism, no ridiculous claims, no stock picks or clickbait. Just good, honest, educated looks at finance
If keeping real is a buzz kill, I'll listen to the buzzkill. :)
Watched this movie yesterday and it is complete trash
Amen sir!!
There are so many P.T. Barnum's in finance and economics, anything to do with money really. Having someone calm and reasonable is like an oasis in a desert.
I grew up in eastern europe. Your buzz killing attitude is like being home, like visiting my parents. It's nice.
Normally, making a story like this where hedge fund managers are explicitly bad guys and retail investors as good guys would be a fine idea for a movie, but the fact that an actual investment cult spawned from this situation and they now essentially have a big budget film validating their sentiments worries me immensely.
That is exactly the feeling I got. It felt like it was valorizing a massive grift on which most people lost money.
There’s a good video from a channel called Folding Ideas about the cult. It’s definitely gotten very odd and very disturbing
@@NohandleenteredDan Olson makes excellent videos. Especially his financial videos about nft, the meta verse, and the finance cult. All of his videos are awesome though
@@shadeitplease7383 I have 0 interest in the 50 Shades of Grey series but I watched him talk for over 2 hours about how much those films suck. He's such a great storyteller.
You think that is bad? Crypto is a much worse cult. Basically the same thing here but instead of it being a single stock it is Buttcoin, sh!tcoins and memecoins. So GameStop amplified by 1000.
Just as Jared Vennett said in the Big Short, you should never glorify or advertise a position. This movie does the opposite lol.
How can I get a more profitable investment in the market? If you are ruining and liquidating this bomb, do you cut it? After the last big fall, I lost a lot of money
This movie approached the situation is the dumbest way possible
@@KamelaBarnettyes, cut your losses. Pick a stop loss (in your head) and if it goes below exit your position before it gets worse
Richard, I was able to earn CPE towards my CPA license in Illinois by listening to your podcast on LimiQ. Was a whiplash to see the plane bagel at work. haha
"Oh no, not the CPA"
-Mr waternoose
I thought you were trolling at first 😂 that’s baller.
Take advantage of Blinkist's (today's sponsor) big promo of 7-days free PLUS a special discount of 60% on the Blinkist Annual premium valid only until November 21st: bit.ly/ThePlainBagelBlinkist
WOOOOHOOOOOO NEW VIDEO
Great video. Is it the case that it was still possible to buy GME? Say Fidelity or Vanguard?
Great video!
Another legend! 🤧❤️
Please keep putting things in perspective, as party-crashing it might be! I think you can‘t emphasize too many times that there is no „magic“ or „secret“ in investing. Nothing can change that at first you ALWAYS have to earn the money and usually keep earning your money by work all of your life - and that‘s fine!
The problem is the film tried to create a story of good guys and bad guys. Of course there's nothing wrong with showing hedge fund managers as villains, but trying to show the retail investors as heroes is just not accurate. For all their blather about politics and sticking it to the hedge funds, they were ultimately just trying to make cheap money on speculative trading, exactly like the hedge funds do. And most of them got burned, because buying in to gamestop as it flying past $20 was just the dumbest of dumb money.
There is definitely a movie in the gamestop and greater memestock shenanigans of 2021. But it isn't a story of heroes and villains. The events really need to be best told through a black comedy or a farce. A story of a fairly normal situation, a hedge fund shorting a small company based on a possibly over-pessimistic view, some small players speculating that position is too negative, and then it just grows and grows, as dumber and dumber money piles in, forcing everyone involved to have to address this craziness in their own crazy ways. It might be a harder film to make, and not as crowdpleasing for the populist set, but it would likely be a lot funnier, and more accurate.
This
Life of Brian but it's about stocks since that is essentially what happened to Keith.
Thank you for posting this, and in such a sensible and responsible tone too. Thank you for doing the right thing.
Netflix did a really excellent documentary on the GME situation that looked at all sides of the issue and explained the complexity of it. I'd highly recommend that over "dumb money"
I'd recommend the Folding Ideas video here on UA-cam over anything else. "This is financial advice"
@@LeMAD22Does Folding talk about the historically high failures to deliver or SI or OBV or Vlad being proven a liar in court or anything?
@@0DTEVIXCALLSthere was a brief part in tifa where he dunked on Robinhood's( and similar online exchanges like it) business model of basically move fast break things until consequences caught up to them, and Vlad trying to weasle his way out of admitting that his business model faced liquidity problem
exactly the documentary was far better
Ignore this guy go watch it to be extremely skeptical dan olson view is from meltdowners extremely bias and intentionally excludes important data to mislead
Why watch this movie when you could watch This Is Financial Advice for free, which also gets all the information correct and is probably more entertaining too
I love that video/documentary - that’s what people really need to watch
It would be great if Folding Ideas did a follow-up on how the movie throws gasoline on the GMC conspiracy theories, and how the motivation for the movie (read, Hollywood greed) is despicable exploitation of the MOASS delusion.
@@PapaCharlie9 it would be especially great considering he originally got his start as a film "critic" (he has said before he does not consider himself a critic, but if someone were to call him that he would not correct them lol)
@@PapaCharlie9 There is a discussion/video of him and his co-writer discussing the dumb money film on his patron.
And hoe Dan olson intentionally excluded important data points for propaganda purposes.
GameStop is what inspired me to take investing seriously now in my 20s, not chasing the the new hot stock or day trading but more search for true value stocks or contrarian investment for long positions. better now then never to start learning the right way to invest.
Jesus, if GME was your inspiration I'd hate to see what your portfolio looks like.
@@sfdntkthey’re saying they started investing because of the absurdity of GME, choosing value over hot stocks
@@placeholderdoe I hope you're right, but I think you're wrong. GME cultists are convinced GameStop is a long term hold and that they're now value investors, because the MOASS myth is no longer sustainable since they've spent three years promising their friends and family they'll be billionaires any day now. This guy talks exactly like a cultist, but if I'm wrong then that's a good thing.
@@sfdntk you might be right. Have an amazing day
@@placeholderdoe and you too!
Thanks for reviewing this, Richard. I wasn't sure if I wanted to see it but you made it sound kinda entertaining. Might give it a chance now. :)
If you like Ben Mezrich books/movies (21, The Social Network), you'll like Dumb Money. His books are better though.
14:00 I think there is an important distinction to be make between "pausing trading on a stock" and "only pausing "buy-to-open" trading on a stock. The former is relatively common for volatile stocks, while the latter is perishing rare. Not only that, but the former is effectively trade-neutral, while the latter puts express downward pressure on the stock price.
Pausing trading of a stock is done by an exchange not by a brokerage. They don‘t have that power. It would be patently ridiculous to stop their customers from selling (especially since they price did proceed to crash shortly after). Given that you don‘t need additional collateral to close the positions the brokerages in question limited customer abilities as little as they could.
@@lennoo5682 That's not what happened in this case though. It was the brokerages, not the exchanges, that prevented buying the stock, while allowing selling. That's why people find it fishy.
@@funtechuDid you miss the part of the video where he explains exactly this? They couldn't afford the clearing house fees from so many people buying such a volatile stock at the same time. Of course they'd freeze buying but not selling
@@connormauk3210 You misunderstand. Typically in that situation, trading for the stock is paused. What is unusual is that they only stopped buying, not selling. None of the other brokerages mentioned did that - only Robinhood. And that's unusual.
@@connormauk3210 adding to your comment, it was even worse than just the clearing fees. Robinhood is ran on a system that enables users to be able to start trading as soon as they open an account: See during the period when customers were waiting for their money to be transferred from bank to Robinhood, Robinhood lets them act like the money's already there to trade, and Robinhood will foot the bill in advance and just subtract money from customer when the money arrives later. At the peak of the GME frenzy, the stock was trading at 3 figure prices, and hordes of people are rushing in on the FOMO, making new accounts and buying as much as they can and... guess what happened to Robinhood's liquidity during all that. It's very likely that if rh didn't shut down buying, soon they wouldn't be able to pay for their customers' buy orders anyway
One issue with your review, the GameStop employee doesn’t hate his job, he loves the store but just hates his boss and the corporate mandates. But he stays on at the end just with better conditions since his boss knows he doesn’t need this job lol
Isn't that effectively the same as hating your job?
The best documentary on this by far was Folding Ideas "This Is Financial Advice" by Dan Olson. Same guy who did the Line Goes Up video on NFTs and Dead Malls video on Decentraland
You’re the best Richard! Keep up the great work. On the way to 1mm subs
I remember watching this last month, and I was surprised to find out the real Keith Gill is better looking than the actor.😂
Now look into the trading pauses in GME during DFVs livestream yesterday. They paused trading before he even went live with no market volatility trading.
So kinda fun fact, the actress who plays Riri (Harmony's partner) is the main character in Industry on HBO. Completely flipping her role and working for a large bank in London as a trader.
The Main shady thing during the Gamestop shortsqueeze was when trading was shut down. You never see trading shut down when the small guy loses and the big investor wins. Only the other way around, that felt a lot like a 'the casino always wins' moment where the games were stopped because someone unintended started to win.
11:00 Yeah this
i enjoy your videos, very educational.. all the way from South Africa
I haven’t seen the movie, so take my opinion for what you will - based on what I’m hearing it sounds like this is one of those movies that’s not necessarily for people that are interested in the financial and political underpinnings of the game stop fiasco, but people who are angry at rich people in this country in general. The GameStop fiasco is just sort of their medium with which they’re painting.
If that’s the purpose, I kind of wish they had just made a fictional story up entirely instead of trying to twist an actual and extremely complicated story into what they wanted.
I include myself in the people that are extremely fed up with greedflation and and just a general tyranny of billionaires in this country, but I wish they wouldn’t use it as an excuse to gloss over, important factual and historical details.
It really just further is the narrative that the poor people that are angry at the rich people just want revenge and don’t actually understand economics and finance nor care to.
"It really just furthers the narrative that the poor people that are angry at the rich people just want revenge and don't actually understand economics and finance nor care to."
That because that IS the case. Hate to break into you. But most poor people are never gonna do what it takes to learn because they're lazy when it comes to learning in general. It's easier to be a victim.
Anyone who's learning or knows the game, could tell you that this was not gonna play out the way they thought it would.
The moment I learned that it's institutions and market makers that move the market and not retail investors, it became clear that poor people were just playing themselves.
Hell of a show though 🤷
Especially since the only thing meme stock cults have achieved is an even bigger transfer of wealth from the lower and middle class to the richest people in the world. They aren't actually changing the world in any meaningful way other than making it worse by spreading conspiracy theories.
I like the thumbnail, had a good chuckle.
Have you seen "Other People's Money"? It's an early 90s movie with Danny DeVito. I don't know that it would warrant a movie review. It isn't that complicated. It is a fun movie though. DeVito gives a good speech in it.
Was that the horse and buggy whip company, making the best product, in the advent of the automobile speech?
@@tigurr Yep. It's a good one. More humorous than "greed is good".
Another great video as always, well done!
Others have said it, but Folding Ideas' video on the matter is spectacularly good.
Spectacularly half truths propaganda on bbby grifting instead of gme
Isn't the hold "hodl" thing pretty obviously something people say so they can be the first to sell when the price gets high enough? It's something a conman would tell their marks.
"hodl" was first coined in a drunken rant during a downturn in Bitcoin's price. The writer was lamenting that it's price had fallen to $14.
Hodl is Hold On 4 dear life
One thing you didn't mention, not sure if the movie does, much of the furor at the time was over the fact that the short interest on GME was supposedly well over 100% but there seemed to be efforts to hide this. Can you maybe elaborate on that aspect?
actually this is just a misunderstanding of what that >100% short interest means. Many novice traders who rushed in to buy into the shortsqueeze movement thought it meant that over 100% shorted means there are fraudulent shares being used in short positions, but what it actually meant is this: a single stock can be shorted for multiple times. Say Ben decided to short stock X, he borrowed a single stock X and immediately sold on the market to Jerry; but Emily also wants to short stock X, so she borrowed a stock, which happened to be the same one, from Jerry, sold it again to someone else. At this point, you can say that this single stock has been shorted 200%. Now imagine this phenomenon happening at a wider level, and you can see how a company's stock can easily accrue short interest over 100%, when many traders believe that its finances aren't doing too hot.
If I remember correctly, the short interest around gamestop's stock at the time was something around 140%, which is a signal that the short position against the stock is staggeringly high, quite possibly recklessly so, and you could argue that maybe the analysis of this kind of recklessness caused people to stand firm in their hold position. But based on posts and comments at the time, it's more likely that people misunderstanding the number, thinking it's a clear evidence of fraud, that galvanized people's antagonistic sentiments against the hedge funds, and that kind of attitude is still very present today if you go look into their investing subreddits, where these novice traders still take financial documents, misunderstood what they meant and thought they found proof of fraud on the part of the short sellers, and double down on their efforts to buy stocks of declining companies.
^
Correct it was 226% of float and 140+% of total shares outstanding yes you heard me right over 100% of total shares in existence
Legal for market makers and that's a huge problem especially when they also own hf to trade against clients and retail.
Eg insider trading but turned a blind eye and call it something else basically legalized theft.
Pfof insider info
Dark pools to hide buys and sells.
Hft fast front run after gather pfof data
Algos automate trading.
With all combined you get insider criminal stealing financial terrorists.
I remember buying some puts (like $1k) in the middle of the squeeze thinking this is absurd and then it kept going up and was like ok maybe I should sell, but then made a small profit even though the price of the stock was even higher 😅. That's very rare to see in options btw, but was due to "implied volatility" (the price paid for the options in general) offsetting the increase in stock price.
Yep, had same experience with amc.
Always a join to see a new video from you
My dividend journey began when I realized that two particular expenses in my budget were always going to go up and never go down. The two expenses were taxes and insurance. I realized that the dramatic rise in both will need some added income. So, I started buying shares paying dividends. I can now see that this will be the path I need to take to make sure those two expenses will not overtake my future income.
Early squad!
Thanks Richard!
♥ from Malaysia!
Glad you're helping us walk through these nuances. Thanks.
Okay, your citadel chart looks a lot like the ftx scandal. Can you explain how Citadel can feed itself, but ftx could not do that for alameda.
FTX didn't buy the right politicians. They sold about $8b in crypto that didn't exist, while at the last counting Citadel has sold about $65b in stock it didn't own.
Thank you Richard, this was a very valuable piece of public service you did - clearing things out and giving your sane and rational and professional opinion about the movie and its emotional message. I'm sorry you had to say it like almost feeling guilty, but I'm glad you are doing this! I hope you don't get too much hate for being against the herd though. Keep it up, I really enjoy your balanced views and very informative videos.
As a CFA, did Keith Gill (aka Roaring Kiity) breached CFA Ethics Standard?
him getting on public stream and analyzing specific stocks is like, a big no-no. I interned for a short period at a securities trading firm in China, and a big thing we got told about our online activities is that not only are we not allowed to casually give financial advice (i.e. buy this, hold that), under no circumstances should we talk about any specific stock/security. it's because it violates know your customer and the principle of matching risk preferences, when we talk to a general audience, we can't know everyone's financial profile and risk tolerance, and even licensed investment analyst shouldn't talk specifics to general online audience, they can only talk about broad concepts and general market analysis, not to mention we interns who weren't even licensed. I don't know if the US has similar provisions on social media use like in China, where a securities trader casually analyzing specific stocks on online platforms, if they got caught, will definitely get suspended for years or even barred from the industry for life. I do know that Keith got his trading licensed suspended tho, so make of that as you will.
Blinkist seems like an awesome idea, I might have to try it out
I divide into three categories what people can do with securities. They can invest. They could trade. And they could gamble. The gme story is one of gambling. Perhaps the hedge fund side were trading not gambling. But retail money was just gambling.
I see it a bit differently, and worse. It really was just a big pump and dump scheme that was dressed up in a "common person vs the billionaires"story. But, both the retail investors flocking to game stop and the hedge funds that (ironically) made the most money off it, were just pushing the price up way beyond the fundamentals, and all but the least knowledgeable had to know they'd have to exit, with everyone left holding the bag. So, not a gamble, but more of a scam.
@@Hyperpandas I dont think I see the "scam". The hedge funds certainly were not trying to convince retailers to buy the stock. Perhaps you could argue the WSB were "scamming" other retail purchasers, but I think many if not most of them also lost money. I call it gambling, because the retailer investor had no "edge". They were just hoping that either there was someone more ":dumb" then them to buy the stock, or hoping (gambiling), that some type of short squeeze would happen. Anyway, peace.
@@buyerclub2 The hedge funds who came in later wanted more people to come in for sure, both because it helped pump up the price and they needed someone to buy when those funds exited.
But the scam was also perpetrated by the organized retail investors, whether all of them knew it or not. Encouraging everyone to buy the stock with the sole purpose of propping it up is identical to a large fund doing the same, because the end game is to exit at the inflated price leaving everyone else holding the bag.
It doesnt matter that some of them told themselves they were just sticking in to the (original) hedge funds with ridiculous short positions, it could only end in tears for whoever couldnt get out when it inevitably collapsed. That's what a pump and dump scam is.
I think we're actually seeing the same thing (based on your latest comment), I just see it as more nefarious than you do. Which is fair, its just a matter of perspective and opinion.
I think if your going to be emotionally attached to a company it better be your own
Pete Davidson was on point at least. The casting in general was great.
Oh my god. I thought you had covered everything around the Gamestop topic already. But I couldn't find an extensive video about it on your channel. Turns out my memory wrongly attributed Folding Idea's "This is financial advice" to you lol
You mean the meltdown piece?
Very good video
Thanks ❤👍
Its still a huge problem when an exchange removes a buy button. Thats not a free market.
I'm curious...hedge funds lost a lot of money shorting at $13.
Did anyone short it at $80 and make a ton when it dropped from the artificially high prices while it was being short squeezed?
This was my first time watching your channel... good job my man. 🤙
This might sound weird, but i really appreciate your word clarity. You have great prounounciation. 👍
Have you reviewed, "the worlds fastest indian"? My favorite movie of all time. ❤
Not a buzzkill, just solid ass facts my man. Good video and well spoken.
Will have to save to my watch later list so I can watch on a streaming service or dvd
Basically, if you got a robinhood ad before the video, the video is about you. Also if the robinhood ad worked on you.... Stop
9:49 asking price is $0.01 higher than the bid price. How does the broker make money in this case? He will buy at $13.43 and sell for $13.42? I must’ve mistaken something
the broker buy from a seller at 13.42, sell to a buyer at 13.43, and pockets 1cent/stock, the bigger the order the more money he keeps. Literally a scheme invented by, no joke, Bernie Madoff
@@sunnydong9069 but asking price is 13.43, where does broker buy a stock at 13.42? Bidding price is 13.42, means buyers only willing to pay 13.42 for it, right?
Can you do "finding the money" and or something on MMT?
GameStop as a business is still in big trouble, isn’t it?
Yeah. They did a stock dilution that bought them some time, but as gaming moves further to digital stores, Gamestop’s having a hard time keeping up. People can buy physical copies of new games on Amazon as easily as Gamestop, and people trading in used games would much rather make $30 selling on Amazon than $3 from Gamestop, and buyers would rather get the game for $35-$40 rather than $50 at Gamestop.
Why do you say options are more risky? The maximum risk is known. For put options vs shorts for example.
Retail investors need to realize they are not buying stocks they are selling money. Hedge funds make so much because they buy and sell money. If you are investing in something you better be sure of 2 things that you will get your money back and you can get out of it if need be
The real funny thing is wall street best was basically laughing at DFV until the price starting going up. I haven’t see the movie but it sounds like the skipped over someone who also got in on GME early, Michael Burry. Yes, that Michael Burry.
I watched your video and I don't think you mentioned "naked shorting"? Am I right?
Correct, it’s not brought up in the movie so I didn’t cover it
😍 Love the reasonability!
A vary fair analysis. Thanks for the insight 👍👍
I wish you'd explain the DTCC part a bit more. Why would disallowing buying solve any sort of margin problem that HOOD would have? If I recall correctly, GME was already not allowed to be traded on margin. So any purchase of the stock would have been with funds already in HOODs custody. What does volatility have to do with this at all? They'd have the funds to settle any buy orders.
It's a bit of a strange concept (and admittedly one I don't have work experience around), but settling trades doesn't just mean ensuring margin trades go through. Even settling normal trades comes with a risk of failure or non-delivery, which is why clearing houses are a vital part of the process. Think of it like a credit card company that checks if you have enough credit before allowing a purchase to go through; without that check, we'd run into some problems. This risk increases with the volatility of a stock, and so if Robinhood continued allowing buys for GME, the clearing house would have required higher fees to cover this risk.
Now there is a valid criticism around Robinhood still allowing sell orders, but hopefully that clears things up a bit.
Playing game with marked cards on set up table where opponent use fake money, when you sacrifice money for which you had to give up your effort and time, is not the wisest strategy.
Like a wise guy tweeted today.. you always sell a position If you gonna tweet about it 😂
We are so back baby
My favorite scene was when MAYO BOY dropped mayo on his pants during his little breakfast when GME was going up.
What annoys me the most with notion that the GameStop ordeal was some kind of "social movement" was that they weren't trying to fix any of the massive flaws or inequities in our economic system -- the ones we basically all agree exist -- they just wanted to be the ones cashing in on them.
This ordeal convinced me to visit "Wall Street bets", at the end they believe in "fuck you, I got mine" just as much as the big investment firms
Doesn’t kill the company unless the company is valiant.
Here is a massive point of vexation for me about this movie: They split-adjust GameStop's price. It's fucking excruciating. It is as if filming a motion picture about the Occupy-Wall-Street movement against the back-drop of the Twin Towers.
I mean that entire "stick it to the man"-framing echos (unsurprisingly) and ironically the dominant spirit of the whole issue (involuntarily or with intent by the film makers,...you decide) .
What was that line from The Big Short about truth and poetry and people hating it!?
Imagine this movie being totally 100% reasonable and not taking the cheering side of,...well "dumb money" (there is another hint in that choice for a title), how successful would it be?
People don't seem to care as much about facts as they care about how they like to feel.
It's this self-righteous conviction that blinds you in learning how stuff like this works for real.
Great commentary and analysis,...will give it a watch!
"We did it, reddit!" The movie
Apparently, retail traders are a joke to these big Wallstreet investors
Folding Ideas told this WAY better, with the actual story not the movie, plus a real deep dive into the ape culture. It was clearly a pump and dump though.
I'm good enough just listening to you describe that movie and just saved over an hour of my life for something educational. I think I'll read The Intelligent Investor again:)
Can you also do Wall Street and Wall Street money never sleep
Its a great commentary on, among other things, how people in social media silos create their own narratives as "truth", regardless of what the real truth might be. And at the same time, how this can completely work for said people, leaving them happy, as long as they can adapt the narrative to whatever future actually emerges. As well as also completely lead someone down a rabbit hole of nonsense that ends in disaster (families broken apart by COVID politics, for example, that are still broken to this day).
Sound familiar? Combine stocks (well, money and economics in general), crypto, and politics together and half of America (at a minimum) has already fallen into this trap.
The result is a fragility in the social fabric of society that more or less is guaranteed to break catastrophically at some (unknown) point in the future when reality diverges enough that no silo-bound narrative can rationalize what is happening. Some think the breaking point is already upon us, driven by politics in particular.
-Matt
I will say, when I watched Dumb Money, I was surprised because it was better than I thought it would be at dealing with some of the more nuanced parts of what happened. I do think it would need more discussion on the fallout for it to be truly excellent, but all told it wasn't half-bad.
Yea, it was All Bad!
…funny, forgot about the pet pig scene. does that allude to the saying, “Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered”?
Dumb Money, also called "Düsseldorf" in 2008.
0:29 Friends… can you please make a video explaining that concept? I think I’d like some friends but not sure how to proceed, thanks! 🙏
Don't apologize for being a buzzkill. I come to you specifically because you're a buzzkill.
I didn’t understand anything you just said, but that’s a really nice t shirt👚 👍🏼
Question. Do you think Keith Gills spreadsheets is better than other hedge funds tools? I mean he doesn't have a Bloomberg terminal.
I still like the stock 🚀 🚀 🚀
I love finance movies like the Big Short and Margin Call, it was kind of a bummer that this GME crap spawned the next big finance movie but I watched it eventually. It was a funny movie but the messaging was just so off. It’s glorifying a weird self imposed Ponzi scheme which is less a short squeeze and more a money suck from gullible retail investors. The emotional attachment people had with GME, the extreme exposure to a single volatile stock, and the obsession with ‘sending a message’ instead of earning a profit are some of the worst possible investing habits. That one girl who holds GME blames Wall St for screwing over her dad but it appears much more likely that’s related to PE or shareholder activism not shorting. Furthermore it paints Vlad Tenev and Ken Griffin as these big villains without bothering to go into any real detail on how brokerages or PFOF or any actual financial details work.
I see America Ferreira Seth Rogen or Nick Offerman in the cast, I watch... It's as simple as that.
3 reasons I won’t watch and with Pete Davidson in it, that makes 4.
Paul Dano is a treasure, excuse you.
10:35 Another god damn bailout! Why won’t they let me bankrupt the company so I can get rich. 🙄
Don't apologize for this! People believing that the markets are magically and impossible to understand is why people end up not saving enough for retirement, or assuming that they'll be able to lotto their way to success, etc.
Yo, what's up everyone? It's your favorite commenter here with another video feedback. Today, I'm going to be reviewing out this video by the talented creator. Let me tell you, this video is absolutely amazing. I'm not even kidding. It's so good that I'm actually starting to feel a little empowered. I mean, how can someone be so talented? Seriously, though, this video is a must-watch. It's informative, entertaining, and just plain good. So what are you waiting for? Go check it out right now!
I wouldn't say rich investors go out of their way to close down a business, shorting still requires the share be bought and traded it's just they expect it to be a lot less than when they borrowed it. It's still scummy they can profit from a failing business and I don't fully doubt they aren't immune from being partly involved with their struggle (if someone says he bets you the first card on a brand new deck will be the jack of spades, you know he's going to pull a jack and you're going to lose money. ) Robin Hood pulling the stock did look sketchy, thanks for sharing why they were losing money but it's still dishonest offering access to stocks to the public then a meme gets pulled as people are having fun and rich short sellers very annoyed (hilarious).
There are plenty of reasons not to let just anyone buy stocks, but I think part of it is you couldn't explain half of this to people when they're just dropping money into penny stocks and hyping up their friends to bet the same.
Robinhood in particular turned off the buy button because, unlike regular brokerages, they’d buy and sell stocks for you before making sure your money got through to them. It made them faster and easier to use than traditional brokerages, but also meant they could run out of money to buy a stock with. More traditional brokerages didn’t have this issue, and let people keep buying. Still, not a good look for that business model.
"shorting still requires the share be bought and traded"
your innocence is addorable.
Yeah he is still not giving me access to my stock
Wouldn't it be more fun to simply go nuts at a gambling casino? Personally, I'd empty my bank account and bet it all on number 12 at the roulette wheel.
Casino gambling doesn't have the emotional weight of feeling like you're attacking the system.
Emotional trading, scary stuff.
I get the feeling there's a lot on this channel that's going to make me mad. And that's ok cuz I'm a crappy investor. So hopefully I learn something.
Okay but are we all going to make it?
Nice job on the thumb nail it made me click
So many burnt hands and GameStop became the baddy recently. Great job apes!
Omg i need this
Maybe don't wait till halfway through the video to start using helpful diagrams.
Why do you apologize for being a "buzzkill?" The entire point of this channel is level-headed and down-to-earth advice, IMO.
I'm a little bit fuzzy as it's been minute but wasn't the main issue there was more short positions then there were total stocks to buy? (Multiple shorts on a single stock).
There's nothing impossible about that despite what the moron cultists tell you. A share can be shorted multiple times by multiple people, and in rare circumstances a company can be such a worthless dog that the short interest exceeds 100%, which can sometimes form the conditions necessary for a short squeeze. Dummies will tell you it's not possible to short a stock more than 100%, and that's because they're financially illiterate and don't know the first thing about how the stock market works.
My issue is with short selling, period. I can't sell a house that I don't own and buy it back later - that's an asinine concept. It's ridiculous, stupid, overcomplicated, and it obfuscates market data. It's downright immoral
Worth saying that usually these collusions take place in such a way that they are hard to prove or can't.
Wall Street talks down to retail investors and considers them “dumb money” because, well, many of them do really stupid things. OK.
It's not a total loss until your investment goes down to 0 or the investors liquidate their portfolio investments, only based on the reacting to fearmongering tactics that are used against the retail investor. Retail investor can profit from a long term time horizon portfolio too. ✊
The elevated price was a market distortion though, that didn't represent valuation fundamentals. It's like buying a house at 10x its actual value and claiming you don't lose money if you don't sell.
didn't a couple of companies people hedged their bets on have already gone bankrupt, like Sears and Bed Bath&Beyond? I would definitely categorize that as going down to 0
Nice