from Hacker News

Wall Street was the real winner of the GameStop saga

by planetjones on 2/7/22, 5:31 AM with 240 comments

  • by ggambetta on 2/7/22, 7:43 AM

    It was a weird, fun ride. My writing partner Lutz and I work in tech, but have a real passion for filmmaking. We lost some money on $GME, so we had to tell the story from our point of view.

    The result is STONKS, a comedy/drama feature screenplay [0], fictional but inspired by the GME events, and a love letter of sorts to WSB. We queried Hollywood producers but were ignored; we shared on WSB itself but we were insta-banned and never told why (but given the founder sold the rights to his life story to Hollywood [1], we can make an informed guess).

    Anyway, here it is. Feedback welcome.

    [0] https://gabrielgambetta.com/files/STONKS-2022-02-02.pdf

    [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/reddits-wallstreetbets-founder-...

  • by netcan on 2/7/22, 8:55 AM

    $GME was always going to be a "Revolution That Wasn’t." Almost everyone playing knew it.

    IMO, it was kind of an exemplifier of postmodernism, used colloquially. All the "beat down hedgies" stuff was just part of the game, just like "fuck the fundamentals" was part of the game.

    IMO it has had an influence. A neurotic, dramatic lens through which we can look at financial institutions, more abstract economics. What is capital? What is money? Etc. Obviously, it all happens within a context with crypto, a long term bull market, and such. I think one of the features of being a basket case, meme-ish phenomenon is a sort of openness to ideas. Mentality-wise it allows exploring concepts with the vigour of a believer, but without really being bought into the position long term. Meme trading, and maybe trading generally, kind of lends to this. You can believe a "case" a hold the position with caveat.

    As is typical of "movements" today, there is no expectation of winning... just as there is no expectation that market rationality "wins." Everything, in our times, is a "just so story," in economic rhetoric terms.

  • by rvanmil on 2/7/22, 7:52 AM

    There are still many retail investors who think the saga is far from over, and are now betting on direct registration (DRS) of their GME shares with the goal of triggering another, much bigger short squeeze than last year.

  • by planetjones on 2/7/22, 5:45 AM

  • by 1_player on 2/7/22, 9:07 AM

    It's just a matter of time before some company insider is paid to manipulate their employers' stock through the power of the /r/WallStreetBets self-defined autists.

    Companies use social media for astroturfing and viral marketing, why not market manipulation?

  • by andris9 on 2/7/22, 12:50 PM

    On the last day of the spike I saw in the pre-market the GME price to go over $500. Figured that this is good enough for me and as everything related to order processing was very slow I set a limit sell order for $490, figuring that it probably hits $500, but wanted to be sure it goes through. Once the price spiked at 483 and started rapidly dropping I was f-ed. Cancelling the sell-order took like an hour (couldn’t add a new sell order without releasing shares from the old one). By that time the price was in the dust.

  • by FuriouslyAdrift on 2/7/22, 2:19 PM

    Because of my GameStop stock play, I am finally debt free for the first time in my life (after 35 years of paying). No car loan, no college loans, no mortgage.

    It actually felt good to pay over $10k in taxes for short term gains.

  • by spupe on 2/7/22, 8:31 AM

    This review was rather short and uninformative. There is a slightly longer one here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-...

  • by kklisura on 2/7/22, 8:52 AM

    Tangentially: I learned a lot while watching Keiths (Roaring Kitty, DFV) streams, even before GameStop took off. It gave me insight in what kind of research and analysis is done for investment and it served almost as a demo for me. It's really a shame that he's not streaming anymore, but I kind of get it.

  • by dheera on 2/7/22, 7:37 AM

    https://outline.com/hGfBNu

    to read the full article without GDPR, paywall, or other annoyances.

  • by ashurov on 2/7/22, 11:29 AM

    I have seen so much fuckery with the stock price and ridiculous headlines in het media about GME that can't really believe that we have seen the actual squeeze. Furthermore, the SEC report said that the price run-up was because retail bought in, not because the hedge funds closed their positions. So when did they do this and went from 200% to 20%? Besides all of that, the fundamentals for GME are great. They are hiring great people and seem to be working behind the scenes with some of the biggest companies to, what seems to be, create a NFT marketplace linked to gaming, that will be 'carbon neutral'. all-in-all a good investment on that end I think. time will tell.

  • by olladecarne on 2/7/22, 1:03 PM

    Why is the financial media so obsessed with Gamestop? It's a relatively tiny company and if it truly was the case that it is over they would have stopped talking about it. Instead they publish fear-mongering articles and hit pieces on people like Keith Gill who was just a normal person seeing a value investment and got lucky. hint: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

  • by MomoXenosaga on 2/7/22, 4:05 PM

    I play videogames and I haven't been inside a game store in 5 years. Absolutely noone was shocked GameStop business is dying.

    Don't get me wrong I'm as nostalgic of browsing walls of videogames as the next 30+ year old gamer but nostalgia rarely makes money.

  • by wolverine876 on 2/7/22, 12:50 PM

    How do we recognize such madness in the future, before we get caught up in it? After it's metastasized?

  • by andrewclunn on 2/7/22, 7:46 AM

    So because people traded (sometimes) using services that had associated fees... Wall Street won? There's nothing in this article that supports the click bait title.

  • by d--b on 2/7/22, 8:50 AM

    Well in these zero-sum games there is always someone who wins. And clearly many small investors got out with insane returns for a day of trading.

    But more importantly I think that for many small investors the point was not making money. The point was the story. It was worth losing some cash so that they can be a part of these things. Luckily winning is not always defined by money…

  • by dfxm12 on 2/7/22, 2:10 PM

    Wall street always wins, especially when congress gets involved.

  • by SideburnsOfDoom on 2/7/22, 8:01 AM

    "the house always wins"

  • by just-tom on 2/7/22, 10:06 AM

    I suggest we start putting [PAYWALL] in titles of links that have paywalls. This way, my time and others' will be spent better.

  • by potassiumwreath on 2/7/22, 4:52 PM

    This seems to be a particularly polarizing topic and I may have some insight into why.

    There's a supreme value to the widely-held belief that 'the market' just 'works' and is 'fair' or 'free' or something. The only way features like liquidity were possible to offer in the early days of the emerging globalized financial markets was by appointing Market Makers, Authorized Participants, and other privileged positions that could self-regulate and influence the market. There were all kinds of (legitimate) limits to creating a truly 'free' or 'fair' system during the bootstrapping phase. So the system was justified, once upon a time at least...

    So that's how we got here: What now?

    Well... many of us still expecting a GME squeeze believe that Market Makers got greedy and instead of contenting themselves with the profit channels they were conceived to capture they used their central position to extract revenue from some less scrupulous places than the bid-ask spread. Once MMs realized the haul they could extract by selling shorts throughout the deaths of certain 'surely dead' companies, it doesn't take a stroke of genius to think about inciting these kinds of events themselves. Here's where the rub comes in: Because of the way things were bootstrapped, most of these Market Makers are self-regulating bodies that self-report a lot of critical positions if they even have to report it _at all_. Regardless of how we got here, the reality is that many privileged positions such as Market Makers do NOT need to report their short positions. Even if they were 'required' there are so many ways to 'hide' the position on a balance sheet that I honestly cannot imagine paperwork exists that would conclusively DISPROVE the possibility of a MOASS.

    Many others hold the belief that 'the market' is 'working' just 'fine' whatever those words mean to the individual espousing that belief. Their belief is, in general, that the rules of the game are to be trusted. They don't just quote the SEC report citing Self-Regulating Organization short interested coming in at 0% right after Jan 2021, they actually BELIEVE it. They don't even question that these self reporting organizations may be lying. I mean, with their immaculate records how could you not believe them?

    So there you have it: One group believes mostly on principle that markets are 'good' or 'functioning correctly' thus MOASS couldn't happen and anyone still awaiting MOASS is doing so because of ideological reasons more than a single piece of evidence.

    Disclaimer: I hold some GME

  • by rnd0 on 2/8/22, 5:23 AM

    Why is anyone surprised? The house always wins. Always.

  • by codeptualize on 2/7/22, 9:32 AM

    Wall Street always wins.

  • by jeffrallen on 2/7/22, 12:29 PM

    The house always wins.

  • by goldnugget92 on 2/7/22, 9:10 AM

    Its easily dismissed as conspiracy but having read many of their supporting arguments and seeing the SI (Short Interest) being over 220% myself along with the SEC report suggesting that shorts never closed their position... I can't say I would dismiss the possibility of another short squeeze...