to be glued to Gamestop this week!

[DiamondHanded]

I can't be the only one, who else is hooked on #GME?

I'm quite surprised at how much influence Elon Musk has. Any experienced trader sorts care to suggest how this will pan out?

Not an experienced trader in the slightest (had no idea what was going on until I read up about it!) but this is highly entertaining.

I see the stocks platform they use has allowed trading again, so I’m intrigued to see where this will go.

I shouldn’t be basking in the glory of billionaires losing money ... oh I can’t even keep it up, it’s hilarious! Power to the little man.

Yeah it's very satisfying

Will these guys actually make crazy money, someone made £400million in days....has anyone cashed in or is it all on paper?

Yes they’re definitely making money. It’s mostly done via an app ‘Robinhood’ who’ve just had to have a billion dollar bailout from their investors to make sure they can continue. It’s biiiig business. And excellent!

I dabble (badly) with a long term investing subscription platform and it has mostly held fast. I was thinking about switching to the free apps because they seemed cheaper, no way now.

It's so good. I'm loving watching it

Me and my husband have 13 shares in GME. Hopefully next week it will get even crazier. Reading Reddit and r/Wall Street bets there is massives of explanations about why this is happening but basically this has happened before- hedge fund investors got greedy and it shot the price up. But this time due to the age of the internet lots of people have worked this out so poor joe is playing these people at there own game. Best case scenario I get some money worst case I don't bit at least it will hopefully stop these people being so greedy and for governments to put some better controls.

Too late to buy in. The move has already happened. Its gonna drop like a stone, but a lot of people made a lot of money, so good on them.

To be brutally honest, given the transparency of the equity market, I'm amazed it's taken this long for a hedge fund to get slaughtered like this.

Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.

I’ve been utterly hooked on the stonks. It’s fascinating. The combination of 4chan bro madness versus hedge fund power.

Eventually the fundamentals of the company will kick in and the price will have to reflect that, but there is scope for so much madness on the way.

It’s hugely entertaining if you don’t have skin in the game. Sadly I suspect when it all comes to an end it won’t be just the hedge funds getting hurt unfortunately. I just hope the Redditors aren’t betting more than they can afford to lose but I reckon the smart ones have either cashed out or will do so shortly.

I am also looking forward to the inevitable investigations which will follow as some of the moves to suspend trading over the last few days are questionable at best. Not to mention the fact that the combined movement of the Redditors could possibly - at a stretch - be considered market manipulation. There will be fall out from this, no question.

I'm enjoying it. My DS has been glued to it. He's saying buy blockbuster, Nokia and blackberry

I have no idea but DS and his mates are enjoying it - he was looking into buying a couple (!) of Nokia shares earlier.

The thing is, these businesses unfortunately have no future, so it is actually logical to short them.

So they will eventually go out of business, then go to zero.

but doesn't shorting shares force companies to go out of business or am I misunderstanding?

Don't for one second think that amateurs are making money off of billionaires. It's a great David vs Goliath media story, but the reality is somewhat different.

Whilst some shorts have lost out massively, there are plenty of hedge funds making money out of this. The Robinhood app all the Redditors use sells their trading data to professionals which use the data to front-run them.

Most of the amateurs will end up losing money. Pump and dump on online chatrooms has been going on for decades, and the majority end up holding the bags.

Manias like this normally take place at the top of markets. Despite all this amateur pumping, world stock markets have fallen a lot this week. Stocks are already over-priced and in a bubble, especially tech stocks.

Another thing to note is that short-selling actually provides liquidity if a market falls, as the shorts have to take profit and buy when the price drops, creating a floor. This can provide more stability than if a market has no shorters and no one buys because of fear.

I'm loving it. I bought a load of dogecoin yesterday haha - that's the next thing they're pushing and I already have a bit of crypto so I just switched stuff over.

I’ve long been of the opinion shorting stocks shouldn’t be permitted. It’s interesting the Redditors are considered ‘coordinated market manipulation’ yet when a hedge fund shorts it’s ok. It may be one hedge fund but the effect can be profound due to the values involved. Let’s not forget they also have access to all the management team so have insight way beyond ‘public information’.

No sympathy for the hedge fund. If you think stocks are overvalued don’t buy.

Can someone who has a few mins to burn please explain to the initiated what’s going on?

Yes I’ve Googled it
No, I haven’t managed to find an article that explains it all in lay terms.

A hedge fund shorted a stock ie. bet on the share price going down. A load of Redditors have bought in pushing the share price up = potentially v bad for the hedge fund.

@KeepWashingThoseHands

A hedge fund shorted a stock ie. bet on the share price going down. A load of Redditors have bought in pushing the share price up = potentially v bad for the hedge fund.

Thank you!

And that’s why some people have made so much money?

Surely people will sell eventually ans the hedge fund will make its money back, no?

@DiamondHanded

but doesn't shorting shares force companies to go out of business or am I misunderstanding?

I think you are misunderstanding, it doesn't make good companies go out of business. In the case of GameStop, it has no future because people will download their games directly in the future.

Shorting also helps highlight stocks that are outright frauds, for example Wirecard.

The market does actually need shorting, the actual problem is tons of printed money hitting the market, you can blame central banks for that.

@KeepWashingThoseHands good explanation

@KeepWashingThoseHands

I’ve long been of the opinion shorting stocks shouldn’t be permitted. It’s interesting the Redditors are considered ‘coordinated market manipulation’ yet when a hedge fund shorts it’s ok. It may be one hedge fund but the effect can be profound due to the values involved. Let’s not forget they also have access to all the management team so have insight way beyond ‘public information’.

No sympathy for the hedge fund. If you think stocks are overvalued don’t buy.

I think you are misunderstanding, it doesn't make good companies go out of business. In the case of GameStop, it has no future because people will download their games directly in the future.

Shorting also helps highlight stocks that are outright frauds, for example Wirecard.

The market does actually need shorting, the actual problem is tons of printed money hitting the market, you can blame central banks for that.

Sorry, just quoted the wrong thing there.

My point is shorting can expose companies that are total frauds like Therenos, Wirecard, Luckin Coffee.

In these cases, the shorters are telling the stock market there is something wrong with the company.