I think you’re probably right that *most* people saying HODL are engaged in a cynical zero-sum game, but I think there is a core of True Believers who are not really in it for the money. I think this is even more true of cryptocurrency - the true Bitcoin believers are HODL not because they want to sell BTC for USD when the price is right, but because they believe in / hope for a future in which BTC is the dominant currency and prices are denominated in BTC
“But most actual professionals (as opposed to your cousin saying he’s moving to Vegas to play blackjack professionally) don’t throw down huge stakes on individual bets. Again, there’s variability in sports as in the markets; sometimes Buster Douglas beats Mike Tyson, and if you’re consistently throwing down your whole nut on individual events, eventually you’re going to be broke. Instead, most gamblers spread their money around, have a system that produces a slight edge, and grind out money with that edge over time, sometimes having to take an unexpected loss because of the roll of the dice. (Figurative or literal.) That’s what being a professional gambler is, for most people most of the time, grinding out small gains over time.”
One interesting angle to this is that there are people who are both professionals in the way you describe and gambling addicts. I’ve heard stories of poker pros who will grind out a few thousand bucks over 12 hours of poker and then go blow it in half an hour of roulette.
That’s typical for poker players. There are poker players without the degenerate gene, I’m one, but I’m not sure you can be a great poker player without having degenerate tendencies.
that quoted post reads as if Howard Ratner was livestreaming his sports bets. social media truly turned up the dial on what Keynes referred to as “animal spirits.” what fun is the boring utilitarian UI of the Bloomberg terminal compared to the double dopamine hit of above-market returns and a cheering audience of upvoters?
Not trying to be obnoxious, but can i ask who this essay is aimed at? Is it the case that the blog readership skews young enough or unaware enough that something like GME might really be on people's radar?
That aside, while I certainly agree with everything, I don't think the essay manages to fully express the absurdity of the GME situation. The fact that the object of Prophet Kitty's ardor was a company selling a completely obsolete product is so perfect it verges on poetic--practically like telling people to go all in on Blockbuster Video in 2010.
Another example of how people who know what they're doing view the situation: multiple times this year, when the price of GME has risen, management has simply issued new shares, diluting the float, "bailing out the shorts," and stockpiling cash. I think most of the company's earning are now just interest on the cash.
There's 60,000 people on the mailing list; I'm trying to serve as many as I can. And I don't think it's clear that older people have avoided the meme stock fad. There's millions of retail investors who are currently holding these stocks.
As I understand it, the long case for GME was the fact thst the short interest was several times the market cap. In other words, all the shorts could not cover unless GameStop went bankrupt.
The short case for the same stock was the fact that big investors were seriously short and such people cannot never be allowed to lose money, lest Bad Things Happen.
Yeah I feel like Freddie actually didn't understand that this was a specific market play and GME wasn't a meme stock in the same way that memecoins are for lulz. Do people actually hold meme stocks for fun?
I think in reality the fact that the short interest was greater than 100% doesn't have any special significance, but there was a "short squeeze" thesis there rather than pure memes, where if the price goes up some of the shorts will have to buy shares to cover their position, which makes the price go up more, which makes some shorts have to buy shares to cover their position, etc..
Short interest greater than 100%, with just small increase in price, almost guarantees some short squeeze pressure that inevitably means a price pop up. AND it means big losses for the short sellers. Lots of folks think too many rich short sellers are shorting weak but still viable companies down into bankruptcy, vulture capitalists. So punishing such short sellers feels really good, and even fun. I decided not to join in on the fun at $30 or so the day I looked at, knowing it would go up some unknown amount more but come down very fast once it starts down.
The fact it’s not bankrupt seems to validate the white knight investor who became the key shareholder, so far, but haven’t followed it since that huge boom-pop drop, and then second savior rise. Glad to get the fine chart & some notes by Freddie.
What does "shorting weak but still viable companies into bankruptcy" mean? Selling short involves betting against a company's financial future, but doesn't harm it directly all on its own.
In theory, short selling doesn't cause bankruptcy - lack of cash to pay bills does so. But most companies have times when they need loans, or else die.
Companies whose share price has dropped & dropped & dropped ... don't look like good risks for repaying a loan, so many banks won't loan. If none, bankruptcy. Because the company was weak. Made worse by short selling.
But when the shares went up, those who had borrowed 100,000 shares at $6, had to pay $20 - 40 - 80 per share to cover their positions. Many short sellers lost millions.*
A bit later, after boom, bust & smaller rise, GME was able to issue equity shares for cash rather than borrowing from a bank (or bonds), but became revitalized.
*(Other new short sellers made money when shorting at 40 or 80 at the hype boom "to the moon!" and then the price dropped back to ~20).
If it’s good enough for warren Buffett, it’s good enough for 99.9% of people. Buy a S&P 500 ETF, and then go do something useful with your time. Those who believe they (or some rando active manager) can beat the street consistently and long term, are on crack.
The other aspect of GME that's not discussed here though are the individual investors making posts in WSB that amount to "I don't care if I lose my $100 (or $1000), I just want to stick it to those rich bastards".
my understanding is that the time when meme stock holders will sell is when MOASS happens (because at that point the value of the investment would become Infinity)
From what I remember, it was definitely seen as a market play by all the "apes," as opposed to just a nonsense meme. All the stuff about the MOASS was taken 100% seriously.
As far as I know (which i admit, isn't much) there are few or no past examples of people getting rich off of short squeezing stocks, for the obvious reason that when one holder exits the squeeze it reduces the value of everyone else's holding. What made the GME case strange was that the Kitty dude was able to convince a gazillion followers that a dogshit company had some kind of "deep" long-term potential, giving them a rationale to hold while the price fell. Some of them, apparently, are holding to this day.
Gamestock ain't nothing in terms of gruesomeness, cult appeal and ability to ruin suckers. DJT is much more useful in those respects.
Less cynical and more to the point: HODL is silly, but buy-and-hold (aka buy-and-hope) is in my opinion also a mass delusion. Historically, there have been very few cases of stock markets that just went up most of the time. Many went through phases like in post-bubble Japan, where if you invested your money in 1990, you were still underwater in 2023, so no gain whatsoever in 33 years. And this is not a singular occurrance; a lost decade has happened in the lifetime of most generations. Even worse, look at what happened to investors in Russia 1917, Germany 1943 and China 1949 -- they lost basically everything. If you don't know when to sell, then you might be better off not buying.
"HODL" was merely a typo in the online cryptosphere the same way that "PWN" was back in the early 2000s. That it so happened to also match the acronym for "hold on for dear life" was, for several years, merely a coincidence - and then the "financial press" picked up on it and kind of created their own definition.
As someone else pointed out awhile back, the frustrating thing about the GameStock hype is that...the price is *still* noticeably up after the crash, relative to pre-meme. Dumb money outspends smart money, the EMH is false, etc. Such shenanigans make it a little harder to believe in the power of responsibility and steadiness...even for people content with their economic lot, it's hard not to occasionally dream of a lucky break. Kinda like playing the lottery: Everybody Knows it's a fool's bet, without even a thin veneer of "no, really, you actually could win", and yet even many that know better will pay in anyway to purchase some cheap hope. Lots of my coworkers gamble, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous when they talk about winning a couple thousand bucks over the weekend or whatever. (Nevermind the losses, which don't get talked about, of course. Negative waves, man!)
I think you’re probably right that *most* people saying HODL are engaged in a cynical zero-sum game, but I think there is a core of True Believers who are not really in it for the money. I think this is even more true of cryptocurrency - the true Bitcoin believers are HODL not because they want to sell BTC for USD when the price is right, but because they believe in / hope for a future in which BTC is the dominant currency and prices are denominated in BTC
Right, but that's kind of the problem - they have to be baked into this thing for upward price pressure but will be the last holding the bag
best wallstreetbets saga recently was dude investing the entire 700k inheritance he got from his grandmother into Intel.
And it was right before the stock dropped by $10. Still hasn’t recovered.
“But most actual professionals (as opposed to your cousin saying he’s moving to Vegas to play blackjack professionally) don’t throw down huge stakes on individual bets. Again, there’s variability in sports as in the markets; sometimes Buster Douglas beats Mike Tyson, and if you’re consistently throwing down your whole nut on individual events, eventually you’re going to be broke. Instead, most gamblers spread their money around, have a system that produces a slight edge, and grind out money with that edge over time, sometimes having to take an unexpected loss because of the roll of the dice. (Figurative or literal.) That’s what being a professional gambler is, for most people most of the time, grinding out small gains over time.”
One interesting angle to this is that there are people who are both professionals in the way you describe and gambling addicts. I’ve heard stories of poker pros who will grind out a few thousand bucks over 12 hours of poker and then go blow it in half an hour of roulette.
That’s typical for poker players. There are poker players without the degenerate gene, I’m one, but I’m not sure you can be a great poker player without having degenerate tendencies.
that quoted post reads as if Howard Ratner was livestreaming his sports bets. social media truly turned up the dial on what Keynes referred to as “animal spirits.” what fun is the boring utilitarian UI of the Bloomberg terminal compared to the double dopamine hit of above-market returns and a cheering audience of upvoters?
That poster is the embodiment of "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly."
Not trying to be obnoxious, but can i ask who this essay is aimed at? Is it the case that the blog readership skews young enough or unaware enough that something like GME might really be on people's radar?
That aside, while I certainly agree with everything, I don't think the essay manages to fully express the absurdity of the GME situation. The fact that the object of Prophet Kitty's ardor was a company selling a completely obsolete product is so perfect it verges on poetic--practically like telling people to go all in on Blockbuster Video in 2010.
Another example of how people who know what they're doing view the situation: multiple times this year, when the price of GME has risen, management has simply issued new shares, diluting the float, "bailing out the shorts," and stockpiling cash. I think most of the company's earning are now just interest on the cash.
There's 60,000 people on the mailing list; I'm trying to serve as many as I can. And I don't think it's clear that older people have avoided the meme stock fad. There's millions of retail investors who are currently holding these stocks.
Fair enough. I'd love to see data on who actually owns GME in what quantities. Also, data on who's short in what quantities.
As I understand it, the long case for GME was the fact thst the short interest was several times the market cap. In other words, all the shorts could not cover unless GameStop went bankrupt.
The short case for the same stock was the fact that big investors were seriously short and such people cannot never be allowed to lose money, lest Bad Things Happen.
The other part of the short case is that the company's entire product set was obsolete.
Yeah I feel like Freddie actually didn't understand that this was a specific market play and GME wasn't a meme stock in the same way that memecoins are for lulz. Do people actually hold meme stocks for fun?
To be honest, I do hold meme stocks for fun. I know it’s silly, but I enjoy following the discussions and the data on Robinhood.
For example, I own 3 shares of $PLTR, a popular meme stock with a huge fanbase. I still don’t understand what they do, nobody really does.
I own small amounts of other meme stocks and normal stocks, just because it’s fun. It’s like playing a phone game where my points = the total return.
I know it’s not smart investing, but I’m not gambling my life savings like the WSB poster. I’m just bored at my job.
I also owned GameStop back when it was popular, but I only invested a couple of dollars because it was clearly going to tank.
I think in reality the fact that the short interest was greater than 100% doesn't have any special significance, but there was a "short squeeze" thesis there rather than pure memes, where if the price goes up some of the shorts will have to buy shares to cover their position, which makes the price go up more, which makes some shorts have to buy shares to cover their position, etc..
Short interest greater than 100%, with just small increase in price, almost guarantees some short squeeze pressure that inevitably means a price pop up. AND it means big losses for the short sellers. Lots of folks think too many rich short sellers are shorting weak but still viable companies down into bankruptcy, vulture capitalists. So punishing such short sellers feels really good, and even fun. I decided not to join in on the fun at $30 or so the day I looked at, knowing it would go up some unknown amount more but come down very fast once it starts down.
The fact it’s not bankrupt seems to validate the white knight investor who became the key shareholder, so far, but haven’t followed it since that huge boom-pop drop, and then second savior rise. Glad to get the fine chart & some notes by Freddie.
What does "shorting weak but still viable companies into bankruptcy" mean? Selling short involves betting against a company's financial future, but doesn't harm it directly all on its own.
How does the short selling cause the bankruptcy?
In theory, short selling doesn't cause bankruptcy - lack of cash to pay bills does so. But most companies have times when they need loans, or else die.
Companies whose share price has dropped & dropped & dropped ... don't look like good risks for repaying a loan, so many banks won't loan. If none, bankruptcy. Because the company was weak. Made worse by short selling.
But when the shares went up, those who had borrowed 100,000 shares at $6, had to pay $20 - 40 - 80 per share to cover their positions. Many short sellers lost millions.*
A bit later, after boom, bust & smaller rise, GME was able to issue equity shares for cash rather than borrowing from a bank (or bonds), but became revitalized.
*(Other new short sellers made money when shorting at 40 or 80 at the hype boom "to the moon!" and then the price dropped back to ~20).
If it’s good enough for warren Buffett, it’s good enough for 99.9% of people. Buy a S&P 500 ETF, and then go do something useful with your time. Those who believe they (or some rando active manager) can beat the street consistently and long term, are on crack.
Meme stocks, like crypto, are a pyramid scheme.
The other aspect of GME that's not discussed here though are the individual investors making posts in WSB that amount to "I don't care if I lose my $100 (or $1000), I just want to stick it to those rich bastards".
my understanding is that the time when meme stock holders will sell is when MOASS happens (because at that point the value of the investment would become Infinity)
From what I remember, it was definitely seen as a market play by all the "apes," as opposed to just a nonsense meme. All the stuff about the MOASS was taken 100% seriously.
As far as I know (which i admit, isn't much) there are few or no past examples of people getting rich off of short squeezing stocks, for the obvious reason that when one holder exits the squeeze it reduces the value of everyone else's holding. What made the GME case strange was that the Kitty dude was able to convince a gazillion followers that a dogshit company had some kind of "deep" long-term potential, giving them a rationale to hold while the price fell. Some of them, apparently, are holding to this day.
Gamestock ain't nothing in terms of gruesomeness, cult appeal and ability to ruin suckers. DJT is much more useful in those respects.
Less cynical and more to the point: HODL is silly, but buy-and-hold (aka buy-and-hope) is in my opinion also a mass delusion. Historically, there have been very few cases of stock markets that just went up most of the time. Many went through phases like in post-bubble Japan, where if you invested your money in 1990, you were still underwater in 2023, so no gain whatsoever in 33 years. And this is not a singular occurrance; a lost decade has happened in the lifetime of most generations. Even worse, look at what happened to investors in Russia 1917, Germany 1943 and China 1949 -- they lost basically everything. If you don't know when to sell, then you might be better off not buying.
"HODL" was merely a typo in the online cryptosphere the same way that "PWN" was back in the early 2000s. That it so happened to also match the acronym for "hold on for dear life" was, for several years, merely a coincidence - and then the "financial press" picked up on it and kind of created their own definition.
As someone else pointed out awhile back, the frustrating thing about the GameStock hype is that...the price is *still* noticeably up after the crash, relative to pre-meme. Dumb money outspends smart money, the EMH is false, etc. Such shenanigans make it a little harder to believe in the power of responsibility and steadiness...even for people content with their economic lot, it's hard not to occasionally dream of a lucky break. Kinda like playing the lottery: Everybody Knows it's a fool's bet, without even a thin veneer of "no, really, you actually could win", and yet even many that know better will pay in anyway to purchase some cheap hope. Lots of my coworkers gamble, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous when they talk about winning a couple thousand bucks over the weekend or whatever. (Nevermind the losses, which don't get talked about, of course. Negative waves, man!)