Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

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A few punters losing money on GameStop stock (and an awful lot of them will lose), and possibly some hedgies taking a minor trim, is hardly going to bring down our system of economics.

Bear in mind all but a few of these small investors haven't made a single penny. They only make money when they actually sell, and as soon as a significant number of them do sell the price will fall and the money the others think they have made will vanish. And then some.

So a few hedgies might lose a few bucks, but all the WSB people piling in are not a cuddly gang of friends, and not all on the same side and the savvy among them surely know that. The smart ones will sell and leave the rest holding the can. It's the poor saps piling in at $300+ who genuinely think they are sticking it to the man that I worry about.

The people who have actually made money so far are the ones who already had stock and have ben selling on the way up, because the stock being bought must have come from somewhere, not the ones who have gone long now and will end up long when it collapses again. It's amazing how many journalists and commentators get this so badly wrong.

I'd wonder, if given the market dynamics, the whole sharade will unwind into even lower price of the underlying stock than at what it was before the "activity". I can't see how this could help GME or other stocks picked for this ride.

I totally get the emotional value of these stocks and the hit they took due to the pandemic. This just feels that they are used as pawns and somehow this recent emotional tension is being harvested for some other than the proclaimed purpose (to support the stocks).

GME could issue shares and get a large cash infusion into its business. GME could sell some of its shares to get a large cash infusion into its business.

Their market cap 19x'd up to ~19B. Having a 1B cash infusion into the business isn't crazy. Imagine what 1B of investment into Gamestop could achieve.

That assumes people will buy said shares. That's contentious at best.

There's a short squeeze; people will have to buy. Most of the shorters would probably love to just clear their short if they could buy at a semi-reasonable price. GME has to know their stock is inflated. They could sell stock for 75% of the current market value and still be making money hand over fist.

That would, however, crash the price.

Yeah. It's market manipulation from every angle and every party right now. All the crowing about "sticking it to the man" is almost certainly prosecutable as securities fraud. And yes, the folks holding the early shorts either have financing available to hold until it comes down or have transferred the position to someone who does. The people holding the bag at the end of this are indeed going to be individual investors, most of whom thought they were sticking it to the man.

Right, once the stock actually collapses and drops way below it's trend price, those holding the shorts and expecting to make a few bucks on them will end up making an absolute killing. Sticking it to the man my arse.

All they need to do is beat the current calls that mature this friday. There are an ungodly amount of shorts about to mature...

The big issue, is that the shorts on GME surpass the total outstanding shares... Melvin went 140% short on GME and they should pay the price for that stupidity.

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