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Comment by MrMan | Hacker News Reader

Comments that start with saying "I don't buy" the real-world non-simple explanation, even in the face of mountains of real world evidence, are not in the spirit of any site that pretends to be some kind of better place.

Conspiracy fantasies should be moderated down by the administrators. "Wide eyed curiosity" comes second to pragmatism, realism, lack of narcissism and entitlement.

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It’s scary how much conspiratorial thinking is gaining traction in the GameStop story.

Despite the narratives about people buying GameStop for altruistic purposes or for sticking it to Wall Street, it’s obvious that most people bought because they were told the trade couldn’t fail and this was an easy way to double their money (or more).

When it doesn’t work out, I’m worried that people will reach for more conspiracy theories instead of realizing that the latest GME buyers were always guaranteed losses.

When I get explanations like “you can’t buy or sell for your own good” on a funded account without leverage, at a time where the odds of money were sky high, it does seem fishy. People on WSB have been YOLOing entire accounts to zero for months, where was the concern when people were losing money? Why the concern when they are actually making money?

Also, if there is a good regulatory explanation, why not just give that, instead of thin statements like “we’re blocking these trades for your own good.” I’m open to reasonable explanations with evidence.

The messaging was not forthcoming, I’ll grant you that.

But they are actually correct if you take a step back. Protecting the DTCC protects all brokers and thus in turn protects their users.

The regulations and the practices followed in the industry are to protect against against real scenarios which can lead to brokers collapsing and investor funds being decimated.

Maybe it would have looked better had robinhood come out and said “we don’t have enough liquidity”, though that’s still not a reassuring message for their users.

I remember the MMM ponzi scheme that was in a bunch of countries including Nigeria. When these things go south people always need an outlet to blame for denying them their free money they thought was coming and better if its a third party and not themselves or whoever duped them into investing. People were furious at editorials or government officials trying to dissuade others which may or may not have brought it to an end. Here its going to be the brokers fault for not being able to let people open more positions, otherwise it certainly would have kept going up and certainly at some point there would have been a price they were willing to sell at.

Common, I may not know enough about the stock market to be opinionated about this case in particular, but when literally billions are at stake, conspiracies about mild collusion between brokers and market manipulation are really not that far-fetched.

It's puzzling that people find it surprising that the situation caused speculation and "conspiracy theories."

It's frustrating that the phrase "conspiracy theory" is used as a way to dismiss skepticism. I hear more and more hand-wringing that conspiracy theories needs to somehow be addressed.

And it's annoying that given how complex the situation is, and how little transparency in the market there is, we think that one narrative by authorities should be taken at face value.

If you truly dislike conspiratorial thinking, then it seems the best possible reaction is to reply calmly explaining to the conspiratorialists what happened and buttressing counter-claims of the skepticism where it exists.

I like how you criticise the above comment for saying "I don't buy" based on high-minded notion of better spirit of discussion, and then in your second paragraph imply it's a "conspiracy fantasy".

Bonus points for your completely failure to address the arguments of the comment.

It's not my job to teach everyone about trading operations. I am alarmed at the prevalence of anger founded on willful ignorance, on this site. I don't have an obligation to refute every dumb angry post tit for tat. I am not even trying to be "right" I rather want to encourage people not to fall prey to the temptation of thinking that you can simply scrunch up your face and decide to "not buy" a narrative simply because you cannot be bothered to be well informed.

To be honest it just sounds like you're one of those people who goes on social media, makes a claim, then when someone asks for evidence you just say "look it up". Unless you have something to contribute other than smug comments that amount to "look at these dumb plebs who know nothing about the market", then please stop posting FUD.

A Soros-owned space laser is a conspiracy theory. Citadel forcing Robinhood to disable buys due to their massive short position is not.

I feel that many people are lumping hypotheses into the conspiratorial bucket because of Qanon and current events. Are all skeptics conspiracy theorists?

The space laser is certainly more outlandish, but both are fundamentally the same. They both posit (contra all the available evidence!) that sinister forces are behind something in the world that you feel has gone wrong.

There's no difference between conspiracy and hypothesis.

You mean "conspiracy theory" and "hypothesis". And yes, there fundamentally is a difference between theory and hypothesis:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/difference-bet...

> Outside of scientific reasoning, "theory" and "hypothesis" are often used interchangeably, and "theory' can unfortunately be interpreted to mean "less sound" or "lightly speculated."

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