- Joined
- Jul 13, 2007
- Messages
- 63,563
The best thing about this whole episode is that it's so new that the public doesn't know where to stand on it. Meaning, they haven't gotten their team's talking points yet.
I love when that happens.![]()
You've got AOC and Tucker lining up on the same side. The public is confused on what the "right" answer is for their tribe.
TELL ME WHAT TO THINK, DAMMIT!!!
Considering they have accused the Reddit guys social media forums of sex trafficking and racism, the left should know who to hate any time now.
Am I right that the thing that instigated this was hedge funds short selling the stock, and maybe more specifically that they engaged in naked short selling it, up to the point of selling an amount of shares that exceeded the amount in existence?
And somehow these little guy investors saw some kind of injustice in that, which it was up to all of them to stop?
Is that basically the gist of it? Or was there something more that made the alleged bad guys here especially morally repugnant?
I'm not asking about the subsequent actions on the parts of Robinhood and others to stifle this. I'm just asking about the initial instigation.
I can't post a specific article or video, as I have watched a lot of them at this point. It is more than just one motivating factor. It's not as simple as it sounds. As best as I can tell, here's my understanding of the history:
- COVID shuts down malls, stocks get hammered, especially brick and mortar shops like Gamestop.
- Some of these young people who just started investing invest in Gamestop, because they grew up going there, and want to help it through the shutdowns.
- Some Wall Street people on TV try to talk the stock down. (Probably shorting behind the scenes).
- Chewy.com founder Ryan Cohen, a newly minted billionaire invests in Gamestop, and starts publicly giving advise to Gamestop management, talking up a whole new online business model.
- Gamestop puts Cohen on the Board and hires a couple of his best developers to pursue new business plan.
- More back and forth between long investors and Wall St. shorters, most vocally Gabe Plotkin of Melvin Capital starts online battles with the pro-Gamestop investors.
- All of the long investors get pissed about Plotkin and others shorting Gamestop to drive it down. Some of them discover that Gamestop is way over shorted, over 100%. (Charles Payne has reported on that fact for a while).
- The Reddit crowd finds out what a short squeeze is, and the possibility of driving the price of the stock through the roof, while hammering loud mouth hedge fund managers at the same time.
- Other people get involved on both sides, and the stock starts to take off.
- The controversy ensues.
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