I'm hoping this will create an impetus for social change. Occupy Wall Street failed but now that people's nihilism is increasingly justified and living standards drop, I doubt things will go on as before.
"Let's protest because we can't sink our money into GameStop stock after seeing a stock promoter online hype up the stock!"
Do we forget that GameStop is a mall retailer that sells physical copies of video games? This is not the next Amazon or Saudi Aramco. Anyone who is convinced to put their money in GameStop was likely tricked by someone with a financial interest (and that was probably a rich person). This entire narrative about retail investors taking billions from evil hedge funds is just that, a narrative. It's not even true; Melvin got rid of their short position.
This is not related to Gamestop as a company. This is about a instrument (GME) which was over leveraged short position, and is way out of balance. Doesn't matter what Melvin says, the short % is there for everybody to see and some one is still very short. Retail investors want to use the said instrument to legally make lot of money.
Why is it "over leveraged"? What makes you think the stock is "out of balance"? The hype men will have you believe that there is some magic percentage or tipping point that makes it a good buy but it's pure bunk. If GME has any relationship to the company GameStop (which it does) the stock should be in the toilet and is very likely to go out of business soon, which makes a massive short position very reasonable.
Go read the current financial position yourself. The hedge funds still have to buy over 100% of the total amount of GME shares to cover their short positions. To do that they need to buy existing shares at current market value or they go bankrupt. Its a vicious cycle. Go look at previous short squeezes that have happened.
You misunderstand the context here. Yes, there's the narrative and the certainty that wealthy people participated in the snowballing/astroturfing and profited from it. But it's still the case that small investors made some money playing by the same rules as the hedge funds, and the institutions have nakedly tried to stop that through any means possible, from curtailing the actual discussion to media campaigns to directly plugging at the source with Robinhood. It has nothing to do with the actual nature of GameStop, but that's part of the message of the stock market itself and the broader economy being more and more nonsensical and divorced from production.
The nihilism is increasing more and more. This is just one instance of it, where institutions are so brazen that they don't even bother to come up with an excuse and just pull the plug after some cost benefit calculations. Eventually there will be the straw that will break the camel's back, which is what I mean by an impetus for change. If more and more people come to understand that working hard and saving is a sucker's game and that any escape from that game is rigged at the institutional level, they will stop wanting to participate in the current social contract.
Pointing out that people are making money as the stock is currently going up completely ignores what is likely to happen next: the stock will go down. In the end this won't be a story of Robinhood traders making money but rather about how Robinhood traders lost a bunch of money because of internet hype.
The narrative about a cabal of rich people "nakedly trying to stop" Robinhood traders from trading is also manipulative garbage. Every reasonable and level-headed explanation of why Robinhood halted trading was about credit limitations, that is in agreement with what Robinhood stated publicly, and now that the credit has been remedied Robinhood trading has resumed. No conspiracy theory necessary. The hype is wrong and, worse, intentionally misleading.
>likely tricked by someone with a financial interest (and that was probably a rich person)
Do we know Melvin got rid of their short position? They might be in a position to get an article published saying they did, while being able to say later it was fake news, and covering it as the stock plummeted today.
The article I saw I think had weaselly language about not being able to confirm the losses.
