The Reddit Rebellion
Game Stop’s stock price (GME) is going higher (high of $385) even as their business model flounders due to people purchasing games online instead of retail stores. It appears that traders on Reddit have organized to manipulate the stock price of GME higher to bankrupt the hedgefund Melvin Capital, which was shorting GME. They seem mad that the politically connected get bailed out while the little guy suffers in the K shaped recovery; so, they are trying to bankrupt the politically connected. Perhaps people are starting to realize that inflation is a deliberate policy for bailouts.
In an open letter from the community of r/wallstreetbets on Reddit to CNBC reads,[1]
“Before you spend another day hosting your shill hedge fund buddies to come on the air and demonize r/wallstreetbets I hope you read this.
Your contempt for the retail investor (your audience) is palpable and if you don’t get it together, you’ll lose an entire new generation of investors.
I keep thinking about these funds that are short GME like your boys at Melvin Capital / your coverage of this subreddit and I’m getting madder and madder.
These funds can manipulate the market via your network and if they screw up big because they don’t even know the basics of portfolio risk 101 and using position sizing, they just get a bailout from their billionaire friends at Citadel. Then they have the nerve to turn us into public enemy #1 just because we believe in an underdog company getting a second chance.
We don’t have billionaires to bail us out when we mess up our portfolio risk and a position goes against us. We can’t go on TV and make attempts to manipulate millions to take our side of the trade. If we mess up as bad as they did, we’re wiped out, have to start from scratch and are back to giving handjobs behind the dumpster at Wendy’s.
Seriously. Motherfuck these people. I sincerely hope they suffer. We want to see the loss porn.”
Melvin Capital had to close their short trade on a massive loss and get bailed out by Citadel.[2]
Coincidently, former Federal Reserve Chairwoman, Janet Yellen, was sworn in as Treasury Secretary yesterday, January 26, 2021. She wrote an open letter to the Treasury Staff, saying,[3]
“If you have listened to President Biden speak over the past few weeks, you have heard him talk about “four historic crises.” COVID-19 is one. But in addition to the pandemic, the country is also facing a climate crisis, a crisis of systemic racism, and an economic crisis that has been building for fifty years.”
50 years ago, in 1971, Nixon nixed what remained of the US gold standard. The Fed has been increasingly printing money ever since.[4]
Today, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee announced that they will keep the Federal Funds Rate low (0%-.25%) by printing money, which lowers all other interest rates.[5][6]
Does the game stop when people realize that printing money is a deliberate policy for bailouts?[7]
“But then finally the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against ‘real’ goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.” -Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1949), page 428.
Update: The subreddit r/WallStreetBets was banned by their server host.
Via Zerohdeg:[8]
Update again, like 5 minutes later: Wall Street Bets is back: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l54ky3/an_open_letter_to_cnbc/
[3]https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0003
[4]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/keynesianism
[5]https://www.hamiltonmobley.com/blog/iorr-ioer-and-ffr
[6]https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/monetary20210127a1.pdf
[7]https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l68ill/the_biggest_short_squeeze_in_the_world_slv_silver/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
[8]https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/sec-joins-biden-admin-actively-monitoring-option-volatility