How do you mean?
Also, gal not guy.
their points seem to boil down to
- âactually, naked shorting 140% of a stock is FINE and also GOOD, and Gamestop was OVERVALUED according to my feelings, not undervalued, like the data showedâ
- âum, ACTUALLY the WSB folks were doing shady manipulation too, even though they were acting in public and based purely on publicly-available information, just donât ask me what they did or how I knowâ
- âRobinhoodâs freezing of buy orders solely because it hurt their bottom line but allowing sells, which made all movement in these stocks unilaterally positive for the hedge funds theyâre in bed with is completely OK and goodâ
- âthe solution to all this is actually to make it HARDER for everyday people to invest so that finance goes back to being the rich-folks-only casino I like, NOT holding institutional wealth accountable for using gangster tactics to steal wealth from regular people for decadesâ
1 Like
I wonât be happy until wall street guys are wearing barrels with suspenders like in the cartoons
9 Likes
âThe Commission must review recent market activity affecting GameStop and other companies, and act to ensure that markets reflect real value, rather than the highly leveraged bets of wealthy traders or those who seek to inflict financial damage on those traders,â Senator Warren wrote in her letter to the SEC. âTo protect and restore public trust in sound securities regulation and enforcement, the Commission must identify gaps in existing securities laws and rules and ways in which the Commission can improve its enforcement capabilities.â (emphasis mine)
No one makes something devoid of enthusiasm like Warrenâs office, huh. Canât help but feel indignant at the amateurs making a mockery of the system.
Perhaps the same could be said of all private equity
ok I get the spirit but câmon GameStop was dying before the cheap versions of new consoles came out without disc drives. You canât keep the lights on with funko pops and magazine subscriptions. The business model is, as @Brooks hilariously put it, a pawn shop for children.
4 Likes
I think itâs a regulatorâs mindset looking to ensure stability as a precondition of trying to stomp inequities. You canât take any action inside of chaos and when institutions are flat-footed I think itâs always smart to assume the longstanding powerful interests will find a way to fleece everyone else.
(yes, I think the populist narrative around this is hokum, this is clearly an injection of chaos but I donât think itâs small investors vs large investors)
1 Like
They were doing badly, yes, but not AS badly as the stock prices at the time implied
Plus they just hired a new guy to a high-level position who has a reputation for turning around struggling companies. If allowed to continue doing business as usual until nature took its course, so to speak, they actually had a less-than-abysmal chance at turning around, but if the heavy shorts werenât fought against, Gamestop would have been driven into a premature bankruptcy purely for sport so a few hedgies could make a buck.
Framing the issue around âfair, orderly, and efficientâ is a mistake imo. Itâs a kind of legislating/rulemaking that passes the buck to obscure pseudo-litigation that can largely avoid public scrutiny. Can anyone honestly say the securities markets in the US are fair or efficient while the web 3.0 bubble persists?
Leveraged short options are obviously vulnerable to manipulation and are only useful to increase wealth in the short term for those who already have it. No ordinary person meets with their CFA and picks Melvin. I donât see why this financial product should be permitted to exist. Why expend resources regulating rather than prohibiting something inherently anti-social?
3 Likes
Because you do the work you can, and incremental improvements donât undermine larger changes and bigger fights you want to pick. Itâs just the grinding work of taking what gains you can in an adversarial environment.
the discomfort of rich people was amusing for a day or two but days later people everywhere still constantly enthusiastically talking about stocks makes me feel like Iâm eating raw sewage
26 Likes
Again, I take issue with the framing. This is her officeâs opening salvo. There is no need to compromise out of the gate, especially with a situation as utterly unsympathetic as this one. Move the unit of analysis to the practice of leveraged shorts, then focus in on specific penalties later. Itâs a failure to capitalize on the overwhelming sentiment.
This isnât even the cynical analysis â Iâm disappointed under the assumption for argument that she wants to eliminate this practice.
5 Likes
Warren gonna warren. This is her to a tee
The only good left interventions here are things like Ilhanâs wealth tax, transaction tax, etc
Point the blame squarely at the rich not at some micro targeted wall st rules
2 Likes
Not much I dislike more than meta-strategizing around political messaging. Itâs the easiest possible backbenching and impossible to falsify.
What I care about is directional changes and stated goals. Looking back at docs, weâve got a 2017-19 Senate bill to replace Glass-Steagall, a proposal by her campaign to regulate banking executive compensation, and message statements about a large package that would include âputting private equity firms on the hook for the debts of companies they buy, making them responsible for the downside of their investments so that they only make money if the companies they control flourish.â
I donât think itâs under question that thereâs a Senate faction for heavily regulating hedge funds and similar activity.
Itâs not the meta, itâs just strategy.
Bill is good and would likely forestall hurrying GameStop into an early grave, so why not plug it rather than ask the SEC about angels on a pinhead?
Or, put another way, what will be practical and operable about the response from the SEC?
Political statements are directed towards multiple audiences and donât preclude other statements weâre not privy to. Sheâs got influential access now to regulators who can take quicker action than re-introducing legislation; why does this statement mean the other routes arenât also being worked? Does introducing a bill that needs to fight for priority among the dozen intensely-high-priority items make sense at this moment?
SEC action is operable because the agency will now be responsive to her concerns, right?
3 Likes
I can only speak to what I know, but I think itâs a rote formality to ask the SEC koans about broad interpretive admin law.
True. Itâs a âwe need to do somethingâ action in an environment deeply inside fog of war.
This is why I have to expatriate if I want medical treatment without an annual âhigh dollar reviewâ to determine whether walking unimpeded is worth $30k.
After the Obama administration I am not going to trust that anything good is happening behind the scenes.
5 Likes