What stocks are you trading today

1.

A. A hedge fund manager buys up a massive short position. Encourages his buddies to do the same. Then goes on CNBC and touts how pathetic the company is to drive the price down, so he and his buddies can make a nice profit.

B. An ordinary Joe finds a company in a dying industry niche with a decent amount of cash to weather a storm. Finds that hedge funds have shorted the stock to the tune of 140%. He goes on Reddit and shows the crowd that the hedge funds have screwed up royally and if they drive the stock up they should have a good profit.

Why is it ok for the hedge fund manager to do "A", but not the ordinary Joe to do "B"?



2.

Will much of the Robinhood crowd loose money long term? Possibly. Don't they have the right to make financial decisions for themselves even if they might be wrong?

The government encourages the poor and working class to buy lottery tickets and gamble. At least the stock market is more than zero sum since there is a long term upward trajectory with it.



3. "Accredited Investor" is such a joke. Regulation is a way of limiting access to those that don't have the ability fight it. Regulation always helps those already in the system to limit competition.

You are probably correct, government regulations will probably be enacted to stop this type of things and further protect the elite from the prototeriate.
Excellent points Wheels. The arrogance of these hedge funds is almost beyond belief. They could have put a stop-loss on these positions for pennies, yet they were so certain of their success in destroying this company that they did not bother. I have no sympathy for them whatsoever.

I also agree with you on the 'accredited investor' classification. I was on the trading strategy committee of one of the largest energy systems in the world (you know which one) years before I hit the 'accredited investor' threshold. There is no way you could argue that I did not have the knowledge or sophistication to participate in 'accredited investments' before I hit the threshold. The tools you have access to as an accredited investor dramatically increase you ability to manage risk and, in a volatile environment, significantly improve your ability to outperform the market. The fact that these tools are restricted to those with a certain level of accumulated financial wealth is mind boggling. I'm not a socialist, but I take serious exception to this.
 
We may be seeing a transition away from fiat currencies for at least part of a companies near term assets.

We live in a world of changing technology. Is crypto in 2021 what dotcom was in 1995. It seems as though things are starting to move very fast.

________________________________________________________________________________________________





Michael Saylor

@michael_saylor

·
1h

I have never seen so many CEOs sign up to attend one of our events. Send yours, or come join our sessions & report back to your team. Every company can benefit from plugging into the #Bitcoin



o5J4myzE_normal.jpg


MicroStrategy

@MicroStrategy
· 1h
In 2020 we purchased ~70,469 Bitcoins at an aggregate cost of ~$1.125B with an average price of ~$15,964 per #Bitcoin

. We used a #playbook. Attendees of this week's event get complimentary access. Register today. http://ow.ly/ap8350Dne6b
 
1.

A. A hedge fund manager buys up a massive short position. Encourages his buddies to do the same. Then goes on CNBC and touts how pathetic the company is to drive the price down, so he and his buddies can make a nice profit.

B. An ordinary Joe finds a company in a dying industry niche with a decent amount of cash to weather a storm. Finds that hedge funds have shorted the stock to the tune of 140%. He goes on Reddit and shows the crowd that the hedge funds have screwed up royally and if they drive the stock up they should have a good profit.

Why is it ok for the hedge fund manager to do "A", but not the ordinary Joe to do "B"?



2.

Will much of the Robinhood crowd loose money long term? Possibly. Don't they have the right to make financial decisions for themselves even if they might be wrong?

The government encourages the poor and working class to buy lottery tickets and gamble. At least the stock market is more than zero sum since there is a long term upward trajectory with it.



3. "Accredited Investor" is such a joke. Regulation is a way of limiting access to those that don't have the ability fight it. Regulation always helps those already in the system to limit competition.

You are probably correct, government regulations will probably be enacted to stop this type of things and further protect the elite from the prototeriate.
I think it is obvious that we may view the situation differently, which is all good. I hear your points and they are valid- I am constantly trying to learn so, thank you. Should also mention that I have no dog in this hunt. A couple additional sentiments in response to yours:

1. I have absolutely no problem with people on the wrong side of any bet loosing money. That fundamentally happens in any trade. I don't see this as a "us" against "them" scenario. My initial take is that a collective and public objective to manipulate the price of any stock is something that regulation has tried to do away with in a ton of ways . . . front running, etc. In this case, where the price performance is so disconnected from company fundamentals, the result is a market frenzy (in both directions) that is certainly not a desired outcome in the eyes of folks who try to deliver all of us a rational and orderly market. I just don't see what has transpired as a particularly good thing, from a macro perspective. I don;t want to comment on "A" or "B" being "okay to do" but I do think they are very different.

2. The lottery is, economically, a pseudo tax on the poor. Not because it was specifically designed to be that but because of the cohort that delivers the most participation. I don't play but, hey, some like to and that's their prerogative. Certainly some intrinsic value makes owning a stock less than a gamble . . . assuming their is a rational underlying value to the stock. In the case of GME, there is no real underlying value and as such I put the recent event in the bucket of "disconnected from anything that resembles fundamentals around the company". Again, I don't want folks not to participate at will, but participate with the knowledge that playing the stock is gambling. I do like to gamble.

3. I am completely on board with less regulation, generally. That said, my concern is that these types of market moves and unbridled events like this do nothing to make regulators believe regulation should be less. To the contrary, I could see where big gov steps in to "protect" new market participants which is surely not a desired outcome.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. What I do know is that a lot of folks who are trading, because it is en vogue right now on social platforms, are more likely to get hurt than those with more experience. Same as just about anything. I just hope that they have gone in eyes wide open and that this is a foray into life long investing that backs quality companies as opposed to chasing irrational momentum or a trajectory born of a concerted effeort to create a temporary phenomenon.
 
I think it is obvious that we may view the situation differently, which is all good. I hear your points and they are valid- I am constantly trying to learn so, thank you. Should also mention that I have no dog in this hunt. A couple additional sentiments in response to yours:

1. I have absolutely no problem with people on the wrong side of any bet loosing money. That fundamentally happens in any trade. I don't see this as a "us" against "them" scenario. My initial take is that a collective and public objective to manipulate the price of any stock is something that regulation has tried to do away with in a ton of ways . . . front running, etc. In this case, where the price performance is so disconnected from company fundamentals, the result is a market frenzy (in both directions) that is certainly not a desired outcome in the eyes of folks who try to deliver all of us a rational and orderly market. I just don't see what has transpired as a particularly good thing, from a macro perspective. I don;t want to comment on "A" or "B" being "okay to do" but I do think they are very different.

2. The lottery is, economically, a pseudo tax on the poor. Not because it was specifically designed to be that but because of the cohort that delivers the most participation. I don't play but, hey, some like to and that's their prerogative. Certainly some intrinsic value makes owning a stock less than a gamble . . . assuming their is a rational underlying value to the stock. In the case of GME, there is no real underlying value and as such I put the recent event in the bucket of "disconnected from anything that resembles fundamentals around the company". Again, I don't want folks not to participate at will, but participate with the knowledge that playing the stock is gambling. I do like to gamble.

3. I am completely on board with less regulation, generally. That said, my concern is that these types of market moves and unbridled events like this do nothing to make regulators believe regulation should be less. To the contrary, I could see where big gov steps in to "protect" new market participants which is surely not a desired outcome.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. What I do know is that a lot of folks who are trading, because it is en vogue right now on social platforms, are more likely to get hurt than those with more experience. Same as just about anything. I just hope that they have gone in eyes wide open and that this is a foray into life long investing that backs quality companies as opposed to chasing irrational momentum or a trajectory born of a concerted effeort to create a temporary phenomenon.

You have some good thoughts here.

We probably agree on much more than we disagree about.

The exuberance in the markets has the feel that a blow off is coming. If this happens then many "unsophisticated" investors will get crushed and cry foul to the politicians. We all know where that leads.

A massive concern is the derivatives market. How does the world unwind a quadrillion dollars if the markets are in freefall. This may be the key difference between now and previous corrections.

All the best and happy hunting.
 
I received a short email from one of my investment subscriptions and they had this to say about the Gamestop trading which I thought was interesting.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Quoted by Jeff Brown (Editor):
Last Thursday, we crawled down the rabbit hole on the extraordinary GameStop (GME) situation. I told you all about the efforts to ban or censor the merry band of retail investors who recognized a major market distortion and traded in hopes of a profit.

At least, that’s what they tried to do. But these events have become even more interesting and bizarre than they were a few days ago…

The distortion was the massive levels of naked short selling of GameStop’s stock by hedge funds. This was all done to drive down the share price and make a profit.

Naked short selling is not supposed to be possible. Still, it happens all the time. It happens when the total short position is larger than the total number of shares available to short. And that’s exactly what happened with GameStop.

A large number of retail investors identified this massive short position and drove up the shares in GameStop to levels that almost brought down the hedge fund Melvin Capital. Two other prominent hedge funds, Citadel and Point72, had to bail it out.

And brokerage houses were overwhelmed by all the buying and selling activity on GameStop. One in particular was caught way off guard: Robinhood.

What happened next is hard to believe.

Robinhood was lending out shares of GameStop and other highly shorted companies to hedge funds. Robinhood generated lending fees by doing so. It also allowed – arguably encouraged – the retail users of its platform to trade stocks and options on margin.

But there was so much activity around GameStop that Robinhood could no longer meet its capital requirements from a regulatory perspective. It had to quickly raise additional private capital to shore up its balance sheet and provide enough capital to clearinghouses to avoid getting into trouble… or something much worse.

More specifically, it drew down on credit lines of $500–600 million and raised more than $1 billion in emergency funding. The most ironic part was that it did so hours after stating that it had no liquidity problem.

But in order to stop its increasingly large capital requirements from growing even larger, Robinhood suspended trading on several shorted stocks like GameStop.

And it didn’t just suspend trading. Robinhood actually started selling its users’ positions at its own discretion. Many traders using Robinhood reported having their shares sold without their permission.

That’s not a typo. Users profiting from GameStop were closed out of their positions – without their consent – at rapidly declining prices in GameStop. This was done so Robinhood could shore up its own business.

And it resulted in the loss of more than $1 billion in profits for retail investors. Of course, it saved hedge funds an equivalent amount of bleeding.

Robinhood is certainly an inappropriate name for the online brokerage. I propose renaming the company “Robbing the Neighborhood.”

Robinhood was supposed to let regular investors do “commission-free trading.”

But the company did exactly the opposite. The platform is not commission-free. And apparently the company can trade our stocks in a way that benefits Robinhood and its customers… and hurts its users.

I use that language intentionally. Robinhood’s “users” use the brokerage to trade and invest. Robinhood’s “customers” are actually the hedge funds that pay Robinhood for order flow.

Robinhood’s largest customer is Citadel. More than half of the orders that Robinhood users place are routed through it.

The absurdity of this situation is baffling.

Robinhood is the online broker equivalent of what Facebook is to social media.

Robinhood takes users’ data – their order flow – and sells it to the highest bidders.

What do Robinhood users receive in return? “Free” trading. But Robinhood users do in fact pay for trading through suboptimal order execution. That results in more profits for Robinhood’s real customers – the hedge funds – and fewer profits for Robinhood’s users.

And politicians are now looking at retail investors to determine if they are manipulating the markets. I predict that this will end in new regulatory changes to “protect” us retail investors from any speculative behavior.

And, of course, the hedge funds are crying foul due to the sting of losing billions. But the real focus should be on the hedge fund activity and naked short selling.

I doubt that will happen. After all, the new U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, received $810,000 of speaking fees from none other than Citadel over the last couple of years.

I suspect that the old saying will ring true…

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
 

Hipster
@Hipster_Trader
·2h
"This here is a short seller, they went extinct in the early 2020s"


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We may be seeing a transition away from fiat currencies for at least part of a companies near term assets.

We live in a world of changing technology. Is crypto in 2021 what dotcom was in 1995. It seems as though things are starting to move very fast.

________________________________________________________________________________________________


Michael Saylor
@michael_saylor

·
1h

I have never seen so many CEOs sign up to attend one of our events. Send yours, or come join our sessions & report back to your team. Every company can benefit from plugging into the #Bitcoin


o5J4myzE_normal.jpg


MicroStrategy

@MicroStrategy
· 1h
In 2020 we purchased ~70,469 Bitcoins at an aggregate cost of ~$1.125B with an average price of ~$15,964 per #Bitcoin

. We used a #playbook. Attendees of this week's event get complimentary access. Register today. http://ow.ly/ap8350Dne6b

I bought some Bitcoin around 34k last week when I realized 1,400 corporate executives were going to this meeting on using btc as a place to park excess corporate cash.

Todays announcement by Musk that Tesla bought $1.5B may have relaunched btc. even further. I bought more this morning at 44k with extremely poor entry and execution. Hard to believe it is up over x10 in less than a year with opportunity to go further.

The amount of btc available to trade on the exchanges has been going down significantly. It seems buyers are moving btc off of exchanges to wallets for long term storage. If demand from the corporate folks continues to go up and the supply is removed from circulation, then btc may have a chance to move big again.

PS: I am not a financial professional. Just an old goat with an opinion, who is often wrong. See 2020 election results for proof! :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:
 
3. "Accredited Investor" is such a joke. Regulation is a way of limiting access to those that don't have the ability fight it. Regulation always helps those already in the system to limit competition.
Nothing pisses me off more that accredited investor bullshit...I remember reading up on it the first time, it was the first time I ever so blatantly seen and understood being rich is a club and they dont want to let any new blood in.
 
I bought some Bitcoin around 34k last week when I realized 1,400 corporate executives were going to this meeting on using btc as a place to park excess corporate cash.

Todays announcement by Musk that Tesla bought $1.5B may have relaunched btc. even further. I bought more this morning at 44k with extremely poor entry and execution. Hard to believe it is up over x10 in less than a year with opportunity to go further.

The amount of btc available to trade on the exchanges has been going down significantly. It seems buyers are moving btc off of exchanges to wallets for long term storage. If demand from the corporate folks continues to go up and the supply is removed from circulation, then btc may have a chance to move big again.

PS: I am not a financial professional. Just an old goat with an opinion, who is often wrong. See 2020 election results for proof! :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

Sigh...

I went back into RIOT at $9.55. It reached $23 and I was happy/giddy and sold. Yay $1300 profit.

It closed at just under $80 today some 12 days later which would have been a 7K gain.

I'm not going to whine, but dang...
 
PS: I am not a financial professional. Just an old goat with an opinion, who is often wrong. See 2020 election results for proof! :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:
Bwana mkubwa :

Bitcoin
Ethereum
Ripple
Litecoin
Bitcoin cash

you wil be happy in five years that you bought it in 2021
Stay safe
Foxi
 
Bwana mkubwa :

Bitcoin
Ethereum
Ripple
Litecoin
Bitcoin cash

you wil be happy in five years that you bought it in 2021
Stay safe
Foxi

;)

Don't forget Chainlink. Chainlink is the plumbing that makes it all work. (y)
 
Sigh...

I went back into RIOT at $9.55. It reached $23 and I was happy/giddy and sold. Yay $1300 profit.

It closed at just under $80 today some 12 days later which would have been a 7K gain.

I'm not going to whine, but dang...

Nice profit.

It's hard to catch the bottom. It's hard to catch the top.

It's not too difficult to catch 50% of the middle. If you can catch more then fantastic. The problem is identifying a dip from a retrenchment.

We all ask what if. (My son said I should look at BNT yesterday. He bought at $3.61 as I look now it is $4.44) A key is making some decent decisions in an appropriate market, and letting some of those decisions run for a long time. As Foxi said a couple posts above. Buy and hold for five years. There will probably be a massive correction within that period of time in the crypto market. Holding will be tough. Buying and getting back in may be easier but timing those transactions is always difficult.

All the best.
 
Bwana mkubwa :

Bitcoin
Ethereum
Ripple
Litecoin
Bitcoin cash

you wil be happy in five years that you bought it in 2021
Stay safe
Foxi
Your list is good, but get rid of Bitcoin Cash...go with xtz, algo, link, dot (though not a huge fan of DOT but you can stake it), BNB has its own chain.
 
Sigh...

I went back into RIOT at $9.55. It reached $23 and I was happy/giddy and sold. Yay $1300 profit.

It closed at just under $80 today some 12 days later which would have been a 7K gain.

I'm not going to whine, but dang...
If you hit your profit target and traded your plan than oh well, hindsight is always 20/20. If you try too hard to catch the peak you're more likely to hold past the peak and be wondering if you should sell now when you're down on unrealized gains or risk more downside hoping it hits highs again
 
Evidently buying Bitcoin for $22,000 two months ago was pricy so now they are buying it at $52,000.



Here's Why I Won't Buy Bitcoin, and You Shouldn't, Either
Bitcoin's many bull theses can be easily debunked.

Sean Williams
(TMFUltraLong)
Dec 20, 2020 at 6:36AM
Author Bio


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Motley Fool Announces $5 Million Investment in Bitcoin
The Motley Fool is announcing plans to allocate $5 million of its own cash to Bitcoin. Here's why.

Motley Fool Staff
(The_motley_fool)
Feb 17, 2021 at 2:38PM

 
As world governments continue to debase their currencies, I am more convinced that the following statement is true.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Michaël van de Poppe
@CryptoMichNL
#Bitcoin isn't the bubble, it's the pin.

In the coming years we'll see that develop and come true.
10:15 AM · Feb 19, 2021
 
As world governments continue to debase their currencies, I am more convinced that the following statement is true.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Michaël van de Poppe
@CryptoMichNL
#Bitcoin isn't the bubble, it's the pin.

In the coming years we'll see that develop and come true.
10:15 AM · Feb 19, 2021
I dont know, I admittedly havent spent time researching crypto but I dont research any company I trade, I just trade the charts. if the world gets that bad the only currency that will matter is food and ammo IMO. Maybe the future will provide some entry opportunities but theres just no way I can bring myself to buy something so insanely ridiculously extended as most/all cryptos.
 
Sigh...

I went back into RIOT at $9.55. It reached $23 and I was happy/giddy and sold. Yay $1300 profit.

It closed at just under $80 today some 12 days later which would have been a 7K gain.

I'm not going to whine, but dang...
I did this last year with NIO.... bought it in low $3's, sold it in high $5's, thought I was happy with the trade, removed it from my watch list altogether, and then checked it back in January to find it over $60.
The market has a way of rewarding the patient, and on that occasion I was not patient.
Oh well, se la vie.
 
I dumped my mutual fund at $84, happened get lucky and that was the highest it had ever been. It is in the mid $70's.

Everything is sitting in a Gov bond fund until things get going again as it is an option with my investment portfolio without taking a hit.

I don'
 
I dumped pretty much everything but the blue chips, still have some high end product companies. Rich people always spend money.
Made some money on the ccIv deal and doubled up on the amc grab.
Going to play it safe for a while now.
 

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