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That’s something...and thanks for the post.

   

Trader makes 27 billion in one day and... crickets.

Trader loses 14 billion the next day and he cries like a baby to the government that the rules aren't fair.

   

   

   

   

Billionaire Mark Cuban says he has ‘hedged the heck’ out of his portfolio amid worries over GameStop market war

   

At times like this I think about how so many big companies seem to use the money they save from corporate tax cuts to buyback shareholders rather than actually investing in new jobs, research and development, or things that would actually make their companies grow.

I think about the late Jim Flaherty criticizing companies for sitting on "dead money" instead of reinvesting it.

I think about John Ralston Saul distinguishing between investing to actually build a company and increase the quality of its products, and "investing" to simply strip it of its assets.

I remember George Bush Senior criticizing "voodoo economics" that centered around simply extracting value from companies and assets rather than actually trying to create new value and improved products or services.

Capitalism, in and of itself, isn't necessarily the problem. It's more this asset-stripping and glorified coupon-clipping that's the problem, so much so that people who've had nasty arguments in other threads are all coming together on this one.

Who knows, this might be something that progressives and conservatives could actually agree on.

   

Conservatives have been cheerleading the current economic plundering for far too long, since the days of Reagan & Thatcher at the very least, for them ever to be considered as allies against the neo-plutocrats or to put stop to the schemes of the financial. If anything they'll keep boosting it as the best way to operate a society. Their first priority will always be making things safe & comfortable for the wealthiest and most powerful. Tucker Carlson's musings last year about the growing gap between the 1% and everyone else were a good time killer, but expecting him or anyone else in his demographic to ever truly care or want to change things is too much to ever expect from them.

I'm not a liberal or hard lefty either. I think the last five years for me merely turned out to be the equivalent of my getting hit in the head with a brick and finally waking up to the reality that I have no personal best interest in supporting the political parties that are entirely dedicated to making things that much easier for the wealthy. As such I can't imagine the scenario occurring where I'll be voting for any Canadian conservatives ever again. It really doesn't bother me too much either - I've left the tribe far back in the rear-view mirror and want nothing to do with them ever again. When I voted twice for Rachel Notley I actually felt clean in doing it, which is more than I can say about how I felt when I was casting ballots for the likes of the Reform Party or Ralph Klein. Never too old to finally figure it out I suppose.

   

It's hard to defend what these funds have done. They identify a struggling company, put their substantial wealth into shorting the stock, and then go on tv and tell everyone to short their stock. That ends up being an indicator to all the other funds to do it, and then suddenly the company's stock has been brought to near zero because these multi billion dollar funds have completely destroyed it.

It's one thing to short a stock that you see as over valued, and another thing to short a stock and then tell all your billionaire friends to short the stock so that you can artificially drive down the price and put a company out of business.

   

The funds have run amok but they do serve a purpose. Blockbuster is a fine example, land line phones another and cable bundles.

Short selling on legacy tech/industry brings it to an end and forces the new into the light. Dinosaurs need to be converted into oil and this is the way we do it. Otherwise, we would still be employing coopers. We just need to ensure that the short selling does not become a means to itself or everything will become a race to the bottom.

   

Exactly. Shorting on GameStop stock in the expectation that its price would continue to go down was a safe bet. Their only crime was to over expose themselves so heavily.

And I think initially, from WSB’s point of view, their squeeze play was more in seeing an opening than any sort of revenge. Only now after everything has blown up has it taken on a bit of an anarchist bent to punishing these particular hedge funds for the litany of Wall Street’s sins. Of which I’m still for.

I, like everyone I’m sure, is curious to see who’s going to blink first. Who at WSB is going to say to themselves they’ve ridden this tiger as far as they can now it’s time to cash in.

   

The difference is doing it yourself vs doing it yourself and then getting every other fund to do the same thing. It basically amounts to market manipulation.

Also, Gamestop had new leadership the middle of last year (and had started gaining value at the same time). They company was starting to pivot and was by no means dead. Enough that the guy who saw the 2008 crash coming had a long position on their stock.

So no, this was not something that was dead and holding on. This was something that was under new leadership, growing, and adjusting to fit the current climate before someone held an axe above it's head.

   

Before that point it was a dead man walking thou so short selling was very much justified. Even with new management it could easily be argued this is far too little to late.

Digital media is the future. Yes they are transitioning but why not just liquidate and start a fresh new IP and cut the fat?

   

The Capitalist who only buys a company to strip it for its meat and sell or bankrupt the skeleton is the reason why we have lost so much manufacturing in the west. The Chinese middle class far outstrips the West, because they saw the future, and if we aren't going to build stuff then they will.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's how interconnected we are, and how dependent we are on Asian manufacturers. I think you can directly trace that to the same mentality as the short sellers who thrive off collapsing companies for the short term gain, rather than invest in them for the long term profit.

   

I don't see why Gamestop doesn't take the successful Netflix subscription model and go to a mail in or streaming service instead of brick and mortar stores.

   

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