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by piva00 1974 days ago
This is absolutely fucking ridiculous. Someone is getting fucked by their own leverage, they got caught, isn't that what the market is supposed to do? Kill the overleveraged non-sense to redistribute wealth to more efficient investments?

It isn't a bank run to be blocked for the sake of society, this is just a bunch of rich people paying the price for risking too much... Boils my blood so deeply.
2 comments
kqr 1974 days ago
This is part of the game, though.

The hardest part of gambling is not coming up with the big winning bet -- it's getting whatever counterparty to pay you once you've won. It's always been this way, in sports, in horses, and on Wall Street. People come up with all sorts of reasons to not pay you and you have to shape your strategy around this.

Aaron Brown talks about how being a successful gambler is not about a few high-stakes wins, or a super-consistent record. It's about winning the right fraction of bets, so that nobody suspects you're a winner.

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mikepurvis 1974 days ago
The Big Short talks about this too— people trying to figure out how to bet against subprime mortgages in a way that the entity on the other side of it will actually be in a position to pay out (and be able to be compelled to do so).

Perhaps ironically, one of the central characters of that story, Michael Burry, is none too pleased at the current situation: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/michael-burry-calls-gamestop-ral...

EDIT: The Big Short, of course, not Moneyball.

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seanosaur 1974 days ago
Nitpicking, but I think you're referring to The Big Short rather than Moneyball.
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mikepurvis 1974 days ago
Right, of course— thanks. My brain was short-cutting to "the one that got made into a movie."
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exoque 1974 days ago
You mean 'The Big Short', Moneyball is about baseball. ;)
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nathanasmith 1973 days ago
>The hardest part of gambling is not coming up with the big winning bet -- it's getting whatever counterparty to pay you once you've won.

Isn't that the truth. I know crypto is hated on here but just as an anecdote, I've traded on a lot of exchanges in the last few years and I almost wince whenever I make a really great trade that 5 or 10x's because as sure as the day is long inside of an hour my account will get frozen and I'll have to submit documentation, answer a bunch of questions, or whatever else to get my account unfrozen and access to the funds. It's almost like they're saying thanks for your business and we don't mind you getting lucky but don't get too lucky.

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chromaton 1974 days ago
Business Adventures has the tale of the Piggly Wiggly short squeeze of 1923. The old boys of the NYSE changed the rules to help the shorts and undo trades after the fact.
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QuesnayJr 1974 days ago
So you think GameStop shares are genuinely worth $375? GameStop traded around $20 a share for the past couple of years. You think that right now the company is worth almost 20 times what it was worth two years ago?
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chromaton 1974 days ago
It's worth whatever somebody will pay for it. And right now the short sellers will pay a lot for it to stop their losses.
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piva00 1974 days ago
Where have I stated that?
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