Group of Redditors take down Wall Street hedge fund

[Craig380]

This is quite funny in a 'Trading Places' way: basically a Wall St hedge fund took a $55M short position on Gamestop shares (Gamestop is like our Game stores), betting the company would fail.

A bunch of Redditors spotted this, piled in and bought a load of shares, forcing the share price back up and massively exposing the hedgies to over $2 billion losses. Serves the disaster capitalists right.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1353951035224694785

[Seeker]

...whilst we are railing against capitalists:

Billionaires made $3.9 trillion dollars during the pandemic and the 10 richest could pay for everyone on the planet to be vaccinated with their increase (and stop anyone from falling into poverty).

https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-made-39-trillion-during-the-pandemic-coronavirus-vaccines-2021-1?r=US&IR=T

[DJ123]

but does that money exist though, or is it the usual it is tied up in assets and shares.

If it was actual cash, i would like to think people would take a Bill Gates style philanthropist approach and understand that money is useless at those levels of wealth.

[Craig380]

The individuals' shareholdings could be cashed in - or at least a proportion of them in order not to upset the markets.

The CEO of one of my clients made a big thing about not drawing his $1.5 million salary during 2020 to help avoid layoffs during Covid lockdowns. Very laudable, but he also cashed in $4 million in shares, so he was just about able to scrape by.

This pretty much sums up the attitude of Bezos, Musk et al: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2019/may/18/stephen-collins-on-amazons-jeff-bezos-cartoon

[Seeker]

This doesn't show any signs of fading away. Some hedge funds are saying it's market manipulation but isn't short selling market manipulation and they've been doing it for years?

[DJ123]

This doesn't show any signs of fading away. Some hedge funds are saying it's market manipulation but isn't short selling market manipulation and they've been doing it for years?

It's market manipulation when it doesn't go their way . . . .

[Dave20046]

Saw a meme/internet reposting earlier

"What's considered classy when rich people do it and trashy when poor people do it?"
"Manipulating markets"


There's definitely been an injustice in the protections afforded to the precarious hedgefunders who took a huge risk in innocent people's misery. With no sign of accountability I wonder why financial crashes happen.