/r/wsb autists taking on a wallstreet hedgefund. Elon musk involved as always / wallstreetbets / gamestop - Gamergate 2: financial boogaloo

[IAmNotAlpharius]

I always wonder about tech companies selling data? What information are they selling, and who is buying? Ads, sure, but those make what, pennies per click? What do these creeps want from me?

Probably what you’re investing in, so some firms can act accordingly aka try to fuck you over.

 

[Water-T]

I had one coworker talking about the whole GameTheStocks thing, and another admitting that her and her husband BOUGHT DOGECOIN. These were both married women near retirement age with children and grandchildren, talking about and following this drama.

That's how mainstream this shit has gotten in just a matter of days.

 

[Terrifik]

 

[Least Concern]

I always wonder about tech companies selling data? What information are they selling, and who is buying? Ads, sure, but those make what, pennies per click? What do these creeps want from me?

Often it's not literally selling your data, but using that data to build a profile of you to better target those ads. If you use Google products to a significant degree and don't block ads and trackers on third-party sites, Google has a very good idea of the things you're into and educated guesses of your gender, age, salary, and so on based on the sites you've visited, videos you've watched, phrases you've searched for, etc. They can use that information to show you ads you are more likely to click on. For example, boomers see ads for life insurance, Republicans see ads for hunting gear, gamers see ads for video game controllers, etc. So Google saying "you can pay us to show ads to boomers/Republicans/gamers" is interpreted as "selling user data" though that's a bit of a simplification.

Some less reputable companies will literally sell databases of email addresses of people with certain characteristics, often sourced from databases of hacked sites or scammy offers ("enter your email address to receive this free e-book!"), but I don't think Google does that per se.

Also, pennies is what a site hosting ads will get for clicks, but Google will get dimes or even dollars - enough to more than pay for what it costs them to aggregate your data.

 

[Bongocat]

Some less reputable companies will literally sell databases of email addresses of people with certain characteristics, often sourced from databases of hacked sites or scammy offers ("enter your email address to receive this free e-book!"), but I don't think Google does that per se.

I think pretty much all companies sell your phone number. Literally every time I enter it anywhere, I get waves of spam calls immediately afterwards. It's gotten bad enough that I just block entire area codes and figure if it's important, they'll leave a voicemail.

 

[The Wicked Mitch]

View attachment 1884225

Perhaps you're right.

Whenever a (((-stein))) tells you something is bad or dangerous for you it's because you're hurting the six gorillion.

 

[usernames can change now!]

Chamath on a podcast compared Robinhood to Lehman Brothers lol

 

[spinal gas chamber]

I always wonder about tech companies selling data? What information are they selling, and who is buying? Ads, sure, but those make what, pennies per click? What do these creeps want from me?

It’s not ads. Those are dollars, sure, but the real value is in predictive analytics - what this really means is being able to decide what people will spend money on (data sold to marketing firms), who people will vote for (data sold to political consultants), what people will read / watch (data sold to entertainment industries), etc.

That’s the value - I know you’ve heard a lot about big data, welcome to contributing thousands of data points a day to it.

Powerlevel: I know big data from a specific IoT segment and it’s value in predicting machinery, etc failure easily overpays for itself. My assumption is that the same applies to people data.

 

[Curly_]

"Why" shows a lack of understanding when it comes to the degenerate, specifically addicted mind. There doesn't have to be a discernable ( and certainly not an understandable ) reason, the only relevant question is: why not?

For most people the answer is consequences or a conscience, barring that maybe it's simply not feasible. What if the first two weren't relevant to you and if what's feasible were only limited by your imagination and the physics of the universe?

You, with a non-degenerate mind, cannot comprehend why a Saudi prince would fly in young Slavic models just to shit in their mouth and watch them get fucked by an unwashed homeless Bengali. I mean surely you'd fuck such a succulent piece of ass yourself? Enjoy that slander ballet body to the fullest?

But what if you got bored of that by the time you turned 13? What if you got tired of fucking nubile Slavic ass a year later? You start to degenerate, in the same way run of the mill coomers do but now without consequence, conscience or limitation. As you're once again blowing out her asshole you feel contempt fuck this useless piece of meat, fucking and sucking for pieces of paper. How can you display this contempt? You call her names, next time you see how much extra money she wants to clean your dick.

Fucking subhuman piece of meat. You spit on the Slavic instathot, give her a good slap. She takes it, as long as you give her more pieces of paper - disgusting. Your contempt grows, seething. She eats your ass for money, she drinks your piss for money, she cuts your fucking toenails with her teeth for money. You bothered to bathe the last time you had her eat your ass. Every step used to get you high with power, euphoric even. But soon even shitting in her mouth and watching her get fucked by an unwashed homeless Bangali doesn't do anything for you and so you try to find a Western piece of meat to shit on. Years later you're emailing Hillary to find out how much these upper class Americans want for them to let you shit all over Chelsea and you're negotiating how much extra it'll cost for them to remain in the room while you do it.

There is very little power in snatching a little girl off the street and having your way with them, getting Bill and Hillary to bring you Chelsea to shit on, now that's fucking power.

There is power in defeating your enemies and forcibly castrating their sons, feminizing them and having them live as some sort of fucked up harem but it's banal, brute power. Demoralizing a culture to the point where parents castrate their sons, feminize them and make them dance for entertainment ( with societal approval, no less ) without a bullet fired is real fucking power.

You and I were born Wall Street porta-poties and eating shit is not enough to get their dicks hard anymore. Making you work 40 hours a week to raise 5 children in a home you owned, a car and a wife who took care of the family ceased being enough decades ago. Why have you work 40 hours a week for Netflix and a studio apartment to eat your Mcdonalds, pizza and the occassional steak in instead of a Hong-Kong style cage where you can consoom bug paste? Why the fuck not?

One additional thing that these degenerate elite have is an obsession with their fantasy of forcing the unwashed masses to live in the absolute min-maxed extreme of "eco-friendly" lifestyles. Why eat bugs over the meat we're used to? Assuming an equal "input" of plant biomass, you'll get a closer poundage to the original "input" with insects than you would with, say, cattle. Efficiency. Why do they want us to live in pods? Less space, less energy requirements for heating and cooling. Efficiency. Efficiency that's supposed to aid in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. If they weren't human themselves (knock on wood), they'd be trying to find ways to drive the human species into total extinction in the name of their kooky climate religion.

 

[mr.moon1488]

View attachment 1884289

Gotta love how companies that are intentionally crashing companies are saying there's going to be a market crash if they continue to get fucked.

 

[The Wicked Mitch]

One additional thing that these degenerate elite have an obsession with is their fantasy of forcing the unwashed masses to live in the absolute min-maxed extreme of "eco-friendly" lifestyles. Why eat bugs over the meat we're used to? Assuming an equal "input" of plant biomass, you'll get a closer poundage to the original "input" with insects than you would with, say, cattle. Efficiency. Why do they want us to live in pods? Less space, less energy requirements for heating and cooling. Efficiency. Efficiency that's supposed to aid in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. If they weren't human themselves (knock on wood), they'd be trying to find ways to drive the human species into total extinction in the name of their kooky climate religion.

That's exactly what the Great Reset is. Reproduction is already below replacement in much of the world and has been for some time, that will dramatically accelerate once we're fully integrated into the painless concentration camp of 2030.

 

[Uncle Ted]

View attachment 1884289

Isn't Goldman the backer bank of Citadel?

 

[axfaxf]

"Why" shows a lack of understanding when it comes to the degenerate, specifically addicted mind. There doesn't have to be a discernable ( and certainly not an understandable ) reason, the only relevant question is: why not?

For most people the answer is consequences or a conscience, barring that maybe it's simply not feasible. What if the first two weren't relevant to you and if what's feasible were only limited by your imagination and the physics of the universe?

You, with a non-degenerate mind, cannot comprehend why a Saudi prince would fly in young Slavic models just to shit in their mouth and watch them get fucked by an unwashed homeless Bengali. I mean surely you'd fuck such a succulent piece of ass yourself? Enjoy that slander ballet body to the fullest?

But what if you got bored of that by the time you turned 13? What if you got tired of fucking nubile Slavic ass a year later? You start to degenerate, in the same way run of the mill coomers do but now without consequence, conscience or limitation. As you're once again blowing out her asshole you feel contempt fuck this useless piece of meat, fucking and sucking for pieces of paper. How can you display this contempt? You call her names, next time you see how much extra money she wants to clean your dick.

Fucking subhuman piece of meat. You spit on the Slavic instathot, give her a good slap. She takes it, as long as you give her more pieces of paper - disgusting. Your contempt grows, seething. She eats your ass for money, she drinks your piss for money, she cuts your fucking toenails with her teeth for money. You bothered to bathe the last time you had her eat your ass. Every step used to get you high with power, euphoric even. But soon even shitting in her mouth and watching her get fucked by an unwashed homeless Bangali doesn't do anything for you and so you try to find a Western piece of meat to shit on. Years later you're emailing Hillary to find out how much these upper class Americans want for them to let you shit all over Chelsea and you're negotiating how much extra it'll cost for them to remain in the room while you do it.

There is very little power in snatching a little girl off the street and having your way with them, getting Bill and Hillary to bring you Chelsea to shit on, now that's fucking power.

There is power in defeating your enemies and forcibly castrating their sons, feminizing them and having them live as some sort of fucked up harem but it's banal, brute power. Demoralizing a culture to the point where parents castrate their sons, feminize them and make them dance for entertainment ( with societal approval, no less ) without a bullet fired is real fucking power.

You and I were born Wall Street porta-poties and eating shit is not enough to get their dicks hard anymore. Making you work 40 hours a week to raise 5 children in a home you owned, a car and a wife who took care of the family ceased being enough decades ago. Why have you work 40 hours a week for Netflix and a studio apartment to eat your Mcdonalds, pizza and the occassional steak in instead of a Hong-Kong style cage where you can consoom bug paste? Why the fuck not?

I should hate you for writing this. But I don´t. Thanks.

 

[DeadFish]

Isn't Goldman the backer bank of Citadel?

I heard Goldman has been hijacked by the Chinese.

I forget the source but thats what I heard.

 

[Pee Cola]

Screenshots of alleged GME share price manipulation in real time. Watch what happens to the size on the ask (sell) side. Bear in mind there's no datestamp on these and they were uploaded by some random on YouTube, so make of that what you will. I tried uploading archived video but the forum didn't like it.

 

[Bongocat]

I heard Goldman has been hijacked by the Chinese.

Oh great, they've melded

 

[TenMilesWide]

I always wonder about tech companies selling data? What information are they selling, and who is buying? Ads, sure, but those make what, pennies per click? What do these creeps want from me?

They're selling whatever you give them, either directly on their own websites or through cookies embedded in others, and ad firms will always buy so they can keep tailoring and updating their ads to catch as many eyes as possible. Those pennies per click add up pretty fast when you've got billions of clicks happening worldwide every day, and that gets paid forward to the big tech info gatherers who enable it.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

View attachment 1884225

Perhaps you're right.

Shame that bitcoin is banned in most places

 

[HumanHive]

View attachment 1884289

The article in question, since it's paywalled on ZH's actual site.
Imagine paying for political commentary. Imagine THINKING people want to pay for political commentary.

https://talkmarkets.com/content/options/goldman-warns-if-the-short-squeeze-continues-the-entire-market-could-crash?post=295851

Last Friday (Jan, 22) we advised readers who thought they had missed the move in GameStop (they hadn't), to position appropriately in the most shorted Russell 3000 names which included such tickers as FIZZ, DDS, BBBY, AMCX, GOGO and a handful of other names, as it was likely that the short-squeeze was only just starting.

We were right and all of the stocks listed above - and others - exploded higher the coming Monday, and all other days of the week, with results - encapsulated by the WallStreetTips vs Wall Street feud - that has become the top conversation piece across America, while on WSB the only topic is the phenomenal gains generated by going long said most shorted stocks. To wit, the basket of top shorts we compiled on Jan 22 has tripled in the past week.

And while some are quick to blame last week's fireworks on the "dopamine rush" of traders at r/wallstreetbets who seek an outlet to being "copped up with little else to do during the pandemic" (as Bloomberg has done), the reality is that at the end of the day the strategy unleashed by the subreddit is merely an extension of the bubble dynamics that were made possible by the Federal Reserve (of which Bloomberg is also a very staunch fan) pumping trillions and trillions of shot-gunned liquidity into a financial system where there are now bubble visible anywhere one looks. In short, main street finally learned that it too can profit from the lunacy of the money printers at the Eccles building, and some are very unhappy about that (yes, it will end in tears, but - newsflash - $300 trillion in debt and $120BN in liquidity injections monthly will also end in tears).

That aside, one week later, Goldman has finally caught up with what Zero Hedge readers knew one week ago, and all the way down to a chart showing a basket of the most-shorted Russell 3000 stocks...

Goldman's David Kostin has published a post-mortem of what happened last week, writing that "the most heavily-shorted stocks have risen by 98% in the past three months, outstripping major short squeezes in 2000 and 2009."

He then points out something we discussed in "Hedge Funds Are Puking Longs To Cover Short-Squeeze Losses", noting that while aggregate short interest levels are remarkably low (imagine what would have happened has shorting been far more aggressive marketwide) "the -4% weekly return of our Hedge Fund VIP list of the most popular hedge fund long positions (GSTHHVIP) showed how excess in one small part of the market can create contagion."

As an aside, and as we showed previously, as the most shorted stocks soared.

Hedge funds were forced to cover (as well as paying for margin calls), and as part of the broader degrossing they also had to sell some of the favorite hedge fund names across the industry, in this case represented by the Goldman Hedge Fund VIP basket.

Yet what may come as a surprise to some, even as hedge funds deleveraged aggressively and actively cut risk this week, gross and net exposures "remain close to the highest levels on record" (something which may come as a huge surprise to Marko Kolanovic who has been erroneously claiming the opposite), suggesting that if the squeeze continues, hedge funds are set for much more pain.

According to Goldman Sachs Prime Services, this week "represented the largest active hedge fund de-grossing since February 2009. Funds in their coverage sold long positions and covered shorts in every sector" and yet "despite this active deleveraging, hedge fund net and gross exposures on a mark-to-market basis both remain close to the highest levels on record, indicating ongoing risk of positioning-driven sell-offs."

With that in mind, here are Kostin's big picture thoughts:

It was a placid week in the US stock market – provided one was a long-only mutual fund manager. US equity mutual funds and ETFs had $2 billion of net inflows last week (+$10 billion YTD). Although the typical large-cap core mutual fund fell by 2% this week, it has generated a return of +1.3% YTD vs. S&P 500 down -1.1%. However, life was very different last week if one managed a hedge fund. The typical US equity long/short fund returned -7% this week and has returned -6% YTD.

With the average WSB portfolio up double digits this past week, one can see why hedge funds are upset. Anyway, moving on:

The past 25 years have witnessed a number of sharp short squeezes in the US equity market, but none as extreme as has occurred recently. In the last three months, a basket containing the 50 Russell 3000 stocks with market caps above $1 billion and the largest short interest as a share of float (GSCBMSAL) has rallied by 98%. This exceeded the 77% return of highly-shorted stocks during 2Q 2020, a 56% rally in mid-2009, and two distinct 72% rallies during the Tech Bubble in 1999 and 2000. This week the basket’s trailing 5-, 10-, and 21-day returns registered as the largest on record.

Thanks Goldman, and yes, your "brisk assessment" would have been more useful to your clients if it had come before the event (like, for example, this) instead of after.

Kostin then goes on to point out that the "mooning" in the most shorted stocks took place even though aggregate short interest was near a record low (imagine what would have happened had short interest been higher), which is odd because historically, "major short squeezes have typically taken place as aggregate short interest declined from elevated levels. In contrast, the recent short squeeze has been driven by concentrated short positions in smaller companies, many of which had lagged dramatically and were perceived by most investors to be in secular decline" to wit:

Unusually, the rally of the most heavily-shorted stocks has taken place against a backdrop of very low levels of aggregate short interest. At the start of this year, the median S&P 500 stock had short interest equating to just 1.5% of market cap, matching mid-2000 as the lowest share in at least the last 25 years. In the past, major short squeezes have typically taken place as aggregate short interest declined from elevated levels. In contrast, the recent short squeeze has been driven by concentrated short positions in smaller companies, many of which had lagged dramatically and were perceived by most investors to be in secular decline.

Of course, there is nothing "historical" about what happened last week, because - as we all know - the biggest difference between the typical short squeeze of the past and the recent rally in heavily-shorted stocks "was the degree of involvement of retail traders, who also appear to have catalyzed sharp moves in other parts of the market." Why thank you WSB, but that's ok - you will be handsomely rewarded.

Last week we discussed the surging trading activity and share prices of penny stocks, firms with negative earnings, and extremely high-growth, high-multiple stocks. These trends have all accompanied a large increase in online broker trading activity. A basket of retail favorites (ticker: GSXURFAV) has returned +17% YTD and +179% since the March 2020 low, outperforming both the S&P 500 (+72%) and our Hedge Fund VIP list of the most popular hedge fund long positions (GSTHHVIP, +106%).

So why does this matter? One simple reason: contrary to the bizarrely nonchalant optimism spouted earlier this week by JPMorgan's Marko Kolanovic who said "any market pullback, such as one driven by repositioning by a segment of the long-short community (and related to stocks of insignificant size), is a buying opportunity, in our view," Goldman has a far more dismal take on recent events, and writes that "this week demonstrated that unsustainable excess in one small part of the market has the potential to tip a row of dominoes and create broader turmoil."

He then picks up on what he said last weekend when responding to Goldman client concerns about a stock bubble, which we summarized in "Goldman's Clients Are Freaking Out About A Stock Bubble: Here Is The Bank's Response", and which turned out to be 100% warranted, and writes that "most of the bubble-like dynamics we highlighted last week have taken place in stocks constituting very small portions of total US equity market cap. Indeed, many of the shorts dominating headlines this week were (prior to this week) small-cap stocks. But large short squeezes led investors short these stocks to cover their positions and also reduce long positions, leading other holders of common positions to cut exposures in turn."

As a result, Goldman's Hedge Fund VIP list declined by 4%. Which is a problem because as Kostin concludes, "in recent years elevated crowding, low turnover, and high concentration have been consistent patterns, boosting the risk that one fund’s unwind could snowball through the market."

Translation: if WSB continues to push the most shorted stocks higher, the entire market could crash.

And since Kostin admits that "the retail trading boom can continue" as "an abundance of US household cash should continue to fuel the trading boom" with more than 50% of the $5 trillion in money market mutual funds owned by households and is $1 trillion greater than before the pandemic, what happens in the coming week - i.e., if the short squeeze persists - could have profound implications for the future of capital markets.

 

[Curly_]

Oh great, they've melded

View attachment 1884356

The only thing that's worse than chinks and kikes: Chinkikes.