Gamestop is just one example. Many of the most heavily shorted stocks have seen triple digit gains recently as counter manipulators try to screw over hedge funds.
The calls for increase regulation from hedge funds and other major investors who are used to being able to leverage their superior asset pools to manipulate markets, and thus sponge up all the losses of smaller investors, because they got caught off guard, is comedy gold.
It's also amusing to see several major stocks outpace common cryptos in volatility and watch the mental gymnastics required from those who are somehow pro-securities markets, but anti-crypto.
Now just wait for someone to chime in with some outlandish comparison about how Gamestop (nothing more than a collection of fancy billboard advertisements) or BlackBerry (patent trolls) is somehow doing something more useful than the Bitcoin network.
It's like the whole stock market is some kind of house of cards or something.
More like the whole global financial system.
We have debt-backed fractional-reserve money, where debt itself is collateral. The whole thing operates on the presumption of unlimited growth, so no one will ever have cause to overdraw the system, and money can just be printed on a whim--especially in the case of the US, who issue the de facto global reserve currency that everyone uses and no one can afford to not prop up (40%+ of US debt is held by foreign investors).
I don't know when the reckoning will come, or if I'll be around to see it, but it will be doozy.
Can can't help wonder if this is a slightly modernised form of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump - get a bunch of people to invest in the shares with no hard data, then get out quick before the share price drops back again. Incidentally stick it to the big money investors to help it gain traction. Will be interesting to see the fallout when the share price drops back down.
Pump and dump is par for the course in speculative investments of all kinds.
Most valuations of most share prices are borderline nonsense; hype, largely devorced from any sort of tangible assets, based on the rumored prowess of certain executives and vague predictions of the performance of future products based on past trends that may or may not be relevant. It's just that there are usually a few major active sharholders that can set the terms for their own benefit.
The difference here is that vague collectives of smaller investors are actively buying heavily shorted stocks, so all these funds that were profiting from the negative sentiment around these corporations are now being forced to cover those bets as the stocks are pumped by those outside of their control.
Any system that allows bad investments allows this kind of manipulation. Any system that doesn't allow bad investments doesn't allow stock markets.
www.bbc.com
How many shares? Let's just say that 140% of the ENTIRE share capital was shorted. How is that even possible, I do not know.
