Just a positive account for those who frequent 'new' hoping to find just one more gem.
Don't normally wear my mask on the bus, don't normally get hassled. Today city workers got on, doing their checks for train cleanliness and getting a head count for usage. I don't know why that always takes 5 peopole to do, but I remind you, this is San Francisco and commies love to pay people to do nothing.
They told me to wear a mask, I told them I wouldn't be doing that
They politely asked me to get off, I politely told them I wouldn't be doing that
They said that the train would have to go out of service then, and they had the driver stop.
After a few minutes of me not going anywhere, the train doors closed and we were back on our way.
"They aren't sending anyone to deal with him?"
"Nah, they're going to meet the train at a later stop"
No one ever showed up at a later stop to "deal with me"
I rode that train nearly to the end of the line with those same 5 workers doing nothing but sit aorund and chat the whole way. Seems SFPD had no interest in enforcing a call that someone wasn't wearing a mask on public transportation.
If I can do it in SF, you can do it anywhere.
Oh my god! GME is down to $150! It's down to $100! It's down to 30 cents! The hedgies are going to cover all their shorts at that 30cent price point! It's over!
Wrong.
No one is selling at these prices. Sure, maybe a few scared folk who don't know any better. Maybe they trigger a few stop losses. Maybe some margins get called. But it's not enough. Say it with me:
PRICE DOESN'T MATTER
WHAT?!
You heard me. 30cent GME? No problem.
They don't need a low price, they need your shares. If 10 people sell at 30c cents, and that's the only market activity, it's a "30 cent stock" but Melvin only netted ten shares. They are still fucked. They aren't buying 50 million shares at 30c, nor $100, nor $300, and that's their problem. It's an availability issue. Sometimes it's ALSO a price issue (too high for them) but primarily it's the availability.
All the activity driving down the listed share price are illegal ladder attacks (not that legality should be expected at this point, these folk are crooks). Those aren't actual sales though, it's just shares trading hands from hedgie to hedgie. They aren't gobbling up value. These people don't admit defeat, they are neither smart nor humble, they are crooks. They need 50 million+ shares. They need over 100% of the float to sell to them (that 50% float you hear about is accounting shennaigans, ignore it, they are still exposed). You can NOT close that many positions sniping a few shaky handed noobs. We aren't talking about a few shares they need to buy, we're talking about fucking ALL OF THEM.
I'll explain that in a second, but first let me repeat:
PRICE DOESN'T MATTER
So let's say you want to buy 50 million shares, let's look at what shares are being asked for in my hypothetical example market:
# of Shares - Price
x 20 - $0.30c
x 80 - $5
x 400 - $20
x 600 - $40
x 900 - $60
x 2,000 - $100
x 5,000 - $150
x 10,000 - $200
x 30,000 - $300
x 50,000 - $400
x 150,000 - $500
x 1 mil - $1,000
x 15 mil - $5,000
x 30 mil - $69,420
Get it? There are only a few people willing to sell at those low prices. By the time you've bought a quarter million shares (0.5% of what you need to buy) you're back up to the sustained highs. And these are just exaggerations to make a point. A stock price only reflects current trade values, not availability at those prices. If the hedgies are trading their shares back and forth to each other to drive down the price and they have ladder attacked down to a Nickel, that doesn't mean anyone's shares are only worth pocket change, that just means that that is what things are trading at in the moment. There's no volume to buy up at those costs. No one can force you to sell at a Nickel.
Get it?
PRICE DOESN'T MATTER
They need our shares, not a low price. The price does not reflect whether we are 'winning' or not. Their financial reserves indicate that, but there isn't a ticker for that. But be sure, every day the inevitable closes in. Sell out of fear if you like, but you'll just miss out in the end. People like me, as we shore up more funds, snipe these low prices, stealing away shares the hedgies use to ladder and taking shares away from shaky hands and putting them into steady ones.
This isn't financial advice, I just want to make sure people on this sub have the knowledge to not make fools of themselves in casual conversation.
(Adapted from a comment thread in another thread)
Imagine (the hedies) shorting at $350 and covering in 4 months at $20. They'll not only recover their losses, they'll probably end up to the better.
Shorts don't expire, they pay interest. And they don't have 4 months, they likely don't even have 4 days.
Right now it's about 30% APY. Let's do the math using the current stock price of GME (~$300) x 115% the number of float shares (~50million) / 365 per day. (numbers approximate and rounded because math hard)
That's over 40 million in interest per day. Never mind that their positions are so below water they are walking dead. They have dug their graves so deep their only play is literally to keep digging and hope they come out in china. Remember that $3 billion injection that Melvin got from Citadel? It covers their interest for 75 days at that burn rate, ignoring all their other existing overhead. But that assumes the price stays at $300. If it hits $1,000 they run out of time before March. $2,000 and "Valentines day Massacre" will have a new meaning. It's why they are desperate to run FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) articles in press, pushing AMC and Silver as 'the new' targets to divert support away from GME. It's why they are literally committing crimes behind the scenes to drive down and halt further raises. It's why the >$320 closing price leaving tons of options in the money on Friday scared the shit out of them. All those in the money options exercising exhausts the brokerage stocks they hold in leverage. That means they have to buy more next week to cover the next round of expiring options if the price continues to rise. There are no new stocks at $300 to buy, shit is about to go parabolic unless they do something, anything!
3 billion only bought the zombie time. To repay their responsibilities at $300 would cost 15 billion. But before Robinhood and others removed the ability to buy new shares 3 days ago, there were multiple documented partial sales as high as $5,400. At that price it would cost 270 billion to repay their responsibilities. At that price interest exhausts their $3billion on Thursday. And that assumes that was the high. It's not.
They are sitting on TRILLIONS in duties and the most they could scrounge up were a few weeks (days) of life support. If they fold, the brokerages must pay out, if they fold the banks must. There is no escape.
They are going to ride their position into the dirt because it's the only play they have. They CAN'T repay, so they MUST ride to die. Their only hope is to stay solvent longer than you stay (classically) irrational. But all anyone has to do to break them is LITERALLY nothing. More new money comes in to buy rather than sell every day. And every time a "rational" actor sells, it is bought by another "irrational" one who simply likes the stock. The noose doesn't just tighten with every dollar of smart money leaving to be replaced by crayon eating autists, no, the trap door has already been released and the body is already in freefall. You can add more length to the rope, but there's no ground below you and you can't fall forever. There's no slipping the knot, your hands are tied. The story is written, the ending is a few pages beyond. Putting down the book doesn't change how this ends, it doesn't matter if you keep reading or not.
* this is not financial advice, I'm a deplorable dirty poor that lives in a basement and I have not showered yet today
Skip to whatever section you need clarification in:
- Stocks:
A stock is just an entitlement to a small share of profit or revenue from a company. Businesses are after all, a collaboration of labor and capital (you're the capital) nd both are entitled to some share of the gains. These gains are paid as dividends.
- Dividends:
The dividend you may receive is set in reality. What they bring in is what they pay out, basically. The company can't pay out more than they make, but they can't afford to pay less than a certain amount because they rely on capital investment to run the business and no one is buying in if you 'aint paying out. But what should a "stock" be worth? Well, what share of a profit actually worth? Depends on how much profit a share will pay out right?
- Share Price:
It's easy to understand that if a "share" is paying out $1 per quarter, then it should be worth twice as much as a "share" paying out 0.50c per quarter, right? Well it's a little more complicated because there's no certainty what the pay out will be ahead of time. Did the company do good this quarter? Did it meet it's "projections" or did it fall short? Did something unexpected happen, like a pandemic, or a ill tempered tweet causing a boycott?
- Speculation:
Because of these risks, some known, some unknown, different people have different opinions on what the stock is worth because they have different views of what the dividend will be and how likely or risky it is to rise or fall. Some risks are commonly "factored in" to the price, (such as price of rice) since flooding and drought may not come this year but they'll come some year. Other risks aren't easy to predict, or even inevitable. But if you believe a war is coming, or a new product will be a success, you may decide that a given stock is over valued, or undervalued. By purchasing an undervalued stock, you don't just reap a higher return through a larger dividend than if you invested elsewhere, but if you later sell that stock you accrue the price difference after it's price "corrects" to reflect what becomes common knowledge. Similarly, "shorting" is how you make a profit off a stock you believe to be overvalued.
- Shorting:
Let's say a stock is selling for $20, and you think it's only worth $15. You believe this because you think the dividend paid out will be lower than what most people buying/selling think it will be. Well what you can do is make an arrangement to 'temporarily' hold onto someone's stock for them. You'll totally give it back at the end of the contract, say a week, so the original holder will still hold it when the dividends pay out. You offer to pay a small fee for the privledge and both parties are happy. The original holder is happy because they just got paid free money for doing nothing - they were going to hold the stock anyways. And you can now short the stock. Because all that stock you're temporarily holding? You sell it. You sell it at $20. It's only temporarily yours, but you sell it. Because remember, you think the price is going to drop and you don't have to give the stock back until next Friday. Well Friday rolls around and lo and behold the stock dropped to $15. You buy some of that stock at $15, and give it back to the person you borrowed from. You bought low, and sold high, you just did it in the opposite order.
- Hedgefunds
Now let's say you're a hedgefund and you think Gamestop is overvalued. So you 'short sell it'. Now you're sitting on some cash from your sale... hmm, what to do, what to do... well it was a good move with a few shares, so why don't we do it again with more shares? Like, a lot. Like, as much as we can get our hands on. So you borrow and sell, borrow and sell. Eventually you've borrowed and sold the same stock multiple times. That's how you get to 130% of all available shares being in this state. When Friday comes around and the price has dropped, you're going to make a killing. You'll just buy the shares to give back at the lower price and pocket the difference. Just like you've done before. And this time will be no different. The stock price will definitely be lower on Friday... right?
- INTERLUDE
Wait...
What's that...
A board of Chaotic Neutral autists with stimulus checks see what you're doing to their nostalgic brick and mortar from childhood? Well what could a few unwashed millennials do?
- Enter Stonky Bois:
Hey guys, what if we buy Gamestop, but like, keep buying it. We buy and buy and buy and never sell. We drive the price up well beyond anything the dividend is worth, but who cares, come friday all these short sells get called and they have to pay them back at literally whatever the stock price is then. We'll make a ton of money. So they did. They drove the price up and guaranteed a profit for them, and a loss for the hedgefunds.
But wait, what's that, these prices are getting ridiculous. $100? $200? We're not going to just bankrupt these hedgefunds, we're going to break the fucking market. We're going to break it so hard it exposes the shell game for all to see. What happens if the stock is worth $1k? Or a million? Guys the emperor has no clothes.
- It's not about the money, it's about the message.png (you are here)
To hell with profits, To hell with selling, or bankrupting a hedgefund, or even about just making our own money back. Let it all burn to the ground, I don't care if I see a cent of return, I want to drive this price so high that it costs so much to repay that the entire system grinds to an explosive hault. What will happen? Can it be ALLOWED to happen? Will the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) put a halt to trading? Reverse trades? If they do they expose the fraud for what it is - it's ok to rig the game when the rich profit, but not ok when the rich are fleeced? Would such moves herald the end of old money and the old financial systems? Centralized fiat relies on the appearance of fairness, and when you remove that you remove the foundation it relies on. Can they afford to step in? Can they afford not to? Is this the moment centralized fiat dies to be replaced by decentralized crypto? No one knows. But does it matter at this point? Buy and hold. Fuck 'em
Biden could approach and pay respects, but WAS NOT allowed to 'lay' the wreathe
For comparison, here are past presidents, actually elected and recognized by the US military as their commander in chief. Wreathe is presented for the POTUS to lay, rather than already there to begin with.
Here's Trump
And Obama
And Bush
And Clinton
And Reagan
Only Biden was denied the laying. Could approach and pay respects, but not lay it. Aligns with being a foreign dignitary rather than the POTUS.
21 gun salute for the President
19 Gun Salute for the Vice President, Speaker, 5 Stat Generals/Admirals
17 Gun Salute for 4 Star Generals/Admirals
Here are two 4 star men you may know the names of:
Admiral Mike Rodgers (former head of the NSA, Trump Tower meeting on campaign spying)
General Paul Nakasone (current head of the NSA, quietly doing god knows what, scandal free, news media free, installed day one by Trump and still there)
I imagine Trump thanking Rodgers for bringing the campaign spying to his attention, that he deserves a 21 gun salute, and being corrected that 21 is reserved for a President, and for a four star Admiral it would be 17. Perhaps an inside joke that recurred between them that later lovingly spawned 'Q'
So when you see 17, the President might not just be hinting at us all, but may also be saluting Rodgers, if not both these two men for their (ongoing) service
For each flag rank junior to a five-star officer, two guns are subtracted (e.g., for a four-star admiral, a 17-gun salute is prescribed; a three-star general would rate a 15-gun salute; a two-star, 13 guns, and a one-star, 11 guns).
Lots has been discussed about Trump's 21 gun salute, 3 seconds apart, vs the video of Biden's 10 gun salute, 10 seconds apart. But I went to compare the last 4 presidents and guess what?
Bush: 21 gun salute IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING HIS OATH
Obama: 21 gun salute IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING HIS OATH
Trump: 21 gun salute IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING HIS OATH
Biden: No salute after oath
^ Listen, no salute, no guns going off like with the others.
The video passing of the 10 gun salute is at Arlington well after the oath, which diverges not just in it's nature, but it's timing. Military broke tradition and did not salute Biden after his oath. Infer what is obvious from that.
Praying for arrests
Praying for the lockdowns to end
Praying for this and that...
...stop asking what God can do for you, and start asking what you can do for God.
God is not the instrument of change in your life here on earth, you are are the instrument of God. Pray for guidance if you must, pray for strength and resolve, but stop praying for change.