The sub you seem to like so much died last week. Whatever is left of it has been diluted when literally millions of people flooded it. "Eternal September" hit them hard.

Right now it's filled with Q-level conspiracy theories, they parrot each other's talking point without understanding any of it ("short ladder" being the most funny and telling example of this). I can assure you that the vast majority of these people are wildly clueless about what's happening right now, they just keep telling each other that they're going to be rich.

Look at this nonsense for instance: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/lboqwm/yet_...

Admittedly there are a few voices of reason being upvoted in this thread, but they're still hidden underneath the baseless "hype" claims.

I've been subbed to WSB for about 5 years, ever since someone at work (prop trading) mentioned it as basically being a bunch of 25-30 yo finance people hanging out and doing dumb shit in their personal accounts for fun. I'll admit, I did some dumb stuff myself, trying to time UVXY/TVIX plays. (Basically netted 0 of course). But it was fun to shitpost about it. This is astrology for finance bros.

And it'd been going a bit down-hill already, but most people were still that same description: young blood, day job in finance, knows what they're doing at both a mechanical and risk level, etc. And the content reflected it.

Then somehow, one of those internet things happened. WSB became a hit, people flooded in, the mod team was overwhelmed, media attention flooded in making everything worse, etc. I feel like this is what a lot of /r/the_donald people ended up now that they're looking for a new cause. So much of the rhetoric I saw once the WSB Old Guard had been overwhelmed mirrored the kind of stuff you saw out of the_donald back in 2016.

But yeah, a lot of the comments are just one liner garbage memes: HODL! TO THE MOOOOOON! FISTS ON CHEST NO FEAR! TO VALHALLA! DIAMOND HANDS! As well as echo chamber "encouragement" to HODL! until $1000/$9000/the moon because Mark Cuban is on our side!

From what I’ve seen thus far is the media trying to use the Q / Trumper angle against this community to tarnish its public perception and recent novelty.

I am happy to be proven wrong though, I just don’t see it.

They push a lot of very strong and completely unsubstantiated conspiracy claims in particular, and they'll quickly accuse anybody dissenting of being a shill or having an ulterior purpose.

Here's a good example I think: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l93d18/gme_...

This is good OG WSB content, written by one of the users that was in on the play from the very start.

But there's the problem: since he knew what he was doing, he managed to sell at the right moment and make huge benefits. That doesn't fit the narrative nu-WSB wants to push. So this very good old-school WSB post can't even get half a thousand upvotes.

Meanwhile post some vaguely conspirationist anti-wall street article and skyrocket to the top of the frontpage.

So yeah, it's not The_Donald, but there's definitely this strong anti-system, populist, "everybody is out to get me" conspirationist, fact-adverse mindset that you find in these types of communities.

Note in particular that, somewhat ironically, WSB calls itself "4chan with a bloomberg terminal", so it seems fitting that it's following a similar trajectory of ironic edgyness turning genuine as new people get in and take it at face value.

He is one of the few people that used a LIMIT order.

That said, there are sure to be a large portion of "the right", on the sub, as the fact of the matter is that a significant percentage of the US is!

As for what caused the influx, I think you can blame reddit for getting rid of all the edgier communities, and lots of people like that sort of thing, so over the years as a wsb post hit /all the numbers would jump because people would say " hey, I like this place, its edgy and self-deprecating" and over time it changed the demographics. I think back then though people mostly lurked, this influx has caused a lot more mime-posting.

I'm seeing it implied fairly regularly here and on Reddit that journalists are somehow anti-WSB, but I just don't see it, and I don't know why it would ever be the case.

Maybe people are mixing up market analysts (who work for financial institutions) with finance journalists (who work for news organisations)?

Maybe people think journalists are afraid of losing valuable sources in big banks if they don't denigrate the day traders (even though all those big firms also made a fortune in this mess)?

What am I missing?

Even if the userbase is bipartisan these extreme, emotional takes are guaranteed to take over by sheer volume unless the moderation steps in hard. I can't really blame the mods for failing to do that at the moment though, if I were them I'd probably have closed the sub temporarily...

Just as an illustration, a number of /r/wallstreetbets/ subscribers:

26/1: 2,390,238

27/1: 3,336,749

28/1: 5,036,912

29/1: 6,317,967

30/1: 6,965,330

31/1: 7,508,966

1/2: 7,977,780

2/2: 8,278,750

3/2: 8,427,584

(via https://archive.md/https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/ )

I think the point being made here is that the whole narrative of "average people beating wall street" is pretty naive and quite bullshit. All in on, maybe a few handful of people got 10x or even 100x their money, but most of the gains were most likely made by hedge funds and with the exception of one or two hedge funds who were squeezed, the majority of losses will probably be by average people.

Even if that fabled squeeze was to take place I'm sure many of them would still be left holding the bags because they wouldn't know when to sell. And again, at this point I'm really not sold on that squeeze theory at all, it seems very plausible that it ended last week and now we're just seeing a good old pump-and-dump taking place.

In the end some people are going to be very lucky and some others are going to learn a very expensive lesson about the dangers of gambling.

Can you provide a single case of someone losing their entire life savings by YOLOing it on GME at the top?

> The Reddit poster Volkswagens1, who declined to give his name but said he lives in the Pacific Northwest, showed The Washington Post an image indicating roughly $400,000 in potential GameStop losses from the day but insisted he would not sell.

> He said he’s poured most of his saving and checking accounts into the stocks and spent the last week “doing as much research as possible,” including sacrificing sleep and calling in sick to work, to make sure he was staying on top of the market’s moves.

(There's also a quote about him doing this because he's been poor for too long, but my take is that if you have enough assets to face a $400k loss, you weren't poor before you entered that position, even if you may now be).

It’s not clear to me this has sunk in w ‘Volkswagens1 nor the loss has really been faced. I’d bet the sober second thought will come after this article was published

Still not a great move to dump your entire worth into meme stocks.

That could be a lot of money to him, but it is not a lot of money compared to what an average worker earns in a year. A probably-young guy losing $6k on a risky stock bet is not life-destroying.

Also, depending on when he bought he could actually be up. And even if he bought at the top, it would still be worth something like 40% of that.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/lavx...

A 21-year-old soon-to-be software engineer losing $25k is not a life-changing tragedy.

That's kind of worse than YOLOing your life savings, because if this prevents them from continuing their education, it just fucked their life.

Most of "average people" entered at or near the top. The ones that did not were so engaged in gambling that they did not sell when it did 20x return. Call it what it is: fear of missing out.

Even DeepFuckingValue, who sold at least some of this position and netted a lot of money after taxes was not smart enough to say that 20x return in a few months is a time to pack the toys and go home so he could fight another day, leaving millions on a table in a futile hope that it would do much, much better.

Better to take $15M of profit than to gamble $35M on the SEC deciding not to prosecute.

Especially when the newspapers decided to plaster his real identity all over the place.

Let's hope that Congress doesn't try to bail these people out!

(Ontario Teacher’s Pension Fund sold almost 25M shares, for example https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/reddit-fe...)

Without knowing when they entered their position. It was hovering around $4 for a long time last year.

Even if they bought in at $5, selling at $20 is absolutely a win. Yes, they could have gambled and HODL'd, but there's no reason to gamble after seeing a 4x increase on a stock very few people expected would ever break $10.

Pensions dont make short term investments, they already had GME shares since a long time ago. They do sell when extraordinary circumstances happen and buy other stocks to hold long term again.

The sub count increased 8-fold. Any prior culture it had has been overwhelmed.

I'm not sure this part is needed for you to convey your point.

The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, who was holding GME, is one of the largest hedge funds in existence, worth over 200 billion dollars. For comparison, Maverick Capital is worth only $15 billion. That is not a case of some little guy teachers making out well, it is the rich (if not the richest) hedge funds getting richer.

That is what the OTPP does. That the hedge fund exists to fund pensions is irrelevant. If you dig into the investors behind other funds, you are likely to find that they are also investing to help fund their own retirement.

OTPP is a pension fund. Hedge funds are a different beast.

https://www.otpp.com/investments/performance/investment-stra...

"Additionally, we complement our efforts by using external hedge fund managers, which gives us access to unique approaches that both add performance and diversify risk."

OTPP invest in hedge funds. But they aren't one themselves. Hedge funds are a specific creature. Legally. And in terms of how they trade.

The political opposition to hedge funds has to do with the fact that they often cater (or are assumed to cater) to the 1%. Who cares if it is 200B? It probably represents the financial interests of tens-of-thousands of teachers.

They are the 1% you are talking about. I expect what you're really saying is that the political opposition opposes strangers who are perceived as being different, whereas the top 1% comprised of teachers are relatable and maybe even your close friends so you can be happy for their success.

The Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund averages member 600k per member in assets (200B divided by 330k members). I don't know the Canadian stats but having around 1M in assets as a 60 year old places them around the top 20% or 10% cut-off - not the top 1%.

https://dqydj.com/top-one-percent-united-states/

Regardless, I don't care if people get rich but it is clear that occupy Wall Street was a movement against the perceived notion that billionaires were exploiting the rules - not that teacher's pensions funds were gaining 2% per year more than an index fund.

That we agree on. Just like the OTPP has been known to do.

https://financialpost.com/news/fp-street/ontario-teachers-pe...

This isn't some teachers trying to eek out a retirement. It is one of the most prolific hedge funds in existence. They are literally what the movement was against, but the movement only served to help them.

Not that I expect anyone thought that they were buying up shares from retail investors to put the movement in motion. They had to know they would help other funds to hurt the one fund being targeted. It shouldn't surprise anyone that hedge funds have made out like bandits in this.

John Simon's personal $1B fund is far more rich than a 10000-member $100B pension fund.