Turnabout is Fair Game

Featured Image by Lloyd Blunk on Unsplash

What happened to Gamestop was just as manipulative and false in the ‘save’ direction as being crushed in the ‘zero’ direction, and the ends attempting to justify the means is hypocrisy.

Have you seen this? You must have seen it, or else you heard something, I’m sure.

What this subreddit crew did was give hedge funds a taste of their own medicine, yet if you can imagine, they also put the people at Gamestop, and AMC, and BlackBerry too, into awkwardly middle positions they undoubtedly never asked to find themselves, to face grave uncertainty they definitely never expected, the likes of all this being rather unprecedented. The lives and livelihoods of those company people were taken for a joyride, which seems detached from what the redditors were out to defend.

Where some Wall Street practice is questionable, doesn’t it remain questionable when practised by anybody else, likewise? Robbing the rich to give to the poor… it does have that certain romance, doesn’t it? Even so… ask yourself whether it comes justifiably at Gamestop’s expense. Gamestop and these other companies, it seems to me, already shorted and suffering, were basically used.

All this began with a tweet from Chamath Palihapitiya, if I’ve understood the news correctly, which was answered by followers who must have thought how clever it would be to stop the hedge fund game this way. [*NB as of Feb. 03, 2021: read here a little more about the origins of this incident.] With no one from these ‘saved’ companies having a say, no one asking Gamestop’s permission, but simply hoisting them up onto heroic shoulders of retail… surely this would become momentum trading at its finest. Incidentally, I watched a live interview with Chamath Palihapitiya on CNBC while the Gamestop action was churning away on January 27 – it was truly fascinating television – and I will say that Palihapitiya stuck to a thesis that was clear and detectable in every statement he made. Also note that whether you agree with his thesis is beside the point that he had one and stuck to it.

Several times Palihapitiya explained what he’d ‘bought’ with his involvement. He said he’d learned more about the redditors – the range of who comprises their community, and the various motives they have. And he said he’d come to see more clearly the need for total transparency by all market participants – institutional as well as retail – if it’s to be an equitable venue for trade. As for me, I knew nothing about Palihapitiya before today and found him compelling and persuasive and, from his position, fully able to let anchor Scott Wapner dig himself deep into a hole with a +1 spade of ignorance. That was my interpretation, anyway, with no real dog in the fight – watch and judge for yourself.

Historically, the culture of the stock market has changed over time, particularly as the modes, tools, and products of investment and trading change with the times. Meanwhile, liars, grifters, and cheaters have always posed a problem; stock markets simply provide them a more sheltered, organised venue in which to ply their trade. But that’s no indictment of stock markets and honest practice; rather, it’s a call to regulators and enforcement officers, and an appeal to the measures of esteem and self-control by which any participant is willing to conduct themselves – and by ‘any’, of course, I mean ‘every’. In another context, I might well agree that some hedge fund is managed by a$$holes who deserve their come-uppance. However, the concern remains about Gamestop being taken up and used, and this remains whether hedge funds are right or wrong – even Palihapitiya didn’t address this question to my satisfaction.

In a world with no hedge funds or shorts, saving Gamestop rests with Gamestop, full stop. What’s been demonstrated by the redditors as the power of ‘the people united who’ll never be defeated’ is the power of mob mentality. In fact, what actually happened to Gamestop was just as manipulative and false in the ‘save’ direction as being crushed in the ‘zero’ direction, and the ends attempting to justify the means is hypocrisy. That so much support of the r/wallstreetbets trading action doesn’t reflect that Wall is a two-way street suggests to me a position equally destructive for being equally one-way, just coming from another direction. One wonders if this game of chicken is, or ever really was, about Gamestop at all.

Somewhere along the way, this incident made me think that Occupy Wall Street had finally found a concrete objective which, you’ll recall, so few were able to assign ten years ago. I’m fully against the avarice of shorting more stock than exists, especially in the name of “our pensioner clients” and so forth… yet even as I can read that and roll my eyes, the defence of r/wallstreetbets – good intentions and all – is just as misguided. The road to hell with good intentions or, as some redditors have even said to Wall Street, be careful what you wish for.