# Reddit users trying to manipulate stocks
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [January 27, 2021, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627 "2021-01-27T18:14:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 14
### Author:  [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2021, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/263 "2021-02-14T07:52:39Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> I think this may be fundamentally different than the GME case in that you’re postulating that the driver of the price going up was a manufacturing problem with heating coils, while in the case of GME the driver of the price going up was not anything relating to an inherent demand for GME stock other than that created by the Redditors (Dopers) themselves in buying the stock for the very purpose of pushing the price higher via short squeeze.
The driver in the GME situation is the information that the stock is short sold. Both the toaster coil shortage and the short sale information are both just pieces of information that may be true or false. But people act on that information.
A guy in WSB told the story about how he bought a coffee stock because the company said that the inventory was short. Later, the company reported that one of the warehouses wasn’t counted in the number and the inventory was actually abundant. The price fell and the WSBer was wiped out of any profit. The inventory number was information that turned out to be false. But he, and I’m sure others, acted on that information.
It’s also possible that some people bought GME because they disagree about the fundamentals of the stock. I read from one guy who writes a newsletter who thinks that Gamestop will become more popular if the country goes into a recession because he thinks that online gaming will be seen as a luxury, so old consoles will become more valuable.
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> From the Washington Post: [How the rich got richer: Reddit trading frenzy benefited Wall Street elite](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/how-the-rich-got-richer-reddit-trading-frenzy-benefited-wall-street-elite/ar-BB1dvfI7?ocid=uxbndlbing)
Also from that article:
> [@](#):
>
> Another possibility regulators are examining is whether employees of large Wall Street firms were actively using the Reddit forum to boost their portfolios. Though posters are anonymous, r/WallStreetBets has long been populated by users who grasped complex trading concepts, shared screenshots of their Bloomberg terminals and discussed six-figure bets on single stocks, said Jaime Rogozinski, who founded the forum in 2012.
>
> “Since it was started, it’s always attracted professionals,” said Rogozinski, who is 39 and lives in Mexico City. “It’s easy to miss them or assume they are not there because of the crude language.”
> . . .
> Joey Brookhart, an analyst at a hedge fund in Denver, has monitored the subreddit for years as a form of entertainment. He said a typical post on the site is a “pump” — a message designed to get other users to drive up the price of a stock. Brookhart said he thinks most of these posts are shared by active traders but not necessarily professionals.
and the money quote
> [@](#):
>
> “There are some really smart people on [WallStreetBets], but for the most part, all this is just poor habitual gambling addicts versus rich habitual gambling addicts,” Hong said. “No one is a good guy here.”
And yet, supposedly, the author of the article thinks that the government either should or will investigate DFV for buying his stock from his basement while hedge fund companies buy the trade information from brokers without the knowledge of the investors, and somehow that’s not worth investigating.
> [@](#):
>
> Last year, prominent hedge funds including Point72, D.E. Shaw, Two Sigma and Capital Fund Management were all found to be siphoning trading data from a popular app called Robintrack, which collected information on which stocks users of Robinhood bought and sold. Casey Primozic, the programmer who created the now-defunct app, [tweeted](https://twitter.com/robintrack/status/1257976735557009413) his finding in May that he had traced large volumes of traffic back to servers that appeared to belong to those firms.
>
> “It was mostly a vindication of the fact that the data does have value to these bigger players,” Primozic said in an interview.
It’s well known that the big players have an advantage in the stock market game since the game is rigged. That’s the reason that some of the Redditors and some other retail investors are doing everything they can to level the playing field.
I don’t doubt that institutional investors made some money on GME. I also don’t doubt that there may have been some retail investors who lost some money on GME. But I do question whether it’s possible to know, as you stated, that Redditors in the aggregate lost money on GME, especially the Redditors described in the article as sophisticated traders and not the Redditors that flooded the sub after the stock was already on the decline.
As an aside, the amount of stock brokerage ads on Reddit since the GME situation has been crazy.
> [@k9bfriender](#):
>
> That’s why you never bet money you can’t afford to lose. A novice mistake, that.
Unless of course, you’re a hedge fund trader. Then you can lose an infinite amount of money, even more than you have, and nothing happens. If you lose some, other hedge firms will bail you out. If you really lose big, the government will bail you out. And you can do all of this while wiping out the equity of the people whose money you’re trading with.
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2021, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/264 "2021-02-16T15:06:43Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#):
>
> The driver in the GME situation is the information that the stock is short sold. Both the toaster coil shortage and the short sale information are both just pieces of information that may be true or false. But people act on that information.
We were discussing whether and to what extent it’s possible to make money on a short squeeze situation. In that context, the two situations are fundamentally different.
If the only thing that caused the stock to go up is the short squeeze buying pressure, then the subsequent selling pressure will force it down to that same extent, so it will ultimately return to the pre-short squeeze price, and the more people attempt to cash in at higher prices, the faster it will decline to the prior price. But if there’s a reason for the price increase outside of the short squeeze - e.g. a coil shortage - then the price is now fundamentally higher, and would eventually settle at that higher price, to the benefit of anyone who bought in prior to the knowledge about the shortage becoming public.
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### Author:  [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2021, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/265 "2021-02-18T01:50:12Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> We were discussing whether and to what extent it’s possible to make money on a short squeeze situation.
No, we weren’t. You can trace back the conversation by clicking on the uplinks (uparrow-yay Discourse!) in every post on the right hand corner. Tracing it all the way back to post #143, the quote this discussion emanated from was this:
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> But I’m commenting on the notion that the winners are the Reddit people and the losers are the hedge fund billionaires. That’s extremely short sighted. Once the music stops, the winners will be hedge fund billionaires and the losers will be Reddit people.
The question of whether it’s possible to make money on a short squeeze is a different question. That’s a more nebulous question, and one you’ve answered multiple times in the exchange. You think it’s possible to make money for hedge fund traders in a short squeeze, so it’s possible. The question you’re saying you’re exploring isn’t very clear. Making money by whom? In a zero sum game, someone is making money and someone is losing. So yes, someone is making money.
I’m also finding your argument about the value of something based on the efficient market hypothesis more assumptive than persuasive.
Using tulip mania as an example of a bubble.
According to [this article](https://slate.com/business/2004/07/the-case-for-tulipmania.html), on Tulip mania, the contracts had some in common with the short sales,
> [@](#):
>
> As European prices for the dramatic flowers rose in the 1630s, many burgomasters—local mayors—started to invest in the bulbs. But in the fall of 1636, the European tulip market suddenly wilted because of a crisis in Germany.
> . . .
> The sudden glut caused prices to fall, and Dutch burgomasters began losing money. They were in a bind.
> . . .
> Rather than take their lumps, these politically connected investors tried to change the market rules—and they succeeded. First, they threatened to abandon their contracts and leave planters in the lurch entirely. But ultimately, they ironed out a deal whereby the _obligation_ to purchase bulbs at a fixed price would be suddenly converted into an _opportunity_ to do so. In current parlance, they aimed to transform tulip-bulb futures contracts into tulip-bulb options.
> So, the market exploded. In November 1636, when the burgomasters’ plans to screw the tulip planters took effect, traders began to process the impending changes into their thinking. By late November 1636, “buyers had already begun treating the contract prices as option strike prices set at around 10 times the actual prices.” As a result, “contract prices soared to reflect the expectation that the contract price was now a call-option exercise, or strike price rather than a price committed to be paid for future bulbs.” By February, the price had risen 20 times. “That’s what caused the tulipmania,” says Thompson.
From [Tulip mania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#cite_note-79), one of the first bubbles where the price of something increased and decreased rapidly.
> [@](#):
>
> Goldgar argues that although tulip mania may not have constituted an economic or speculative bubble, it was nonetheless traumatic to the Dutch for other reasons: “Even though the financial crisis affected very few, the shock of tulipmania was considerable. A whole network of values was thrown into doubt.”[[67]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#cite_note-67) In the 17th century, it was unimaginable to most people that something as common as a flower could be worth so much more money than most people earned in a year. The idea that the prices of flowers that grow only in the summer could fluctuate so wildly in the winter, threw into chaos the very understanding of “value”.[[68]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#cite_note-68)
If there’s a contract for someone to buy something that is in limited supply, that’s the law of supply and demand working as expected, so the value should increase for that commodity. The information about the contracts is supplying the value.
Once the contracts expire, what’s the value of the commodity then? People talk about the price being based on the “fundamentals”.
I know from previous discussions we’ve had, that you’ve been a skeptic of models (in the case of coronavirus). I share your skepticism. The “fundamental value” is just a model based on a prediction. By whom? Is it based on the predictions of hedge fund traders? The people [who](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/active-fund-managers-trail-the-sp-500-for-the-ninth-year-in-a-row-in-triumph-for-indexing.html) have trailed the market nine years in a row?
> [@](#):
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> After 10 years, 85 percent of large cap funds underperformed the S&P 500, and after 15 years, nearly 92 percent are trailing the index.
I’m still skeptical.
This may not be totally related but this sentence from the wiki made me laugh.
> [@](#):
>
> In 2013, Nout Wellink, former president of the Dutch Central Bank, described [Bitcoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin) as “worse than the tulip mania”, adding, “At least then you got a tulip, now you get nothing.”
A lot of people are betting on that “nothing.” lol
In other related news, [in a survey](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-americans-think-about-the-gamestop-investors/), many Americans are rooting for the Redditors and many Americans feel that the stock market is rigged in favor of large investors.
> [@](#):
>
> According to a [Morning Consult](https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2021/02/03174029/2101105_crosstabs_MC_FINANCE_Adults_v1.pdf) poll of American adults conducted Jan. 29-Feb. 1, Redditors enjoy bipartisan support for their actions: 54 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans agreed that “the actions of the small investors gave Wall Street a much-needed taste of its own medicine,” while only 21 percent in each party thought those actions were “reckless given the negative consequences they might have on large and small investors or the economy.” In addition, 68 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans agreed that the stock market was “rigged against amateur investors in favor of large, professional investors.”
In more current news, there are a lot more questions than answers about what happened with the GMEstock. Congress is set to hear some testimony on Thursday.
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-prompts-sec-to-weigh-more-short-sale-transparency-11613593827](https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-prompts-sec-to-weigh-more-short-sale-transparency-11613593827)
[SEC Data Show $359 Million of GameStop Shares Failed to Deliver](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/sec-data-show-359-million-of-gamestop-shares-failed-to-deliver)
> **[We were 'dangerously close' to collapse of 'entire system,' says Interactive...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-were-dangerously-close-to-collapse-of-entire-system-says-interactive-brokers-founder-ahead-of-gamestop-hearing-11613600319)**
>
> Thomas Peterffy, founder and chairman of Interactive Brokers Group Inc., on Wednesday explained the dire situation in which the market stood in late January...
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### Author:  [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2021, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/266 "2021-02-18T02:03:58Z")
A quote that exemplifies the point I was hoping to make in the last post.
> [@](#):
>
> In 2021, one must be quite oblivious to argue that unyielding adherence to “fundamentals” is what allows certain companies to do spectacularly well on Wall Street, and that people attempting to engineer a short squeeze are merely irrational or dominated by feelings. Recent history has made a mockery of Wall Street’s pretensions to superior rationality. In the lead-up to the 2008 crash, under-regulated, cash-rich Wall Street pros made enormous bets using complex and indefensible formulas and clever tricks, making themselves richer while doing so. Those bets and formulas were not rational, but they were convenient as long as one could pretend they made sense. When it all finally came tumbling down, after a large investment bank went bankrupt, the whole financial sector was bailed out with taxpayer money, because the intertwined nature of the industry and the size of their massive bets meant they could drag the whole global economy down with them.
>
> What was the consequence for these reckless, greedy, and irresponsible actions that could in no way be defended as rational investments based on “fundamentals”? A few people may have lost their massive bonuses for a short time, but no Wall Street executive went to jail. Just one year after being bailed out, they were back in business, handing [out $20 billion in bonuses](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wall-street-doled-20b-in-bonuses-in-2009/), as unemployment was soaring. However, for the millions of families without extensive wealth buffers, the effects of that crash have been terrible—not just a year of small or no bonuses—and will likely linger their whole lives. What one side has is not superior rationality, but superior power.
>
> The pattern is persistent, and it’s not even concealed. The higher echelons of the corporate world play together with the government and Wall Street to [enrich themselves](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fraud-failure-and-bankruptcy-pay-well-for-ceos-2013-08-28).
> **[It’s All Rigged](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/02/gamestop-mess-shows-internet-rigged-too/618040/)**
>
> What Robinhood and Facebook have in common
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [February 18, 2021, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/267 "2021-02-18T14:42:39Z")
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#):
>
> No, we weren’t. You can trace back the conversation by clicking on the uplinks (uparrow-yay Discourse!) in every post on the right hand corner. Tracing it all the way back to post #143, the quote this discussion emanated from was this:
That was a while ago. The immediate subject of the discussion was whether and how the group we’re collectively calling “Redditors” was going to profit from this short squeeze, and to that end I/we addressed how one makes money from a short squeeze generally.
My point in this context was that selling on the way down would have the same effect on prices as buying on the way up, all else being equal. Examples of all else not being equal would be pressuring a short to close his position without attracting the attention of other shorts who open new positions, but also - whether there has been a genuine change in the company’s prospects, such that the new fundamentals-driven price is going to be higher than the prior price. That was the case in the example you cited, where the price is initially being by a change in supply availability, and the short squeeze was secondary, but it is not the case with Gamestop.
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#):
>
> The question you’re saying you’re exploring isn’t very clear. Making money by whom? In a zero sum game, someone is making money and someone is losing. So yes, someone is making money.
Of course. I think I’ve been clear on that all along.
I think that collectively, those who sold based on skepticism of the short squeeze strategy will collectively make money and those who bought based on enthusiasm over
that strategy will collectively lose money. (I’m calling the latter group “Redditors”.)
> [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](#):
>
> Once the contracts expire, what’s the value of the commodity then? People talk about the price being based on the “fundamentals”.
>
> I know from previous discussions we’ve had, that you’ve been a skeptic of models (in the case of coronavirus). I share your skepticism. The “fundamental value” is just a model based on a prediction. By whom? Is it based on the predictions of hedge fund traders?
I’m very skeptical of all models, including those purporting to assess stock prices based on fundamentals. (Ultimately, the model results are derived from other sources, mostly gut feeling, and the models are easily rigged to provide the desired answer based on changes to key assumptions.)
The fundamental value has nothing to do with models. It’s about the market based price, which is based on the price set collectively by the buyers and sellers in the marketplace, to the extent that the buyers and sellers are doing so based on their belief as to the fundamentals. Each individual buyer and seller has their own view as to the fundamental value of the stock, and most or all of them are wrong. But the price point derived from the collective buying and selling pressure is the fundamental market-driven price of the stock. This is to be distinguished from buying pressure which is specifically not based on anyone’s assessment as to fundamental value but is instead based on a very temporary disruption.
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### Author:  [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)
#### Post date: [February 19, 2021, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/268 "2021-02-19T00:47:40Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> I think that collectively, those who sold based on skepticism of the short squeeze strategy will collectively make money and those who bought based on enthusiasm over that strategy will collectively lose money. (I’m calling the latter group “Redditors”.)
Regardless of people’s motivation for buying or selling, anyone who bought in on the way up drove the price up. Since hedge funds were bearish on the stock until the rise, any hedge funds that made money that day bought stock in the frenzy, adding to the price increase. You’re calling those hedge fund traders Redditors, making the designation lose all meaning…
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> The fundamental value has nothing to do with models. It’s about the market based price,
Definition of fundamentals from i[nvestopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fundamentals.asp)
> [@](#):
>
> ## What Are Fundamentals?
>
> Fundamentals include the basic [qualitative](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualitativeanalysis.asp) and quantitative information that contributes to the financial or economic well-being of a company, security, or currency, and their subsequent financial [valuation](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valuation.asp). Where qualitative information includes elements that cannot be directly measured, such as management experience, [quantitative analysis](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quantitativeanalysis.asp) (QA) uses mathematics and statistics to understand the asset and predict its movements.
Fundamentals are just exactly what you described models do. [Fundamentals analysis](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fundamentalanalysis.asp) is basically modeling. Some of qualitative analysis in fundamentals analysis is “gut feeling.”
The definition of market price from [investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-price.asp)
> [@](#):
>
> ## What Is Market Price?
>
> The market price is the [current price](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currentprice.asp) at which an [asset](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/asset.asp) or service can be bought or sold.
The market price is the price at which a willing buyer and willing seller transact.
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> fundamental market-driven price of the stock
This is not a thing. If I look up the phrase in google, I get this article
[https://realmoney.thestreet.com/investing/there-s-no-way-to-predict-the-market-based-on-fundamentals-and-economic-news-15350335](https://realmoney.thestreet.com/investing/there-s-no-way-to-predict-the-market-based-on-fundamentals-and-economic-news-15350335)
> [@](#):
>
> Recently, quite a few sophisticated market players have complained about the lack of ‘price discovery’ in the stock market. This is just a way of saying that the market doesn’t agree with their view of fundamentals. If the market keeps going up when ‘my work shows’ that valuation is lower then there must be something wrong with the market.
Any fundamentals price is just the price at which an analyst believes the price should be.
An analogy might be a term like fundamentals-based coronavirus deaths. Deaths from coronavirus just are. What the numbers of deaths should be or would be given a number of predictors is modeling.
The market price of a stock is simply the most current price the stock was transacted at. The fundamentals price is just the prediction of someone about where that stock should be priced based on their estimate.
In current news, Keith Gill aka RoaringKitty aka DFV testified to Congress today. He said that he didn’t pump the stock. He just “likes the stock.” He also said that he’s working on his own.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukXQGBpXaVM)
The CEO of Reddit also testified about Reddit, its policies and r/wallstreetbets in particular. He explained how Reddit works. He also noted that there was not any unusual activity with bots on the site that week. They also combed the site for Reddit violations and didn’t find any.
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBdGL1X5Sdg)
They’re so cute when they’re trying to be serious.
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2021, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/269 "2021-02-25T12:53:04Z")
Does anyone understand what’s going on now? I haven’t read about it much, but I saw some posts that said that the spike and fall of GME a few weeks ago was not from closing out short positions but from gamma squeeze, which is something related to calls by market makers that I don’t understand. And since then, the brokers are reporting a massive failure to deliver to the SEC every day, which sounds like the big boys are just deciding not to buy the stocks they’re obligated to buy and everyone is letting them get away with it. Reddit still thinks the squeeze is yet to happen, and given that GME doubled today (and seems to have doubled again in after market trading) it does seem like something is happening, but I’m way out of date on this.
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### Author:  [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2021, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/270 "2021-02-25T13:04:36Z")
WSB is divided on whether this is another squeeze in the making or whether it is just a normal jump caused by the departure of the CFO exacerbated by people thinking it was a squeeze.
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### Author:  [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2021, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/271 "2021-02-25T18:22:39Z")
Gamma Squeeze: From what I understand. If you sell a buy option, it gives the purchaser an option to buy a certain number of shares at say $150. If the shares are currently $100, your risk is minimal. If the price starts rising and the option looks like it’s going to be exercised you run the numbers and start hedging. You purchase a few shares at 110, a few at 120 ect. The hedging you are doing is also putting upward momentum on the share price. So it’s working against your best interest, but it can also save you.
This is obviously all done with complex mathematical equations, but if there are a lot of buy options floating around out there and something sets them off (like removing a bad CFO) a snowballing can happen on the price as hedging the options can create it’s own rising price. Now the people who sold $200 options have to start worrying and hedging.
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### Author:  [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2021, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/272 "2021-03-03T04:10:55Z")
Gamma being the ratio of the change in option price to the change in underlying price. When an option is greatly in-the-money, this is close to one, as almost all the value of the option is in the inherent value, and little is in the value of the volatility of the stock, so the option moves in almost lockstep with the underlying. When an option is greatly out-of-the-money, it’s close to zero, as it will take a very large movement of price to make the inherent value pop above zero so a slight movement in that direction is of little concern. At in-between prices it the gamma will be somewhere in between, and represents the fraction of the shares contracted in a call option a market maker in options has to buy to delta-hedge their position in the stock (ie, not care what happens to the price of it), as it says what percentage the value the option they sold will go up compared to the price of the underlying, which they buy to hedge the selling of the call. They care about the price of the option they sold because they’re likely to buy the option back to clear their books rather than wait for it to expire or get exercised.
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### Author:  [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2021, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/273 "2021-03-03T04:23:38Z")
And so as the price of the stock rises, the gamma of the options with close strike prices rise, and the market makers having written options at that strike price need to buy more shares based on those outstanding options, which drives up the price more. At some point, the gamma of options with a certain strike price will be almost one and so it won’t feed on itself so much, but at that point then the options for the next strike price in the series have their gammas starting to get a bit more above zero.
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### Author:  [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2021, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/274 "2021-03-03T06:13:39Z")
What he said.
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### Author:  [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2021, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/275 "2021-03-10T11:49:29Z")
Gamestop stock taking a second run. It was at $283/share in after hours trading Tuesday night.
[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gamestop-winning-streak-keeps-going-095607719.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gamestop-winning-streak-keeps-going-095607719.html)
> [@](#):
>
> The shares rose as much as 20% before paring some of those gains. They traded at $283 as of 5:41 a.m. in New York, up from Tuesday’s close, though still a long way from the Jan. 28 intraday record of $483
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### Author:  [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2021, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/276 "2021-03-10T17:14:35Z")
GME rallying hard again today - wonder if the exchanges or regulators will step in this time? DFV/RoaringKitty bought an extra $2M in shares at $40 after telling congress that he would buy at that price - he was already a living legend on Reddit but this surely cements his status as a god amongst men on WSB.
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### Author:  [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2021, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/277 "2021-03-10T17:18:28Z")
Great stuff, I just made my speculative GME money back. Back to zero.
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/278 "2021-03-10T17:22:32Z")
If it gets to $350 again, I intend to short it.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/279 "2021-03-10T17:35:26Z")
And I doubt that FP’s the only one, and that’s why I think this run can’t last and the GME bulls are going to get torched. Some will make off with a nice pile of cash for sure, but a lot of others are going to be hurting and there may not be a third wave.
I’m a believer that ultimately, P/E ratios do matter – maybe not quite in the same way they used to, but I’ve already been through one “new economy” and watched that bubble pop all over the place. This is nothing more than a wild speculative economy we’re living in, padded no doubt by fed and treasury infusions. The euphoria won’t last forever.
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2021, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/280 "2021-03-10T18:21:21Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> If it gets to $350 again, I intend to short it.
Weird thing is that at the time I posted this, the shares were over $300 and heading higher. Immediately after my post, they plummeted below $200, recovering later to about $260. [GameStop Corp. (GME) Stock Price, News, Quote & History - Yahoo Finance](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GME?p=GME&.tsrc=fin-srch)
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### Author:  [@Heffalump\_and\_Roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heffalump_and_Roo)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/281 "2021-03-11T01:17:05Z")
> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#):
>
> GME rallying hard again today - wonder if the exchanges or regulators will step in this time?
I’ve been seeing this recently in several places. What would they do? They can’t regulate against price fluctuations.
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> If it gets to $350 again, I intend to short it.
Would that make you a Redditor? 😉
The day’s range went up to $348.5 You missed it by \>\< that much.
> [@asahi](#):
>
> I’m a believer that ultimately, P/E ratios do matter – maybe not quite in the same way they used to
In what way? We won’t even look at Tesla, although you could. But how about Facebook, Google, Twitter and all the other social media corporations that have ad revenue as their main source of income. Ad revenue is really volatile because boycotts could make advertisers stop funding the corps. Are all of those overvalued?
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reddit-users-trying-to-manipulate-stocks/931627/282 "2021-03-11T02:38:32Z")
We might need to redefine what a good P/E ratio means – might not necessarily be what Buffett and Munger say it is. But when companies have “value” that would take a company decades to earn in actual profits…that’s the shoeshine boy’s stock tip.
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