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GameStop axes its short-lived NFT marketplace as it retreats from crypto (www.engadget.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 51 points 2 years ago

But..but...moass?

[-] [email protected] 62 points 2 years ago

[removed by mod]

[-] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago

There is actually a fantastic video essay about Gamestop bros by Folding Ideas (the guy who made Line Goes Up) called "This is financial advise". I highly recommend listening to it, the whole thing turned out to be way more complicated than it seemed.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

Here's the vid in question, I second, it's very good.

https://youtu.be/5pYeoZaoWrA

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion! It was a good video. Also reinforces my belief that the rational, boring narrative is almost always the right one.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

I second this recommendation.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

The market is crooked, but not at the level of crazy conspiracies the Superstonk bros think / thought. A company took a big gamble on Gamestop tanking, and they were caught. They paid a huge price, and it's over. There's still market manipulation going on, there's still trading in dark pools, and the regulators are not able to keep up. But, it's not a crazy conspiracy with everyone trying to screw the little guy. It's big guys all trying to screw each-other, and screwing the little guy if they have a chance, and the regulators are trying and failing to keep up.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Exactly. I think the market is, on average, a good representation of value, but only over longer time periods and across sectors. All bets are off with individual stocks.

So I buy index funds, and that has worked out well for me. Buying individual stocks has more to do with psychology and gambling than analysis (e.g. buy Tesla because it's popular and will get more popular, not because there selling a lot of cars and will sell more cars), and that's just not my bag.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I would hesitate before buying any individual company's stock these days. There's just too much manipulation, hedging, FOMO, and just irrationality associated with any given company. Gamestop is a poster child for irrationality, but so is WeWork, where a lot of very serious investors somehow convinced themselves that a real-estate company should be valued like a tech company.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Throw Tesla in that bucket as well, especially since they'll see a ton more competition.

Large companies like Apple and Amazon are probably pretty safe, but mostly because they have so much momentum that big movements are unlikely in the short to medium term.

I don't bother though, because I just don't see much expected payoff to taking on more risk vs larger baskets of stocks

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, I wouldn't touch Tesla with a 10-metre pole. That's a prime hype stock that IMO is massively overvalued. But, even if I'm convinced it's overvalued I wouldn't short it because the market can stay irrational much longer than I can stay solvent.

Large companies like Apple and Amazon are probably pretty safe, but mostly because they have so much momentum

The problem with that is that they're so big that the upside is not great. But, the downsides are murky. What if Biden is re-elected and the justice department, FTC, etc. get serious about breaking them up? Besides, in the medium term a lot of their share price is based on hype, FOMO, etc.

With index funds, you get a good hedge against any one company's swings. And, if Alphabet is hurt probably Meta will benefit so you in the end you're just tracking tech stocks in general.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

The problem with that is that they're so big that the upside is not great

The upside should mirror the market because the top 10 companies in the S&P make up ~30% of the index. So if Apple, Amazon, etc make big moves, the market will likely make similar moves.

So buying a handful of massive companies is just an inefficient way to buy the S&P, which is just an inefficient way of buying the whole market.

It's not the worst idea, I just don't see much of a point. I don't know why I should expect Apple to outpace the market.

But yeah, I totally agree with you, buying funds makes a lot more sense. I do pretty much zero work and get most of the benefits for a fraction of the risk.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

So buying a handful of massive companies is just an inefficient way to buy the S&P, which is just an inefficient way of buying the whole market.

Mostly, sure. But, the difference is that the index contains some of the smaller companies too. If there's something that hits all the big companies at the same time (like robust anti-trust enforcement actions), the mid-sized companies are the ones who are most likely to benefit because they can take advantage of the pressure on the big companies.

If you just invested in the big companies you could be hurt, but theoretically if you invest in the whole market (or an index representing it) you could have the losses in the big tech stocks offset by growth in the mid-sized ones.

Anyhow, I think we mostly agree. The market is manipulated, many traders, even pros, are irrational. So, even if you know what you're doing, it's smart to hedge and spread your risk around.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

(On top of NFTs being a joke of a scam)

They really are the platonic ideal of a scam. There's just so much nothing there. No facade, no structure, no foundation. It's the wire mother of wire fraud.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Only sorta. I’m not sure how much they are right about the crookedness of the market - it’s just that retail investors are at a severe disadvantage to institutional ones.

What they did do was create a short squeeze for a bunch of folks (rightly) betting that GameStop is overvalued because it’s a shit company with no real path to an increasingly digital market.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

The problem, basically, is that the people saying "buy Gamestop" originally were people who figured "Hey, this stock is probably slightly undervalued." As in, this is $2 but it could probably climb to more like $2.50 or $3 over the next five years.

Then WSB started to meme the thing like crazy, because WSB are a bunch of degenerate gamblers who don't give a fuck about actual sensible investment strategies, which created the conditions for a short squeeze, which pulled in a bunch of newbie retail investors who drove the squeeze even higher, but were given absolutely no realistic expectations about what that would look like.

I was one of those newbie retail investors, and I actually tripled my money on GME, because I saw the price spike, went "Yep, that's the squeeze, I'm out" and got my tendies, or whatever the fuck these idiots call it.

But for a lot of these people, the expectations of what this short squeeze would look like had basically snowballed into "Remake the global economy with us at the top" so they bought in hard, and kept buying in, way past the point where the squeeze was done, past the point of having any reasonable expectation of cashing out at anything other than a huge loss.

So now they're stuck basically praying for a miracle, because they've got nothing else left.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, there are way too many folks who let the hype about an interesting technical trading opportunity go their head, got emotionally invested, and now are confusing it with fundamental analysis.

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Don’t worry. The meme stock bros will come up with a new stupid narrative about how this was always part of the plan and how no one actually believed the NFT marketplace was the catalyst for moass. Just trust the plan and keep holding.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Are they still at it? I thought this would have collapsed by now.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Its below 15 dollars atm and is continuing to fall.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Lmao no kidding, after reading your comment I went to google and typed in "reddit crypto gamestop nfts" and the second result was literally a 100% serious post from Superstonks 2 days ago titled "Why Gamestop's NFT Marketplace Closure Is A Great Sign". Forget bitcoin, if you want to get rich just invest in copium instead

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

GameStop could go completely out of business and they would still manage to find a way to continue the copium.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

There's even an example of that with a related cult, the Bed Bath and Beyond guys. Said company went under, but the memestock holders still continued the copium.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Stonks are at 1 cent, buy and hodl! Diamondhands!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

That's literally the new hyped plan and the reason the stock got a bump a few weeks ago.

The new idea is GameStop will become a holding company like Berkshire Hathaway as if Ryan Cohen is the next Warren Buffett.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

A lot of people who were into Gamestop didn't want them to get into NFTs like that anyway in the first place.

[-] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago

Nature is healing

[-] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago

Lmao, that's what they spent the meme stonks money on?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

They also bought back a lot of their debt. The company did everything right, except selling anything people want!

Disclosure:I bought and DRSed one share near the height for fun.

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[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago

I'm surprised that they found yet another new way of making the Superstonk folk look like a delusional cult

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Well, they ticked off a bunch of hedge funds, so I think they were pretty successful. I would never take investing advice from them though.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

any good that might have done is, in my eyes, outweighed by all the people that they irresponsibly hyped into gambling away their money when the party was already over

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Agreed. Still successful though.

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

One went bankrupt, many others made bank during the event aswell as during the delusion that followed. I can assure you that big money was the ultimate winner in all of this.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

Who could have seen this coming?? Who???

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The only reason you would want an NFT is to make a profit. That's it. That's all the value and perks it had.

Bloody good marketing if you ask me. Right next to the pet rock.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Everyone knew it was essentially a ponzy scheme. Even the defenders of NFT.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Less ponzi scheme and more shitty hot potato.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

I mean they were coerced into it by people doing pump and dump. They had to.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Who knew that jumping onto a confidence game meme stock fueled crypto craze would not really work out for GameStop in the long term?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Not thousands of GME cultists

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Don't let any company which chose to get involved in this blatant scam get exonerated just because they dumped it later. They still tried to pull the scam in the first place, and they only dropped it because they didn't make any money on it, not because it was a scam.

Always remember this.

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

That weird WhyNotDRS instance is presumably having a normal one.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I thought GameStop was gone

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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024

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