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There is risk in the stock market yes. But what sets it apart from gambling in the casino is that there is a positive expectation to that risk. Typically I invest in index funds, which reflects my belief that those companies in that index will produce more goods and services every year and be worth more and hence a positive return on my investment. If everyone in the world invests in profitable companies in the stock market, those companies will have an easier time raising capital to do productive economic activities. You are buying a piece of a company that will create future value, and the returns come in a very real way from these companies selling goods and services that get turned into your stock dividends or bond coupons.
Whereas if you had just bought gold/ bitcoin, that wealth just gets tied up in the gold or bitcoin. You don't really own a wealth-producing asset. The only value you will ever get from "investing" in bitcoin is from other future buyers. Hence it is a lot like gambling because it is a zero sum game.
Here are some more arguments against seeing gold as an investment. I view bitcoin in a very similar way: [[link]²
'''
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Go1dfish undelete link
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Author: gooie
1: seek*ngalpha**o*/ar*i*le/****975-g*ld-is-not*inve**ment 2: see*ingalpha.com*ar**c*e/41*69**-g*ld-i*-n*t-i*vest*ent*^*1
Unknown links are censored to prevent spreading illicit content.

The following post by wolfwolfz is being replicated because some comments within the post(but not the post itself) have been silently removed.
The original post can be found(in censored form) at this link:
np.reddit.com/ Bitcoin/comments/7wktjo
The original post's content was as follows:

https://www.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/7wktjo/my_friends_say_investing_in_btc_is_the_same_as/

GMEs gone down I'm wondering why
I got out of bed at all
The morning short ladder attacks cloud up my portfolio
And I can't see at all
Even if I could it would all be red
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad
It's not so bad at all
-
Dear Elon, I wrote you but you still ain't buying calls
I left the DD, my eviction notice and a rocket at the bottom. 🚀
u/DeepFuckingValue uploaded 2 GME videos back in Autumn you must not have got em
There probably was a problem with the algorithm or something
Anyways, I hope you get this man, hit the Hedge Funds back,
Just a smack, truly yours, your biggest fan
This is Stan
-6 days pass: also credit to u/jo9793 and u/ItzLog
Dear mister “ I’m too good for calls or buy GME shares”, this will be the last bullcase I ever send your ass, it’s been six days and still no tweet, I don’t deserve it?
I know you got the last charts, the media published them perfect.
So this is my DD I'm sending you I hope you hear it I'm in a Tesla right now, dare me to drive?
You know that song by Darude? Forgot it's name.
About that guy who could a saved that other guy from drowning, but didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a a show he found him?
That's kinda how this is, you could a rescued me from drowning in debt
Now it's too late, I'm down a thousand dollars now, I'm drowsy
And all I wanted was a lousy investment or a call
I hope you know I ripped all of your pictures off the wall
I love you Elon, we could have been on Mars together, think about it, you ruined it now.
I hope you get shorted and you dream about it, and when you dream I hope you get shorted more and you scream about it.
I hope the hedgefunds eats at you and you can’t breath without GME
"BUY SILVER, BUY SILVER"
SHUT UP CNBC I'm trying to Talk
Hey Elon that's the hedge fund managers making them talk
But we didn't fuck them up yet, see I ain't like you.
Cause if they buy more shorts they'll suffer more and then they'll go bankrupt too.
Well gotta go they are taking my laptop and my car now
Oh shit, I forgot how am I supposed to send this post ou-
------------------
---------

EDIT: Elon's reponse:

Dear Stan, I meant to write you sooner but I just been busy
You said your wife's pregnant by her boyfriend now, how far along is she?
Look, I'm really flattered you would buy TSLA calls like that
And here's an autograph for your Mother
I wrote it on the Tesla cap
I'm sorry I didn't see you at the annual stockholder meeting, I must have missed you
Don't think I did that shit intentionally just to diss you
But what's this shit you said about you sold your GME when it fell too?
I say that shit just clownin' dog, come on, how fucked up is you?
You got some gambling issues Stan, I think you need some counseling
To help your ass from bouncing off the walls when your stocks get down some
And what's this shit about us being "in this together"?
I'm a billionaire lol
I really think you and your wife need each other
Or maybe you just need to treat her boyfriend better
I hope you get to read this message, I just hope it reaches you in time
Before you sell again, I think that you'll be doin' just fine
If you relax a little, I'm glad I inspire you but Stan
Why are you so mad? Try to understand, that I do have diamond hands
I just don't want you to do some crazy shit
I seen this one shit on the news a couple weeks ago so I bought GME in the dips
Some dude was high on PCP and drove his car to a Gamestop
And "STONKS" he screamed, for 24 hours outside the closed shop non-stop
And in the car they found a phone with 0 GME left, but I forgot who it belonged to
Come to think about, his name was, it was you
Damn! 🧻 ✋
For the people born after the VW short squeeze: Stan by Eminem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU9DzMhdeEo

There is a prevailing mis-understanding among people fresh to the market that you can buy and sell as much as you want at the "market price." This is false. You are buying and selling from real people or algorithms that believe they can scalp your order. The idealized scenario is that GME rallies, Melvin covers, and everyone at reddit gets out at the top. This represents a misunderstanding of market mechanics. Melvin will cover before we truly know it, and the crash will happen as quick as the rally.
So with recent events, you must ask yourself:

Who is Your Counterparty?

Nothing is a sure bet. How confident are you that your counterparty is who you think it is? Thousands of redditors & new traders beyond have been buying stocks fully confident that Melvin Capital hasn't exited their trade. This is also supported by some analysis provided by two different firms, although their estimates differ some amount. Confounded in this is the interpretation of the data: Does this include market makers and dealers that are short stock but covered with calls or options deltas? Is their information fully accurate in an event the likes of which has never happened? It's tough to know for sure.

Know Everyone's Hand

Your guess on how much they've covered and when they covered has a massive effect on how you perceive the value of this trade. Buying if you think Melvin has $10b notional to cover is a much better bet than if they only have $2b to cover. You also have to consider how much notional the rest of the market has bought in anticipation of a squeeze. The difference between the two represents your effective edge.
Remember, we don't actually know Melvin's current position. We don't know what's going on behind closed doors. We only know the hand they're showing us via media. Has their clearing firm taken over? Has a much bigger collection of firms absorbed the position? Have they been buying since Monday? Have they covered and have new funds entered the space at a much better level?
You are fighting Goliath at a poker table in the city of Gath. The pot is worth $25 billion dollars. Ken Griffin has never lost. Melvin's prime brokers Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche are not used to losing (well, Deutsche is). They will do whatever it takes to take the pot from you and leave you holding the bag. They will not blink twice because there is a lot of fucking money on the line.

Know What Can Go Wrong

Nobody could have guessed everything that happened this week. Prepare yourself for the unexpected. Your brokerage will undoubtedly close out your position at the worst possible time. The stock could be halted for days. You could be assigned on ITM options. Your stock could get delisted. Your stock may get diluted.

Only Spend What You're Willing to Lose

This one is self explanatory. Your investment could go to zero. Even if you think you make money on every trade, if your bet size is 100%, the long term value of your portfolio is zero.

Don't Take Out Loans on Emotional Capital

If you are new, you really don't know the gut-wrenching, stomach-turning feeling of seeing the possibility of your net liquidity hitting zero or negative. It fucking sucks. You just know the highs. You're buying along the speculative frenzy and frantic rallies, wrapped in anti-billionaire & pro-underdog themes. It may even feel good to think that a guy who cut his teeth at a firm notorious for an insider trading scandal is getting his comeuppance. We love the feeling. If you are fully invested financially & emotionally, you are completely overleveraged and will pay the price. Make feeling good your goal, and set limits that you can stomach.
There are several feel-good stories of people making life-changing money to pay off their student loans or their family members' surgeries. Please think twice about this, and only spend what you can afford to lose. If placing a bet makes the difference between your pet living or dying, you may have a gambling problem. These were success stories because they got in at a much better level and could have had a much sadder ending.
Secondly, don't take it personal. There are people on the other side of your trades, your brokerage support line, the subreddit, the media. They are all playing their own hand to the best of their knowledge. It's easy to blame a broker, yell at their support desk, hate-tweet at a company, or even rage-text that guy you know who develops APIs at ETrade. A lot of people across the industry are rooting for you. Fuck, even Ted Cruz and AOC are rooting for you, because this transcends politics. If you're mad at Melvin Capital or Ken Griffin or the guys who crashed the economy in 2008, keep it that way. They will try and misdirect your anger in every single direction: brokerages, the media, and reddit. If your enemies are a few guys at the top holding a $25b short position and moving levers, keep it that way.
Thirdly, if you don't want to be a human being for the sake of the person on the other side, be a human being for your wallet's sake. You make better financial decisions in the absence of emotions.

Jumped on the $GME bandwagon on Friday, 4 @ ~316. My 36 hours of day trading has already taught me that no matter how this plays out, I will never YOLO on a bubble ever again.
The principle seemed straightforward: hedge funds got lazy/greedy, over-shorted their positions, bet against a company that wasn't actually going under, and some astute monkies on reddit caught them and triggered a short squeeze. Even as someone who knows almost nothing about the stock market, the basic premise makes sense. But the devil's in the details, and hype is blinding.
First red flag was when I realized DeepFuckingValue did not bet on the short squeeze, he bet on undervalued stock price over a year ago. He has also trimmed his position such that no matter what happens in the squeeze, he walks away with 8 figures. So the people screaming "if he's still in, I'm still in!" and "look at those brass balls, if he can lose $5MM in a day then I can hold" are really living up to the dumb ape meme. He didn't lose $5MM yesterday, he lost $5MM in *unrealized gains*, there is a *huge* difference.
Second red flag was a common sense idea that hedge funds won't go down without a fight, and they have literally billions of dollars and decades of experience. You don't get that without learning how to game the system in complex, subtle ways. So even if they are still heavily shorted (which they might not even be anymore), and even if somehow WSB is holding some kind of meaningful leverage over them, that doesn't rule out the very real possibility they have a dozen ways out of this that people like me have no idea about.
But even in the off chance that somehow this turns around, and $GME does go "to the moon," that doesn't change the fact that it's bad long-term strategy to bet on bubbles and jump on bandwagons. They almost certainly fail, and if they don't, they only serve to inflate egos that will fall even harder on the next gamble. I'm still holding my shares but I don't expect to see my ~$1200 ever again. In the off chance I break even or see a profit here, I will count it as dumb luck and use it as seed money to learn how to invest in real long term gains.
Edit: holy shit RIP my inbox. No way I can read all that.
Want to clarify a few things. Not financial advice.
My position: I knew I was late to the party. I wanted to gamble. I knew what I was doing, and (mostly) why I did it. Hindsight showed me it was more based on emotion than I wanted to admit, but still, I'm not surprised by the outcome so far, and I'm totally OK with taking the L and calling it a lesson learned. I don't blame DFV, WSB, or anyone for my choices. I own them, even proudly, because I wanted to step out and take a calculated risk vs. sit on the sidelines out of fear of loss. I'm holding because I already bought my tickets to this ride, want to see this thing play out, and I'm fine with gambling the final $300 on the outside chance things turn around.
Your positions: brothers, sisters, nonbinary siblings: you are not your portfolio. whether up or down, your value is not based on how big or small an imaginary number is. you are a human being on the bleeding edge of 3.5 BILLION years of evolution, you have more actual success in your past and potential success in your future than you'll ever know. 12 years ago I was a penniless alcoholic literally stealing change from my grandpa to get loaded on 211 Steel Reserve. I hit my bottom, joined AA, and now I'm a network engineer, wife, kids, the whole lot. Anything is possible if you don't give up on yourself. But I know it's not that easy, we all need borrowed self-esteem before we can see the real value inside. So if this $GME gamble hit you hard, please reach out to someone. don't give up. Hell, this bubble isn't even over, it might even turn around! But either way, don't give up.
Edit2:
wow, never expected this to go this far. wrote it on my way out the door as a way to cope with the situation. read a ton of replies, probably missed most of them. thanks for all the love and hate and everything inbetween! A few more points:

• Agreed that RH deserves to be held accountable. No question they manipulated this.
• Agreed it's not over yet. the squeeze could happen. but if it does, my main personal takeaway from this experience will stand: I won't speculate on bubbles anymore. This is my position if I lose everything or make $100k.
• if you posted gains, that's awesome! so glad for you, I wish you the best!

Edit3 2/3/21:
Full disclosure, I closed my position this morning at a ~$900 realized loss.
My gut says the squeeze happened, short interest isn't what I thought it was on Friday, and the stock will return to actual value soon.

Listen guys I'm not your mom nor your financial manager.
+ Mods don't delete
I'll take my negative karma bomb as well....
okay listen, it will be quick and brutal but if it saves 1 life, it will be worth it.
​
The number of people
- asking how to create a trading account
- how to pass an order
- when to invest / if its too late / if its ok to all-in your life savings
- says / post screens of leveraged positions using borrowed money / students loan / maxed out credit cards & so on
STAY AWAY FROM THE MARKET .
IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE .
WSB MEMBERS, PLEASE, YOU MUST NOT ENCOURAGE THIS.
This place used to be full of educated people "who didn't know what they were doing". Now , it's just full of UNEDUCATED PEOPLE.
Please, consider that BUYING implies that your money is now INVESTED IN THE MARKET and that IF YOU NEED AN ADVICE ON HOW TO INVEST, YOU WILL PROBABLY SEEK FOR ADVICE ON WHEN TO SELL.
but guess what ? nobody will help you on that.
Some lives are about to be ruined. I'm not saying GME is gonna tank, I'm just kindly asking you to NOT PLAY WITH YOUR LIFE SAVINGS / BORROWED MONEY.
in the past, lots of topics / comments / threads in this sub ended up with suicidal declaration, ruined life, people that lost their cars, their work, their wife and family, their home, and even their LIFES. You need to understand SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT ABLE TO MANAGE A LOSS AND ITS A LIFE THREAT TO THEM.
WALLSTREETBETS IS FULL OF STORIES OF PEOPLE THAT LOST EVERYTHING.
PLEASE, DO NOT ENCOURAGE BORROWING MONEY / GAMBLING LIFE SAVINGS.
IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT BORROWING MONEY / USING LOAN , PLEASE RECONSIDER IT A 100000000 TIME. DO NOT DO IT IF YOU ARE F**** IF IT FLIES AWAY. PROTECT YOUR LIFE & YOUR FAMILY.
BE CAREFUL DO NOT PLAY WITH YOUR LIFE PLEASE.
​
Now back to buying GME.
​
Regards,
​
one of us.
​
Edit 1 :
ugly loss porn for the sceptical :
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/hhg42u/people_who_have_lost_everything_what_happened/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/hz5idt/the_comedy_how_i_lost_all_my_money_in_two_hours/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/g9cdzz/lost_everything_because_of_stupid_calls_i_am/
people here used to be gambling addict, I'm not saying you are going to be, but please , young /first time investors/traders, analyze your emotions and keep BOTH EYES ON IT. IF YOU DONT UNDERSTAND YOUR FEELINGS, CHECK THIS. PLEASE BE CAREFUL.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/compulsive-gambling/symptoms-causes/syc-20355178
Edit 2 : to the retards making money in the process. Do not forget that you will most likely have to pay TAXES. Do not forget it. Don't re-gamble everything you won out of it.
Edit 3 : with the ongoing situation (-35% on $GME since open), please do not forget to share your loss porn and go fuck yourself.

For background, I'm 20. The markets have been very exciting lately. Huge gains have been made....but also huge losses. I am in the latter group. I saved money for most of my life, and started investing during 2020 after the pandemic hit. I didn't want to trade, I wanted to just get long term investments and hold them. And that did work out pretty well. I was down red at certain points, but it was never SERIOUS drops, and I was confident that my picks were good in the long run. I wouldn't go into details about the weighting, but my portfolio essentially contained AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, SQ, NKE, ARKK, PLTR, NVDA, WMT, COST, DIS, JNJ, PG, V, and a couple other small picks that were my "fun" stocks - I actually had a few dozen APHA shares at $6. I had heavy tech weighting, but I was confident in the long term prospects.
By this year, just about everything was in the green, and collectively up around 15%. Then came BB. BB looked appealing so I sold most of my stocks that had been moving sideways for a while (AMZN, MSFT, NVDA) and put the money into BB when it was low teens. Within a couple days, it hit the 20s and I sold for thousands in profit. The fact that I made thousands of dollars by doing nothing was crazy to me. The rest of my portfolio was also up several thousand dollars (overall, my profit was around $7000 at this point - a combination of the realized gains from BB and the unrealized gains from everything else).
Then came GME. Several months ago, I neglected GME because I did not think they were a good long term investment, and so I did not buy them when they were less than $20/share. So when I saw the stock jump to 40, and 60 in the span of hours, I thought that was crazy. So what did I do? Naturally, I got FOMO when the stock was almost $400 and bought into the hype because I actually believed in what people over at another subreddit were saying. Within a week, my portfolio dropped around 80% (roughly $20,000). I thought that would be the best learning experience for me, but I bought into the weed hype this week, and have lost another few thousand dollars. All in all, I've lost 90% of my money in the past month. I'm young so I can recover, and this wasn't money I needed urgently. But my money I worked for and saved is completely gone because of my decisions.
I'm writing this mostly for myself because I needed a reality check for myself and don't have anyone to talk to. I can't sleep at nights, and can't really focus on anything else. I've lost all interest in playing video games, and my grades are starting to take a hit. This is really embarrassing for me, and nobody knows I lost my money on stocks (nor do I want them to). I don't know if anyone needs to here this, but please be careful with your money, and don't invest more than you're willing to lose. Especially for young investors, we have such a long time horizon. There's no need to try and get rich quick. Conservative investing will compound over our lives.
Edit: the amount of support has really helped me get out of the dark place I've been in for the past couple weeks. I think I'll call a gambling hotline later just to talk it out with someone. Thanks guys :)
Edit 2: I know I haven't replied to every comment because it's really piling up, but I'm reading through them all. Even if I don't reply, the shared stories, and words of positivity have been extremely uplifting and reassuring :)

Note: BlackBerry is NOT a cyber security company. They are a security company. Revenue does not care about your AI driven autonomous machine learning EV car with DDs. People are using these terms loosely. A quick lookup for interviews with John Chen would prove that he explicitly avoids these terms as they do not define nor matter to the products/revenue of BlackBerry. QNX revenue does not depend on any of these terms, it's on installation on any device. This includes the space station, of which there is 1 of with obviously non-recurring revenue. Buying based on these basis would be gambling.
Bull:

• Business transformation: BlackBerry is now a software company, starting the transformation in 2015. The focus is security, the general term.
• 5 Products:
  • QNX: Embedded system OS.
    • Multi-OS housing: It has the capability to allow for multiple OSs on a single chip.
    • Real-time availability/software prioritization: Not all pieces of software operate on the same priority. Steering/braking would be higher priority than media, and QNX allows for that. Even if the thread/core is shared with other applications, when high priority software is requesting a resource it will be prioritized to ensure reliability.
    • Resource sharing: CPU, RAM, and GPU resource sharing between different applications capability. Two applications can share the same CPU core and bump each other based on prioritization.
    • Why not Linux? QNX has the highest certification for security available. Linux does not. CEOs would want to avoid liability and this certification allows for that.
    • Device agnostic: It can be installed on any device, not just cars. Any IoT and offline device can use QNX.
  • QNX Hypervisor: Consolidate multiple OSs on a single SoC using virtualization
    • SoC: System on a chip. Instead of using multiple ECUs, which is what car manufacturers currently do, they can use one single chip to run multiple high priority applications and multiple OSs. This is what Tesla does now.
    • Virtualization: Running an OS in a virtual environment. Think Linux environment inside of Windows. This helps with debugging for developers without having to have the actual hardware.
  • IVY: Scalable cloud-connected software platform for vehicles.
    • What is it a solution for? When a vehicle manufacturer wants a way to transmit the QNX/OS data safely, normalize it, and visualize it/interact with it. It also allows car manufacturers to own the data, unlike other OSs.
    • Scalable: AWS servers are capable of handling the load from many endpoints.
    • Software platform: There is currently no centralized software ecosystem for vehicles. IVY is providing that.
    • Non-BB developers would be able to use an SDK to develop applications on IVY for infotainment/general apps/others. IVY will also use ML to gain insight on unrecognized patterns by developers. An example of this is detecting if a car slipped, without having the developer connect multiple sensors to figure out if that event happened.
    • 50/50 joint effort on revenue and effort to develop the ecosystem. Using AWS's knowledge in AI/ML for calculated sensors (slip, driver on seat, etc)
    • Usage by other vendors: A city can connect to the data from vehicles and detect when ice/slipping is happening. If brakes are getting overheated coming from a high elevation area. If a car had an accident, etc. An insurance company can provide an app to give discounts similar to the currently implemented OBD-2 readers. A maintenance provider can also connect to this data and check if an error is specific to maintenance, malpractice, or general misuse.
  • Spark: Endpoint management. Basically API security. Did not delve far into this, basic info.
    • Unified Endpoint Security: This is the endpoint where a laptop/phone/IoT device hits. It provides encryption and security around that. Continuous authentication is a part of it, where a device is learning the user behavior using ML and continuously checking if the behavior matches the original owner; if not, lock the device.
    • Unified Endpoint Management: Basically managing your API for devices.
    • Zero trust: I think this is specifically talking about continuous authentication. Basically, it's not an authenticate once and forget it. It's constantly tracking behavior to verify the user is the authenticated user.
  • AtHoc: Non-enterprise communication system.
    • Target customers: Government, healthcare, education, etc.
    • Solution: A communication system targeting non-enterprise businesses; specifically for Event management, cross organizational communication/collaboration, mass notifications.
    • Who does this benefit? You've seen the hacks in healthcare/educational/governmental sector. This is specifically for them.
  • SecuSUITE: Phone application to allow employees to use work related data in personal devices without cross communication (between personal and work data).
    • End to end encryption.
    • Separation of concerns between personal and work data. Employers CANNOT access your personal data.
    • Used by NATO; doesn't carry much value in my book but maybe in yours.
• Customer oriented solutions: As you've seen in the products above, some products overlap and are just names to target specific customers. It allows customers to easily understand what product could solve their issue. Continuous authentication is a great example of this: Their customer complained that they kept re-authenticating, so they designed a solution allowing them to authenticate once and using ML they learned their behavior and can continuously check if the user is the owneauthenticated user. This kind of passion in leadership is good for business.
• Liability: QNX has the highest security rating available. Most CEOs want to avoid liability when it comes to security, using QNX would help them avoid that in a similar way cloud services help them avoid being blamed for hacking.
• Leadership: BBs leadership isn't one to play on famous words to drive the stock up. John Chen explicitly states this in his interviews and says they are a security company. Not cyber, doesn't mention AI or whatever. He explicitly avoids meme words and understands what the point of BBs business is.

Where I think growth can be made:

1. QNX in more cars. They can capitalize on the idea of less ECUs = less cost for OEMs + security.
2. IVY usage by OEMs along with QNX.
3. IVY ecosystem. Maybe application billing?
4. Professional services (support) for the products listed.
5. AtHoc increased market share in more governmental/healthcare/educational entities.
6. SecuSUITE for more enterprise customers with the idea being saving employers money from purchasing work phones for employees, and worrying about securing them.

Bear:

• Revenue: It is not yet based on a subscription/usage basis. You can only produce so many cars, and they don't give an insight on how much do they charge per car for QNX. Anywhere from $2 - $20 is what was mentioned in transcripts. This is a growth area, but not at a trajectory that's excellent. IVY does work on a subscription/usage basis, but IVY can be used WITHOUT QNX. I'm worried about this, but still see it as an area that will generate revenue in the range of $400 MM - $600 MM at the price of $20 per 30M cars. The 30M per year is based on the listing of their customers and their yearly production rates. Keep in mind I stated any device, this does not include trucks or other IoT devices.
• Market share: These are relatively new products. J.P. Morgan pointed this out as a priority for growth. This could end up not working out and growth never happens. This is a relatively low risk due to QNX and IVY providing SO MUCH value for car manufacturers Vs. other products in the market.
• Patent revenue: They sold a chunk of their no longer relevant patents to Huawei. This makes up a small (<= 32%) of their revenue and is a one time sale. The coming quarter could be equal or less to the last quarter revenue due to either other sales making up the lost revenue from patents, or coming up short. It could come higher if they sold more services, but due to COVID and knowing that many car manufacturers have lowered their production due to chip shortage, the next quarter will most likely be lower.
• VW.os: VW is making their own OS. VW.os is what they're calling it. They're currently using QNX, but that revenue could potentially stop. Personally I don't believe VW is capable of doing that. It's a marketing hype. Their companies are not capable of good collaboration or good implementation based on what I've read and researched (can't find article right now), but it's something to be concerned about.
• QNX success: While IVY could be using QNX, it does NOT depend on it. There is potential for OEMs to use IVY without QNX. I think this is a low risk, but still risk. 19 OEMs are already using QNX.
• Lack of Answers: I can't get much out of their earnings call. They don't delve into pricing for QNX, how they plan to grow it besides getting more car manufacturers and more cars post Corona. How they plan to do recurring revenue. A breakdown of each revenue segment would be helpful, but I don't see that either and there is hesitancy to delve into it.

Prediction: I think QNX can become a $1B revenue per year alone. $2B revenue per year as a company is not far fetched. Without a subscription/usage based model, it is difficult to see how growth can go beyond that. BB is good in 2-5 years, not this year. I can see their revenue growing to potentially $2B - $4B revenue per year. They did mention trying to figure out a subscription/usage based billing, if done then the revenue would be much higher. I think $18 is a fair price on the high end. It could grow further than that, but expectations would be HIGH.
Resources:

1. John Chen interview: https://youtu.be/_hQQlCWMrQA?t=313
2. John Chen interview: https://youtu.be/FNdbGhun2E8
3. J.P. Morgan IVY presentation: https://cache.webcasts.com/content/jpmo001/1416508/content/58ffe5daaa24e738fdef0d065b9b15077892ea63/pdf/secured/BlackBerry_-_Winter_2020-21_Investors_Deck.pdf
4. IVY: https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/aws
5. QNX: https://blackberry.qnx.com/content/dam/bbcomv4/qnx/software-solutions/embedded-software/qnx-neutrino-rtos/pdf/QNX-Neutrino-Product-Brief-v7.pdf
6. QNX Hypervisor: https://blackberry.qnx.com/content/dam/qnx/products/hypervisohypervisorGEM-ProductBrief.pdf
7. QNX Tools: https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/embedded-software/qnx-software-development-platform
8. Spark UEM: https://www.blackberry.com/content/dam/bbcomv4/blackberry-com/en/products/resource-centeresource-library/guides/guide-blackberry-spark-uem-suites.pdf
9. Spark UES: https://www.blackberry.com/content/dam/bbcomv4/blackberry-com/en/products/resource-centeresource-library/briefs/Solution_Brief_BlackBerry_Spark_UES_Suite_Final.pdf
10. AtHoc: https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/products/blackberry-athoc
11. AtHoc in healthcare: https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/products/blackberry-athoc/healthcare
12. SecuSUITE: https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/products/secusuite
13. Customer oriented solutions - continuous authentication: Start the video at 5:04: https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/events/security-summit/2020/video-details/work-anywhere
14. Easier link: https://vimeo.com/497426347
15. VW OS: https://electrek.co/2020/06/19/vw-to-develop-its-own-operating-system-but-dodges-question-about-id-3-software/

Position: 1,500.
Disclaimer: I don't know everything, I may be incorrect about some things. This is based on what I've researched and to the best of my ability. Do your own DD. Obligatory this is not an investment advice.
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Edit: This is the only sub with a lot of discussion. I appreciate y'all.
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🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀
Edit 2: One day later, marked closed $18.03. Crazy.

There seems to be a lot of interest in stocks from young investors. I imagine that many will make their way from WSB to this sub because WSB is a bunch of monkeys flinging poo. You may have lost some money and now you want to explore stocks from less of a Meme and emotional perspective.
There is nothing wrong with Meme stocks. Meme stocks can be fun. I have had fun with it. I am also a 42-year-old man with rental properties, commercial properties, and a few small businesses. BB, NOK, AMC, and even GME are all fine. The DD is fine behind all of them. The issue is that if I lose $1,000 then I can write myself a check from one of my businesses for $10,000 to make myself feel better. That is not a brag...it is simply sharing that people come from different places in life.
You are just starting off life and probably have far fewer resources and every dollar matters more.
I challenge anyone to CMV but I am not a big proponent of stocks as a core investment strategy. Here are my reasons why.

1. Information has a time-decay of value. Meaning that information becomes less valuable over time. Data is what is mined to often produce new Information. You are at a disadvantage when it comes to both data and information. The information that you get on a retail level has already lost much of its value. This is where the saying "if you read it in the news you are already too late"
2. You have no power. You simply cannot compete with whales and whales don't become whales by letting people glean the crumbs that are leftover. They have the power to move markets, you don't.
3. You have no control over outcomes. You have no control over the success of a company. You have no control over other investors. You have no control over anything.
4. The odds on options are not that great. Even compared to blackjack our betting the outside of a roulette table they are just not that good.
5. Many people that are far more intelligent than you are, lose money at stock investing.
6. Your emotions and FOMO will be a hindrance and problematic.
7. Most stock investors are too young to understand the market cycles

I like stocks as a small part of an overall investment strategy for young people for the following reasons.

1. Time is valuable and you have the most time
2. Compound interest is the "force" behind all investing and compound interest compliments the stock market very well
3. Certain strategies can complement long-term wealth building

Building wealth through stocks is like trying to build a house one brick at a time...just you, and you are gathering the straw, digging the mud, and pressing each brick by hand. When it rains many of your bricks will wash away. If the sun shines for enough days then you will make good progress.
The problem is that all markets cycle. The housing market cycles. Petroleum and natural gas cycles. The stock market cycles. I believe that a full market cycle is around 18 years with around 7-12 years in an up cycle and 6-11 in a down cycle. In the stock market, they call these bull and bear markets. We are currently in one of the longest bull markets on record due to interest rates and the feds printing money. No one has a crystal ball but sooner or later the market will peak. When this happens Boomers will be the first to pull money out and put it into bonds or CDs. Boomers are as big of a whale as retail can get. Anyone and I mean anyone could have made money in the current market. If ten years ago you had asked a five-year-old to pick five of their favorite things and invested in their choices you would have made money. That could be Barbies, YouTube, Pizza, Sprite, and their Dog. They would have made money on any stocks you picked around those five things.
There will come a day sooner or later when Boomers and GenX will see trends in the market that they don't like. Boomers own multiple houses and are deep into retirement. GenX is a small but powerful generation that is now on the back Nine Holes of life. Gen X will largely inherit the wealth of the Boomers. There will come a shift towards mitigating losses and that shift is not far away. When they move their money from markets so goes the market.
Is it fair to say that one of the longest bull cycles on record could transition to one of the longest bear cycles?
Let's look at Millenials...a generation that is struggling to just buy a home. Boomers own a few. GenX may own a couple and Millenials that are now entering into their forties struggle with one. Millenials are a massively sized generation that I believe is now bigger than both GenX and Boomers combined because Boomers are dying at a rapid pace. Millenials are the generation that were adults starting life and careers in 2008 and full-blown families with Covid-19. Maybe one of the unluckiest generations.
GenZ is this very talented and intelligent generation. Y'all are creating disruptions in culture, in politics, and in Wall Street. You are savvy and demanding. Giving billionaires the finger while pissing on the front door of their mansions.
But you need to be careful.
Stocks are not the key to your success. They are just a single tool in your toolbox. A better tool may be early homeownership or owning a small business. Life is about options...and I am not talking about the gambling options of Wall Street. I am talking about the options of having equity in a home to adapt to economic swings. I am, talking about the options of owning a small business where your day to day decisions make you smarter and more valuable. Where you own assets that make you money. Most importantly you have control over your own destiny.
I am not telling you not to invest in stocks. I am just telling you that it should be a limited part of your overall strategy in life. Unless someone has been through two complete cycles of the stock markets then I would take their advice with a grain of salt.
General advice:

1. Don't sell stocks that you have taken a loss on
2. Buy when everyone is selling and sell when everyone is buying
3. Invest in stocks with a strategy based on your knowledge and experience
4. Invest only what you can afford to lose
5. Stocks work best with time. Leave them alone
6. Be a value investor
7. Invest with a purpose

Number seven is important. For example, I like Robotics, AI, and Automation. I like these is two specific areas....transportation and mining. I operate in the Transportation industry. I know that very soon human drivers will be eliminated and self-driving trucks will take over. Trucks will be loaded, driven, and unloaded without a single human being doing any of that work. With that will come an entire supporting industry. Tow trucks will need to be automatically dispatched when trucks break down or in accidents. AI will need to be involved in decision making. I will see these changes before I am dead and I am 42.
I like underwater mining. Our oceans are the next frontier and the next gold rush. We have areas of sea bottom that has very little life but is rich in gasses, minerals, and thermal energy. Automation, AI, and robotics will play a huge role in underwater mining. I will see this transition start in my lifetime and I am 42.
Beyond that, once we have machines that are capable of underwater mining then we have the basics for machines that can mine inner-system planetary objects. From nearby asteroids to the moon, to thermal energy collection closer to the sun, to Mars and beyond. The wealthiest person in existence will be the person that is able to start the first off-planet mining operation. Where there is no EPA, no taxes on land, where we are not building sub-divisions next to mines. Where we don't have to worry about the ecosystem. Where gasses and pollutants are not pollutants because there is nothing of consequence to pollute. The largest land-owners in existence will be the owner of off-world mining operations. That may not happen in my lifetime...but it may in yours.
I like investing in Meme stocks because they are fun. But I also invest in Robotics, AI, and automation with one-single question....is this company taking humanity one-step close to automated transportation or underwater mining? I invest with a purpose.
Sure I will grab up some value stocks every now and then. People are going to be flying more than ever in a few years. People are going to be more social than ever in a few years. Shoot Condom manufacturers are a buy right now because people will be..........you get the idea.
The whole reason that I wrote this excessively long post is to maybe get you into thinking about your strategy....what is it? And to caution you on being "all-in" on stocks.
Stonks don't always go up.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor. This is a DD (Due Diligence) post in regard to the upcoming squeeze aimed at AMC. The information is a collection of research from credible sources with some of my personal thoughts on the topic.
NOTE: ANYONE WHO IS INFORMED ON THE MARKET AND HOW IT WORKS, SKIP TO PART 2.
This DD will cover more than average DD's since WSB has gained a large following of new traders who can benefit from a full description.
Part 1: $AMC, what is it? 🎞️🎟️
---Source--- AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. is an American movie theater chain headquartered in Leawood, Kansas, and the largest movie theater chain in the world. Founded in 1920, AMC has the largest share of the U.S. theater market ahead of Regal and Cinemark Theatres.
Part 1.2: What is a squeeze?🤏🏼
A squeeze in the market ($GME, $AMC) is a phenomenon that occurs when shorts have to be covered, especially by high class traders (hedge fund managers).
Part 1.3:What are shorts, why are they popular with the top 1%?
In short selling, a position is opened by borrowing shares of a stock that the investor believes will decrease in value by a set future date . The investor then sells these borrowed shares to buyers willing to pay market price. Before the borrowed shares must be returned, the trader is betting on the prices decline and then can purchase them at a lower cost. This stategy is HIGH RISK HIGH REWARD.
Part 1.4 (final intro peice): Why do squeezes cause losses up top?
Simple. In the case of $GME the hedge funds bet that $GME would fall. Logically, they should have been right. But as I'm sure everyone knows, WSB and working class investors from all over the world flipped the trend on its head. So, since the hedge funds bet on a fall they had to cover the losses caused by their BORROWED positions becoming absolutely useless (nice).
Part 2: The stats on $AMC. 📈🧠
---Paraphrased from "Yahoo Finance", Some IMO.---
AMC has 44.6 million shorted shares and a grand total of 101.95 million shares. Now what everyone is waiting for it when shorted shares become useless and the hedge funds have to cover what they bet and lost on. Today's target (1/29) was to beat $8.63 and we closed at $13.29! This short will expire in 0.5 trading days (Feb 1/21) So Monday when they're forced to cover the $8.63 they will have to buy it at its current price to cover their bet. Raising the price up even higher from said stimulus. There are 9 different short stocks between $1.98-$5.96. Over the next few trading days it is going to be a strong squeeze. $AMC is standing where $GME did a week ago. Hold your ground. Gains coming in hot next week.
Part 3: What are our targets for buying and selling?💵📈💵
THIS REQUIRES DIAMOND HANDS 💎👐
From what I have read, buying into $AMC at $17 or below is a safe bet. My exit plan is to secure some profit next week as the squeeze reaches it's height, and reinvest (into $AMC) a comfortable amount based on collected gain. I plan to keep shares for up to 12-18 months so long as $AMC keeps on the track we can see now. AGAIN, I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR. MY WORD IS NOT LAW.
Part 4: Beware The Big Man (Reason for Holding)🏦🚫
Big money managers and short sellers are going to manipulate the stock in the after hours session to scare us investors out of buying and holding with the intent of executing their shorts as planned or to cushion the blow from failed investment. Again, 👐💎.
Part 5: The Conclusion on $AMC in short (wording wise) 🚀🚀
•The statistics on this stock are legit.
•The company is longstanding (70+ years)
•The company is legit
•A squeeze is seemingly inevitable
•Being the largest theatre company, post COVID gains are likely as cinemas will re-open.
•The hedge funds are in a position to be bent over again via their shorts in $AMC.
•Last but not least, I know alot of you autists lost alot of money gambling during highs on $KTOV, $XSPA, $GNUS, and many others... So why not get some tendies for once.
AGAIN I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR, THIS IS A COLLECTION OF DATA AND RESEARCH BASED ON RECENT TRENDS AND $AMC's POSITION IN THE MARKET AS OF CLOSE ON (1/29/21) I AM NOT LIABLE FOR LOSSES OR THE REASON FOR GAIN. THIS POST IS STRICTLY FOR SHARING INFORMATION GATHERED.
TL/DR: 💎👐📈🚀🌑
(typed on mobile, computer format may be fucked up)
Edit: Monkey brain was on overdrive while typing, I know shorts do not expire but monkey brain like thinking about put options.
I am also aware alot of us are receiving different numbers regarding floating shares and shares outstanding. I included the name of my source, take it up with yahoo not me. Just trying to help the people who need it.

For myself, life over the past few years has seemingly gone from bad to worse - and before I go into the details -this isn’t a “pity-post” or a sympathy searching exercise, this is simply a warning, and hopefully a lesson to others who are entering the crypto scene.
My crypto journey began back in earnest at the start of that famed 2017 “bull run” – I had a little bit in savings and had done my due diligence – this really was the future, and it could potentially set me and my family up for life.
I bought in with every bit of money I had to spare. All told, it was about £6,500, and the price of Bitcoin sat at just under £9,000.
This was exciting. The price continued to increase and I religiously opened and closed the Coinbase website to see the price soar by the hundreds and into the thousands. Work took a backseat and I became consumed with the markets, red and green candles being the first and last things I saw in the day.
I wanted more. I became envious of those that had bought into cryptos years before. So I looked at alternate avenues to increase my Bitcoin holdings… this was going to be the making of me! Sadly it turned out to be quite the opposite.
Scams, Scams everywhere…
The first venture I looked into was a third party bitcoin mining platform which promised exponential growth. It sounded too good to be true (spoiler: it was). I used a credit card to buy more Bitcoin. First mistake. I maxed the card and sent around £6,000 in Bitcoin to a mining company known as Crypterra. The reviews were good, the discord was active, people were seeing payouts – it was all looking legitimate. But of course it wasn’t. Payouts dried up. The devs went silent and the site disappeared and re-appeared sporadically before going offline indefinitely. It was over and I had lost most of the £6,000 from my credit card.
Robots are the future?
The price of Bitcoin was still holding strong and I’d made small gains with my original investment which was still untouched. Perhaps I could increase by Bitcoin gains elsewhere and pay off the credit card I had maxed out.
Again, I looked into ways to bolster my Bitcoin reservesI looked into trading platforms, cryptocurrency bots in particular. How hard could it be? As long as the price of Bitcoin went up, it should balance out any losses as I learned the ropes. There were a few that caught my eye. And following what I thought was sage “youtuber” advice – I dove into the world of trading with bots – linking up a Binance account and setting up my automated systems to work their magic and trade whilst I was asleep/working/sitting on the toilet, you name it.
As you can imagine, these bots weren’t the holy grail they were promoted to be, and I was losing Bitcoin left, right and centre. I became more and more “experimental” with the strategies… doubling my stakes, tripling my stakes to recoup what I had lost. I didn’t see it as real money (despite paying with hard earned money to fund these accounts) – it was magic internet money, just ones and zeroes – so the reality of it didn’t hit home how much I was actually losing. Shock horror, I lost it all.
Taking it to the bookies…
I had effectively been gambling my money away, and in my increasingly agitated state I sought out other communities to try and regain my money. Sports-betting communities, gambling communities, Twitter “tipsters” and Facebook groups who had all the inside knowledge.
I was down over £12,000 from my savings and the £6,500 from the credit card combined. I decided to open another two credit cards. One to fund my betting account and the other for backup. I quickly went through the first card’s funds, but I was ‘still learning’, this was ‘Ok’ – next time I would get it right. The second card (third in total) was quickly exhausted, and I was now close to £20,000 in the hole from when I started, all within just a few months.
The hole grew ever darker
As I write this now I am actually afraid and embarrassed to share the total losses I have made over the past few years (it’s actually much worse than I could have ever imagined). I have no-one to blame but myself; the greed, stupidity and at times, pure arrogance have lead me down this path. A path which at the moment seems irreversible for me.
To see the price of Bitcoin now makes me feel physically sick – if only I had been patient. If only I hadn’t chased my losses, if only I hadn’t played with money that wasn’t mine - I wouldn’t be in this predicament. As the debt mounts ever higher and interest rates on credit cards are crippling me, it will be an incredibly long time before I have any financial stability again. It has made me mentally unwell and I’m still figuring out the next steps which I know include professional support and removing my head from the pile of sand in which I have buried it.
I sincerely hope that those who read this account of my situation don’t fall into the same trap. The world is once again hyped for crypto, and with it come the pitfalls and scams and false promises of financial freedom and becoming rich. Don’t try and cheat the system, don’t chase your losses and don’t use money that isn’t yours in the first place.
TLDR:
To put it succinctly, the above is a very short overview of the financial hole I have found myself due to greed, arrogance and stupidity over the past few years. Hopefully a warning to others. Don’t chase losses, don’t look for the next get rich scheme and don’t invest money that isn’t yours to start with. Basically, don’t ruin your life like me. If only I had just held.
EDIT:
A quick edit to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read the above and replied in the comments. I've had some very honest and insightful responses and some incredibly useful suggestions about how I can bring myself back from this dilemma. I'll be seeking professional help both for the gambling and the debt management and hopefully get myself on the right track for the sake of my own sanity and that of my family's.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.
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Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...
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..
​
BOOM
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Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

I gotta say, I see some good shit out there. I see new members trying to diversify their positions and learn about other stocks and other ways to make money. This is the path my fellow retards. I'm a nobody here, but I have good returns and some good insight. When I came to WSB, multiple people helped me figure out what the fuck I was doing, because I knew jack shit. I care more about my money than yours, but no retard should be left in the dark alone. So let me pass on a couple things. I can't prove shit to you, so read this or don't.
I mainly trade options (Calls and Puts), so that is what I will discuss
Generally the most insane gains will come from being in a specific stock and not an ETF or Index. While riskier, this is where you can hit the homeruns. So decide if you want to go for conservative gains or if you want those huge swings. While what I said is true, I am usually against putting everything into a single bet. Anything can go wrong at any time and no play is 100% guaranteed. The goal of this game is to stay alive. You will lose money on a play at some point, because it is inevitable. So never let yourself get wiped out, because you can always build yourself back up. This goes along with one of my other recommendations: always have SOME cash ready to go. You never know when there might be an incredible opportunity and you do not want to get caught with your ass hanging out.
Paper hands and diamond hands are just words. You ultimately decide when you want to sell or hold and how much profit you want to take. One of my favorite strategies is to say, buy an even number of options on a play, sell half at a modest level of gains (like enough to break even or gain a little bit) and then let the rest ride longer. Look guys, on many plays, you either paper hands at some point or diamond hands long enough to see your positions go red. Some people will bail at 40% gains and others might not take anything less than 500%. Just know that chasing endless profits ups the risk factor, so YOU decide when it's time. Having a target share price for the stock is also a good strategy.
Here's a couple psychological principles in investing. Studies have found that people tend to hold onto losing positions too long and sell winning positions too early. They let their losers lose and cut off their winners short. Apparently most people hate losing more than they like winning. Think about this before you sell. Stocks can often get hot and run multiple days in a row. Sometimes a stock will have one red day and then keep up going. This is why it's important to know WHY you got into a position. Trust your DD and stick to the plan. I had ideas for plays where they went red right away and I bailed... only to see them moon. "Diamond Hands" means that you don't dump your position instantly if it goes down. The hardest thing is knowing if you should cut losses or diamond hands. I'm a retard and we're in a bull market.. so often times the stock will eventually go up. Your call though.
The market makers and big boys want you to lose. They want your money. I'm not going to dive into the realm of possible illegal activities that they may use, but just point out some simpler tactics they will use. Big money often sees retail as "weak hands" aka Buy High and Sell Low. They know FOMO is strong when a stock is going up big and that fear takes over when a stock divebombs. We're in a bull market, which means stonks only go up. However, we still have negative days. Stocks sell off sometimes and things can look bad. Generally, the dip is not time to sell, but instead, time to buy. Case and point, we had a pretty big drilling 2 weeks ago. Do you know what the big money did? They bought the fuckin dip and snatched up everything for cheap. We've been mooning ever since.
Sometimes shit makes no sense. A company can have blowout earnings, exceed expectations, and the stock will tank. I was holding one stock a little while ago that reported a fantastic earnings and proceeded to drill to the core of the Earth that day. It was total bullshit and I knew it, I trusted my DD. So instead of panic selling, I added to my position. Sure enough, the stock began swinging upwards and hit an all-time high just 2 weeks later. This is why simply gambling can bite you in the ass. It's easy to get scared and sell when you doubt yourself because you picked a random thing to buy.
Option Expiration Dates matter. Buying a 1 week option is the cheapest and gives the biggest percentage of profits if it goes your way. However, it can often be a noob trap. One bad day or one piece of bad news can kill your entire position. Stocks trade sideways sometimes. Sometimes they don't do what you think they should do. And sometimes the whole fucking market shits itself for seemingly no reason. So give yourself TIME to work with. Time costs money and hurts profit margins. But it is better to consistently make 50% profit than to hit one play for 300% followed by 10 losers. Look, playing weekly stupidly OTM calls is fun as hell and is a huge rush when it hits. I do at least one or more every week. The key is not loading your entire portfolio into this shit. Remember, no tendies = no more fun.
Along the same lines, Strike Price matters. An OTM (Out of the Money) option means that the Strike Price is a bit of a ways from where the stock's price currently is. OTM options give huge profit margins the further you go out. I personally enjoy using them.. some people don't. But my advice is to balance risk with profit potential. If your call relies on a stock gaining 50% in 2 weeks.. then well, it's probably not gonna happen. ITM (In The Money) options means that your stock is already within the strike price. ITM is a more conservative play and sacrifices massive gains for lower risk.
https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/calculatolong-call.html - Use this to get an estimate of potential profits and how much of a move you need
Leaps are fuckin dope. A Leap is a call, but for a much longer period of time. I'm using the term loosely because we're degenerates and some people might consider anything more than 1 month a leap. Given that the market trends up over time, you might even make some money on a mediocre stock this way. A lot of people buy ITM leaps, but again, I'm a degenerate and go OTM a lot.
Implied Volatility (IV) - Extremely fucking important. IV is basically an estimation of how much a stock is predicted to move in either direction. High IV = Expensive Options. It's fucking weird to think, but you can make similar profits from a 2% move on a low IV stock as you can from a 5% move on a more volatile stock. Low IV is fantastic when buying an option on a stock that you think is about to moon. High IV is riskier, so you damn well better think the stock can make some big moves. Buying an option on a stock right before Earnings Report (ER) will be more expensive due to IV. Trying to play ER is usually for suckers, unless you have some really good DD about why a company might deliver a huge surprise. One of the textbook big boy moves is to pump a stock going into ER. The company will deliver great news and then dump hard. You may see people bitching about this very soon. Basically, big money knew ahead of time it would be good, so the stock got pumped and then they took profits.
Buy the rumor and sell the news. Events, press releases, and important dates that everyone knows about are another trap. You will get shit on. Ask someone about TESLA Battery Day. Positive rumors will send a stock soaring though.
Finally, get busy learning. Read about Options on Investopedia and any other things you do not understand. The big boys rely on us to not know what the fuck we're doing to take our money. Learn about the general market. Stocks are grouped into "Sectors" or categories. Start figuring out what they are and pay attention to where the money is going. I didn't even mention half of the shit that goes on in options, so that's on you. The first thing you need to do is to learn what the "Greeks" are. That will teach you how options function.
https://www.investopedia.com/trading/using-the-greeks-to-understand-options/
If anyone wants to talk or discuss, send me a message. I'm a degenerate with no life.
Oh and, if you follow someone's DD and lose money that's on you. I've come up with some genius shit, but I've also lost on some retarded calls. Nobody can pick you a guaranteed winner and hindsight is 20/20.
May the gains be with you

I’m just gonna come out straight and say it: you are hurting yourself more than helping when you spread information that is ignorant and not based in reality.
Last Thursday and Friday, there was all of this talk of a Gamma Squeeze, “it’s going to happen, oh yeah definitely so long as we close above the magic and imaginary number of $320. Don’t worry, shorts won’t cover until Tuesday so you can be patient, wait it out”
Every fucking time you degenerates give a deadline, you create another opportunity for disappointment. Stop it. No one knows what’s going to happen or when.
Yes, monkeys strong together, but also monkeys stupid together. It’s a fine sentiment. The culture stuff is less so.
Is this subreddit really going to turn into such a dumbass fucking echo chamber that every single time the stock goes down we scream “short ladder!” “Market manipulation!” “Fake news!”
Because while all of these things are possible, it’s also a FUCKING VOLATILE MARKET. And every single time someone says that something in it is guaranteed, they’re setting themselves up for failure.
So yeah, FUCKING hold, obviously. But don’t gamble away your life savings.
Obviously but the dip. But ask yourself where you genuinely want and believe the stock you’re investing in to be.
Also. “Shorts have x days to cover, it’ll go up then!!” And “GME is now on the short restriction list!! That means that we literally can’t lose now” are fucking stupid. Not based in reality. Look, we all want our tendies. We all want them to be guaranteed. But this is a war of attrition.
And there’s no such thing as guaranteed success.
If you like the stock, buy it. If you think, based on a whim, or research, or for any fucking reason that convinces you that a stock is going to go up, then buy the stock. Look at DFV: He didn’t invest because he thought a massive short squeeze was going to drive his value investment into the 8 or 9 digits, and he didn’t sell when he was at almost 50mil- you know why?
Because he believes in the fucking company and isn’t here to get a quick buck.
Buy low. Sell high. Fomo is fucking stupid.
And make your own god damned decision.
🚀🚀🚀
Eventually.

Edit: Thank you for all the comment guys. I legitimately read through every single one of them and comment back if I have anything to say. Pt 2 is in the comments because when I originally tried to post with it in, the post was getting deleted by the bot.
1st Mistake
I was up about 40% for the year of 2019, it was awesome, it was the first full year of working as an engineer and I have put in a bit of money into my investments. It felt REALLY good to see the growth it has done. Theeeeeen came the covid drop. I sold halfway down the drop, my entire brokerage portfolio and Roth IRA for about a 50% gains loss of my ENTIRE time investing. I did this because I believed that it will drop even more, which it did for a some days, but then it went back up, and back up, and back up, and kept going back up. I kept telling myself that it was a dead cat bounce and the market will drop even further than before and it never did. I tried to time the market and got rekt. I didnt even get back into investing late last year so I lost out on a good bit of money if I had just kept everything in.
Lesson: Timing the market is hard. It is SO much easier to just keep everything in and put MORE money into your positions on red days.
What I am doing now to not repeat the same mistake: I got back into the game late last year and I will not touch my investments ever again. I have also set aside a 4-ish month emergency fund that I will never touch. I believe part of the reason why I sold during the covid drop was also because I didnt have an emergency fund set aside and I got emotional with my investments. Now even my portfolio drops 50% in 1 day I still have 4 months of living expenses if I lost my job so I would still be carrying out my day to day living normally
2) Getting too greedy with GME or any other hyped up stock I bought GME because I wanted to "get rich quick". I put in $5k last Wednesday thinking I wouldn't take anything less than a $10k gain for some reason. Well I was up a good $3k Thursday, Friday, and Monday, but didn't sell because I was too greedy. I closed my position being down $3.5k. Had I held longer it would have probably be more like $4k or so now.
Lesson: Hyped up stock is dangerous, if you really want to gamble, use only the amount of money you are willing to lose or just bet on a sports game, it will be easier. Greed is also a dangerous game. It is euphoric to see a couple of thousand dollars of gains in a couple of days no doubt, but seeing tons people on WSB making 5 to 6 digit gains blinded me on how much a few of thousand is. I thought it was too little and got too greedy and held the stock too long. I am hating myself right now for not selling in the green when I had the chance. Definitely learned that $5k was too much for me. If I want to play another meme stock it will be a lot less than that.
What I am doing now to not repeat the same mistake: Unfollowing WSB and removing it from my Reddit home screen. I have put a big majority portion of my excess cash in my checking account into an S&P ETF for now and doing research on other stocks that I should be investing in. Having excess cash in my checking account allowed me the opportunity to spend it on dumb shit and gamble it away. I need forced scarcity to stay humble and stay focused about what I spend my money on. Maybe I will expand the 4 month emergency fund to 6 month and keep $1000 or $2000 at most in my checking account for day to day spending.
CONCLUSION During both the Covid drop and GME hype for a week, I literally stared at my phone screen from when I woke up to 8pm when after hours closed. I wanted to see every movement of the market/stock and it consumed me. I definitely could have used the time to do my work more efficiently or literally do anything else. This is what happens when you trade with emotion, it can and it will consume you. The positive takeaway for both is that I am relatively young in my investing life. I am glad I made these few thousand dollar mistakes now rather than 10s or 100s of thousand dollar mistakes later on in my career if my portfolio had more money. If you read this entire thing then I thank you for your time and I hope you have learned from my mistake and wont do the same stupid things I did. If you had a similar story and would like to share, I would gladly hear about it.

Hey guys. Not entirely sure if this is the right place for this post, but here goes.
Since the GameStop short squeeze and the Elon Musk Bitcoin pump happened, there's been a lot on my mind about both Bitcoin and regular stocks and I need to get this off my chest.
One thing above all has really been bothering me and I couldn't put it into words until recently: how rotten the whole system is and how it allows a minority to earn enough money to never need to work again.
Whether it's Bitcoin or speculative stocks, it works out very similarly. People throw money and hope they get lucky, no better than any gambling.
When they win, it's not because they were smarter or did some great service to society. They only had to install an app on their phone, go through some KYC and throw money at their crypto or stock of choice.
Money is a currency used to determine how much access to society's resources someone has. The more money you have, the more resources you can access. This can be better apartments, lambos, yachts, mansions, whatever.
The winners of crypto or stocks are just gamblers, they get a disproportionately high share of society's resources without creating anything of value.
And then there's people like me. I work a day job, working hard every day and trying to improve my skills, hoping to get recognized and achieve some measure of success in life, yet I get a pittance while all these gamblers win big.
To be clear here, I'm not salty because I didn't invest money or lost it. I don't believe in either speculative stock investing or crypto "investing". I realize that speculative investments have a far higher chance to lose money, and losing money can really hurt you and your life prospects.
With both Bitcoin and speculative stock investing, what happens in practice isn't very different. They're glorified casinos and the winners are set for life, and it really grinds my gears because they didn't do anything to earn it, while I'm sitting at a desk day in and day out, working hard yet barely getting anything out of it.
But what's even worse is that the winners' wealth is created through exploitative means. For someone to win money in the casinos, someone else has to lose. Usually a lot of someones. And the losers? They can be drastically affected by their loss.
It's even more sad when you realize that most of them were suckered into playing the game with false promises: "Bitcoin/Gamestop is guaranteed to moon! Invest now and you'll never need to work again!" and so on.
Then when things fail and the hysteria ends, a lot of people are left holding the bag. Some turn to substance abuse, others commit suicie, yet others double down and throw more money at the casino in the vain hopes that they'll win the next time.
And even if speculative investments had a 50% or higher chance of making you a winner, what would that mean for our society?
I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure that our society would start running low on resources as people buy more luxuries they couldn't afford before and this would result in price inflation. Which in the long-term, would nullify the winners' wealth and make everyone else worse off.
It's all so upsetting, and very sad what our society really values.
Sorry if this was too long or rambly, but I really needed to get this off my chest. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Edit: This might not have been clear to some, but I'm not a Bitcoin supporter. I know how it works and why it's terrible.
Edit 2: Well, my free day of shitposting is ending, so I'm wrapping up this thread. Thank you all so much for your responses! There were many interesting discussions, even with coiners. I might respond more tomorrow, but not as much as today.

Going to be editing this with info as I come across it. Please DM me if you have anything to add. Many of you have reached out and I've complied a lot of evidence. I realize now that these pumps originated in Discord groups, but this is something I am still actively looking into and won't be including here.
Users of wallstreetbets (and also places like Stockwits, amcstock, and Youtube chats) attempted a coordinated pump on AMC (& GME) today, Feb. 3rd. These comments are still avaible. The fact they are still up and that I found them very easily means that the mods are not able to moderate their community well enough to stop coordinated pumps. There is not evidence that shows the mods were in on coordinated pump, but the fact that they were unable to stop it taking place shows that the subreddit has grown far too big to be managed by a team of 35 mods.
There is evidence that some mods owned both AMC and GME, and it is possible they held these shares while the coordinated pump was happening in threads they were supposed to be moderating (proof of GME ownership at the bottom).
Coldcutcombo69 was mod on WSB during the AMC coordinated pump. Here is them claiming that they were a mod on WSB. This image of mods before and after the day of the pump confirms they were a mod during the AMC pump-and-dump.
Coldcutcombo69 posted a picture of them having a sell order on their AMC stock that never hit, making it possible they owned AMC shares during the coordinated pump.
Coldcutcombo69 also posted some kind of DD thread about AMC two days ago, promoting the stock here. The content of this post has been removed. This post promoting AMC was made while Coldcutcombo69 was a moderator.
Coldbutcombo69 was a moderator during the AMC coordinated pump. They are no longer a moderator as of the time of this post, only a few hours later. They confirmed this here. A WSB mod was posting comments and threads promoting AMC while possibly still holding AMC shares, and a pump-and-dump occurred in the daily threads that they (along with others) were supposed to be moderating.
turdled is currently a WSB mod. They said, "We don't comment or promote trades. That's up to the subscribers and their upvotes/downvotes to decide." View it here.
turdled's claim was false. Coldcutcombo69 had been a moderator for 25 days. During that time they posted comments and threads promoting AMC, while providing evidence that they actually owned AMC shares. A moderator (who may command more respect in a community of 8.5 million people) promoting a stock is wrong, and the mods clearly believe that is the case since they said they don't do it. But at least one of them did. It could be that Coldcutcombo69 was removed because they were promoting AMC, but they had been doing this for days and were only removed a few hours ago.
ZJZ (a well known moderator) posted this today and was removed as a mod. The head mods also removed more mods, cutting the number of mods from from 62 mods to 37. Coldbutcombo69 was cut from the mod team at this time. It seems very suspicious to me that the head mods removed a bunch of mods from their positions after the events of today, especially because one of those ex-mods had been promoting AMC so much while being a mod.
Note: there is some kind of extended purge happening within the mod team right now. The mod team started at 62, then was cut with ZJZ to 37, then 36, now it's down to 35. EDIT: Two new mods have been added, bringing the count back up to 37. One of them tried posting something in a WSB thread, but their comment was deleted by the auto-mod because they have never posted in WSB before. Here is some proof of what's going on there.
ZJZ has exposed that there are bad actors on the mod team, using their power on the sub to try and make cash off movie deals and crypto scams. This at least adds weight to the points im raising in this thread.
EDIT: There was a thread on WSB by a moderator trying to explain what happened with the mod team. You can see that thread here. There is a lot of push back in the thread. The mod's claim is that the profit from the movie deal would have been given to charity. This may not be true, as Discord logs show another mod asking what their profit will be from the movie deal, asking "What's our cut.". Infighting with the mods seems to be a continued issue with a mod changing the subreddit description from the classic "like 4chan found a bloomberg terminal" to this. This change was instantly reverted.
MOD UPDATE 2/4: It seems that the moderator team has changed again. 23 mods now remain. OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR is now listed as the most senior mod, and they have allowed this thread to stay up. The mod reports that the Reddit admins have stepped in.
Statement from Reddit admins, according to OPINION_IS_UNPOPULAR: "After reviewing this situation based on input from both current and past moderators, we have decided to remove several moderators at the top of the list that were creating instability in the community." Source.
NEW INFO: I've also been sent a good amount of evidence from multiple people indicating these types or coordinating buying and selling schemes were happening on places like Youtube, Twitch, and Discord. All of these groups seem to be composed of WSB/WSB spinoffs users. These users would spam hash tags, spam and raid Twitch channels, and coordinate these social media pushes with timed buying and selling of GME/AMC/BB/NOK. It is possible (and looks likely to me) that the timed pumps you see below were organized by a Discord group. I have collected a lot of evidence on this front, but this evidence of the real organizers of the pump is something I might have to pass along to someone who is more experienced at dealing with this stuff.
The AMC Pump
Here is evidence of the coordinated pump by users on WSB. The coordinated pump effort occurred in the daily thread, but also spilled out into some posts. Note: I have yet to see any comments/posts that moderators made showing them participating in the coordinated pump effort. It is not known if they knew about these comments or not.
"AMC 1 pm LET FUCKING GO" - WildPhoenix55 58 upvotes. Posted around 12:00 PM CST. Not removed as of 8:40 PM CST.
"AMC 2 DA MOON @ 1PM EST" - OutlandishnessOk4137 Posted around 12:00 PM CST. Not removed as of 8:40 PM CST.
"watching that 1pm movie"
At 1 PM, we’re going to the Moon! Get ready! 🚀 🚀 🚀Discussion *Note that this thread was 6 days ago. Still strange that it was not taken down
Comments in this thread talking about 1 PM pump
EVIDENCE THE 1 PM PUMP WORKED: 1 PM seems to be the main time that was set. You can actually see the coordinated pump spike the price of AMC up to $9.70 right after 1 PM. You can also see the massive amount of volume increase during that time as well. Volume between 1:00-1:05 shot up to 8,725,700. This was the highest volume for a 5 min period all day. Check it out here.
It was also reported to me that some users received DM's about the pump. If you are reading this and received any kind of DM like this, please message me. After seeing the first pump work successfully, they tried it again 1 hour later. Here are a swarm of comments made coordinating the pump for 2 PM.
"2 shares at 2 pm AMC!!" EDIT: This account has been deleted. You can view a picture of this post here.
"Everyone buy 2 shares of AMC and 2pm let’s rush these heggies 💎💎💎💎🚀🚀🚀" "AMC at 2 !!!!" "2 AMC shares @2pm rush" "AMC at 2. Let’s give them some payback🚀" "do i buy now or at 2" "Buy AMC at 2pm Eastern, 11am Pacific. 2pm is when it’s happening."
The 2PM coordinated pump was not as successful. It could be that some users were confused with the time differences. Either way, there was still a marked increase of volume during the 5 min period of 2:00-2:05 which also resulted in the stock re-testing its daily high. Check it out here.
You can actually watch a Youtuber Trey's Trades see the pump at 2 PM in action. He is reading comments on a WSB spin-off subreddit amcstock. You can see people spamming chat for people to buy at 2 PM. Here is the video. The fact that this guy's stream chat is filled with a pump-and-dump scheme and he did nothing about it is pretty telling.
I've backed up the comments and info here. If you find anything else suspicious about this, please DM me. I want to make it clear that there isn't evidence that the mods participated in the pump. But the pump-and-dump (which is illegal) happened under the watch of the mod team. They may have tried to stop it, but 8.5 million people is a lot. If they didn't think they could keep the place running without illegal things happening in the comment sections, they should have set the sub to private and put in proper pre-cautions first.
EDIT: This pump also occurred for GME and users in the GME thread were able to comment about it. None of these comments are removed and they exist in very large numbers. They are mostly heavily downvoted, but the fact they are able to stay up means the mods failed at their job.
Comment 1 Comment 2 Comment 3 Comment 4 Comment 5 Comment 6 Comment 7 Comment 8 Comment 9 Comment 10 Comment 11
The volume spikes do show an uptick in volume around 1PM and around 2PM, but they are not as strong as the AMC boost in volume. The volume during these times were high, but they weren't the highest points in the day for GME.
EDIT: I want to make it clear to people who are saying "those are just bot accounts." Bots are still controlled by humans. If bot spam cannot be caught and deleted, that means 8.5 million people are exposed to pump-and-dump schemes run by bots. It does not reflect any better on the mods if the comments are made by humans or made by bots controlled by humans. It is now a day later, and still none of the comments have been removed by a moderator or moderator bot.
UPDATE: Wall Street Bets has completely removed any post talking about ZJZ and his post about the head mods trying to engage in crypto scams and strange movie deals. (EDIT: This has changed, see above.) The rising sections is now completely filled low-effort, small text posts that are only pushing $GME. Here are those threads. Low-effort threads like these are explicitly against WSB rules. Why are mods letting rule-breaking, ticker spamming posts stay up?
Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 Example 6
WSB mods are banning users for mentioning ZJZ and his post. (EDIT: This has changed, see above.)
Mods Removing Negative GME Posts
I started digging into this when I posted to Wall Street Bets with a post containing some information about GME. The post pushed back against some of the "GME revolutiuon" talking points. It was a pretty tame post, meet all the guidelines for posting, and contained enough content to warrant staying up. The post was removed by the mods, but you can still see it up here. The content of the post was a combo of these two comments I made. This comment here and this comment here. Somebody in the comments recommended I make the contents of the comment into a separate post- which I did until it was removed.
The moderators removed this post, the removal states: "Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose."
I sent a DM to the mods asking why exactly the post was removed. I have not been given a reply. Does the content of the post I made (pt.1 / pt.2) break any of their rules? Why would the mods remove a post containing that info?
Even worse, the exact contents of the post I made exist in comment form and are still up. If the info somehow breaks their rules, why leave it up in the comment section? Why haven't they removed the comments that contain the EXACT wording I used in my post?
It seems very strange to me that a post I made that contained some research to counter act the "GME Revolution" narrative would be singled out removal for "keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose."
The front-page of Wall Street Bets is FILLED will positive memes and DD that supports GME. There is not a single negative post about GME on the entire front page that I can find. Why not leave up some negative DD and let the community downvote/upvote it?
The mods will let the comment section of threads get filled up with misinformation (GME SI being 226% is a common one that is easily debunked, yet is posted every 5 min in daily threads). People are gambling their life savings on outdated information yet when I make a post to push back against some of the common GME arguments, it gets removed.
Mods removing negative GME posts is unethical because WSB mods own GME shares.
jamsi is a mod on WSB. They left this comment: "I just received this e-mail from Robinhood. I am no longer using Robinhood for any of my purchases. Only keeping my $GME - not selling." Here is the comment.
Swedish_Chef_Bork_x3 is a mod on WSB. They left this comment: "Another $2k locked and loaded to buy in tomorrow. Feels like fucking Helm’s Deep in here. I have tomorrow off work, gonna get drunk and hope I don’t sleep through my alarm.". Here is the comment.
rawbdor is listed as a mod under the Moderators section of Wall Street Bets. rawbdor posted a comment saying: "The price is going to plummet hard no matter what we do. The real question is, will they be able to steal our shares in the process. They can drop the price all they want on low volume. But they'll never be able to buy it back unless you sell it to them."
A link to that comment is here.
This comment makes it pretty obvious that rawbdor owns some shares in GME, right? Saying things like our shares implies they own some.
ITradeBaconFutures is also listed as a mod. They made it clear that "Mods did not trade GME". You can find that comment here.
turdled is listed as a mod. They said, "We don't comment or promote trades. That's up to the subscribers and their upvotes/downvotes to decide." View it here.
One mod claims that mods don't trade GME, when its obvious from the three examples above that they did. Another says they don't comment or promote trades, which is also a lie. Other mods have been doing that. They also "promote" trades when they remove content that argues the other side of GME. If the only content they allow on the front-page is GME Positive content, they are promoting that content.
WSB has a mod team of 35 accounts moderating 8.5 million people. CNBC gets about 200k viewers at peak hours, while WSB has almost a million viewing it at a time when the market is open.
The mods could simply send me a DM and explain why my post was removed. They haven't. Market manipulation is bad. It's bad when investment firms do it and its bad when retail investors do it. The mods could DM me right now and say "Hey, here is the reason the post was removed." They haven't. If they do send me a DM, I will post an update here.
TL;DR
Now-former WSB mod ZJZ, in a removed & locked post, accused dormant top mods of coming back to siphon media coverage, potential movie rights, and springboard a cryptocurrency, while suppressing other mods
Coldcutcombo69, a moderator on WSB, was posting comments and threads promoting AMC. A coordinated AMC pump happened in the daily threads and comments that this moderator (and others) were tasked with moderating. This mod was removed as a moderator after this thread was posted. Coldcutcombo69 held AMC stock before the pump, but it is unclear if they held or sold that stock around or after the time of the coordinated pump.
Today, several users, but no mods, in a discussion thread attempted to push buys of AMC at 1 & 2 PM EST. Those times would later coincide with high volumes of stock trades for the day. Similar coordination was attempted by users (no mods) for GME.
WSB's front page is filled with only positive coverage of GME (here's a snapshot), while they removed my post containing negative GME DD with no legitimate reason given.
Mods are holding GME contradicting another high level mod's comment that "mods did not trade $GME". Mods made a false statement that they don't promote stocks, as one of them clearly did. You can also see the other mods comments about GME as also promoting stock.
Tervia's comment here has good info on Reddit moderation.