#memestocks

r/ T-Shirt

I should mention this first: I'm going to call the memestock redditors believing the MOASS conspiracy theory "apes" because that's one of their most common names for themselves. Like most of their other self-descriptors, it implies a lack of intelligence. There's a weird self-deprecating streak in the memestock community, which you'd think would be incompatible with a typical conspiracy theorist's overconfidence. You'd be wrong. That's part of what's interesting.

Part of me wants to break down all the places where the self-proclaimed apes' financial theories break down. Like, if we accept that Ken Griffin needs to buy back more Gamestop shares than are in existence, and that the Reddit apes already own most real shares of Gamestop, and that all of them will hodl as the stock prices rise to plausibly high stock prices, the hedge funds wouldn't be forcibly liquidated to pay arbitrarily high prices demanded by the apes. The short sale contract is a contract between the short-seller and the lender; nobody involved has an obligation to the shareholders. If stock prices rose too high, the short-seller would either cut a deal with the lender or break contract and deal with the legal consequences. But this kind of thing is pointless; the people who believe that stuff aren't available to be persuaded, and the exercise requires accepting so many absurd premises that its educational value is limited.

Another part of me is fascinated by how the whole memestock community is basically playing the world's slowest game of chicken. They seem to conceptualize their conflict with hedge funds as—well, first of as a conflict that both sides are participating in, where both sides are fighting by the same rules. But those rules are, themselves, kinda silly. The apes ascribe their inevitable, ultimate victory to the fact that they're willing to grind video games for little practical reward; their actions involve stubbornly refusing to sell the stocks they buy, even as the company they represent goes bankrupt and warns investors that those shares are likely to become worthless soon. As far as I can tell, they conceptualize the conflict as basically a contest of will—the diamond-handed apes holding onto their stocks versus the greedy hedge funds...doing...something. Spreading FUD, I guess. It's such a weird conflict and bears so little relationship to how actual finance works.

It also overlaps in some key ways with other topics Dan Olsen has covered, which isn't surprising. Everyone needs a niche, and Olsen's is increasingly online conspiracy theories and grifts. Also, /r/Superstonk users are swimming in the same waters as a lot of conspiracy theorists and crypto-bros, and the sort of person who buys GME because Reddit says it'll make them all gorrilionaires and then swallows conspiracies like tic-tacs to explain why the price is still falling is probably vulnerable to blockchain scams and flat-earth theories and such.

But there are also interesting differences! To start with, despite being a financial conspiracy theory, MOASS is remarkably non-antisemitic. There is still antisemitism, don't get me wrong, but since the villains of their conspiracy are international financial institutions, I expected more. I expected the antisemitism to be front and center, even more prominent than in most conspiracy theories. But it's not! It's probably less antisemitic than the average conspiracy theory!

There's also the fact that apes are basically trying to organize a counter-conspiracy. It's an ineffective one, considering how its plans are based on a bunch of lies they keep telling each other, but they're still organizing an effort to create a new world order with themselves at the top, by accumulating financial capital and forcing the US government to pay obligations owed to them. It sounds like the kind of thing a conspiracy theory with the average amount of antisemitism would say Jews are doing. You don't see that kind of counter-conspiracy "we're gonna take over the world" thing often, outside Christian Dominionist circles and imperialist war hawks, and their "we" is a lot broader than the apes'.

On a completely unrelated note, one of MOASS's core figureheads, DFV, is an ordinary securities broker who wanted to be a finance Influencer. He said that GameStop was probably undervalued by about 50%; it would probably see a bump in 2020 from the ninth console generation (which wouldn't be delayed by any unexpected global events that also hurt brick-and-mortar retail in general), which would give it the capital needed to potentially pivot to a business model that's more sustainable in our digital world. By saying GME was undervalued, defending his theory despite the global pandemic ruining the assumptions it was based on, and celebrating GME's obviously unsustainable prices as evidence of his theory being correct despite being caused by completely different factors, DFV became a bit of a thought leader. The apes started reading anything he said in public as a coded message to them, which lead DFV to withdraw from the memestock community and social media overall, which lead to the apes simply recasting him as the sort of shadowy cabal leader that would be a conspiracy theory villain if he wasn't supposedly supporting and leading the apes from the shadows. DFV is not perfect. He committed to his pet theory even when the basis for it collapsed, even though COVID gave him a perfect ego-preserving exit ("I was wrong, but who could have predicted the pandemic?") He then took an equally unpredictable freak event as confirmation of that theory, even though it was unrelated to the theory's premise. But he saw a bunch of increasingly conspiratorial cranks who wanted to make him a figurehead in their movement, potentially giving a huge boost to his finance Influencer dreams, and said "no, bye". I can respect that.

M

Ryan Cohen is such a character. He's a perfect example of a capitalist failson. He's an activist investor, a concept which I've been meaning to ramble about ever since I learned of the term in one of my accounting classes. But he likes attention and is willing to give apes the kind of crumbs they like for it. And maybe manipulate them for his own profit. Despite this, the apes still treat Cohen as a trustworthy savior, so much that Carl Icahn got drafted into the pantheon through flimsy association with Cohen. They think he has this master plan to create a megacorporation out of failing retailers that he has already stopped meddling with, which will somehow make the apes into billionaire cyberpunk villains.

Speaking of which: For all that the memestock apes like to position themselves against Wall Street's real-life cyberpunk villains, their predictable bad decisions are making a tidy profit for those same villains. (Aside from the one company that went out of business because it was making short sales that were considered reckless before Reddit started memestocking.) I don't have a point here, it's just ironic.

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NEW YORK— In what analysts are now calling “the funniest thing to ever happen to Wall Street,” a ragtag group of retail investors from Reddit’s infamous r/WallStreetBets have once again outperformed hedge fund managers for the third year in a row, proving that years of experience, Ivy League degrees, and complex financial models are no match for blind confidence and an internet connection. “We’re witnessing a financial revolution,” said one anonymous hedge fund executive while clutching a stress ball and staring vacantly into his Bloomberg terminal. “These so-called ‘investors’ aren’t even looking at earnings reports. They’re making investment decisions based on… memes. Do you know how humiliating it is to lose to a guy who calls himself ‘CryptoDaddy69’ and whose entire portfolio strategy is ‘YOLO’?” Wall Street in Full-Blown Crisis Mode As the news broke that yet another wave of amateur traders had beaten the market using what experts are now referring to as “weaponized stupidity,” panic quickly spread across Wall Street. Hedge fund managers scrambled to make sense of how their billion-dollar firms—outfitted with cutting-edge AI trading algorithms and staffed with the best minds from Harvard and Wharton—had been outperformed by a group of Redditors who spend more time arguing about which crypto coin has the funniest name than analyzing market trends. “These guys aren’t using fundamental analysis, they aren’t diversifying their portfolios, they aren’t even pretending to understand what they’re doing,” sobbed one veteran hedge fund manager, whose fund lost billions betting against a meme stock. “They’re just picking stocks based on vibes! I saw one guy mortgage his house to buy shares in a failing video game retailer because he ‘felt in his bones’ that it would go up. And he was right!” The Art of ‘DD’: Reddit’s Secret Weapon Despite accusations that Reddit traders are recklessly gambling their money away, members of r/WallStreetBets insist they do extensive “DD” (due diligence) before making any investment decisions. Their analysis includes a range of highly sophisticated financial indicators, such as: Whether the stock has a funny ticker symbol (e.g., “LOL” or “TENDIE”) How many rocket emojis are in the comment section If the stock has been called “the next Tesla” by at least three unverified Twitter accounts Whether or not Elon Musk has tweeted about it in the last 48 hours “It’s all about the fundamentals,” said Reddit user ‘DiamondHands42,’ who turned a $300 investment into $1.2 million by simply refusing to sell. “Like, does the stock have potential? Does it spark joy? Can I realistically hold onto it until it becomes a ‘tendy factory’ and I can buy a Lambo? If yes, then it’s a solid buy.” The Hedge Fund Response: Desperate & Hilarious In an effort to combat the growing influence of retail investors, some hedge funds have begun hiring social media analysts to track Reddit sentiment and predict the next big meme stock before it explodes. Others have attempted to infiltrate Reddit communities, but their efforts have been easily detected. “We knew something was off when a new user named ‘WallStWarrior_69’ posted a long, detailed breakdown of price-to-earnings ratios and risk-adjusted returns,” said one Reddit moderator. “We immediately banned him for excessive nerd behavior.” In one particularly desperate move, several hedge fund executives have reportedly attempted to appeal to the retail crowd by launching their own meme stocks, creating tickers like “STONK” and “MOON.” However, these efforts have largely failed, as Reddit traders are highly suspicious of anything that smells even remotely corporate or logical. The Future of the Market: Pure Chaos With retail traders showing no signs of slowing down, some experts predict that the stock market may be entering an era where traditional finance models are completely obsolete, replaced instead by viral TikTok trends and the collective whims of a bunch of guys with anime profile pictures.