Scrutable

No lpm didn't.

I hope nobody went so far as to call short-selling a good thing, it's just not a particularly negative thing assuming rules are followed and it's not taken to extremes. If we have to have a stock market*, it has to have the possibility of short-selling because it is an important balancing factor, but that possibility should be kept to the minimum level necessary to keep the market in balance. I feel the same about futures, options and some other derivatives.

* While they're interesting and kinda fun (especially the US OTC market ) the whole idea of a market for bits of other people's companies just still doesn't sit well with me. I'm also against usury. In fact, I want the human race to get to a point where we can do away with the idea of needing money for anything altogether.

lpm wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:29 pmNo lpm didn't.

ach, you're right. me and my sh.tty memory. it was dyqik in a post that quoted you & i put your name next to the statement in my head. d'oh

tom p wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 7:34 pm

lpm wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:29 pmNo lpm didn't.

ach, you're right. me and my sh.tty memory. it was dyqik in a post that quoted you & i put your name next to the statement in my head. d'oh

I don't think I said it was a good thing either, but that it's often considered to be a good thing.

dyqik wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:23 pm

tom p wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 7:34 pm

lpm wrote: Thu Mar 18, 2021 4:29 pmNo lpm didn't.

ach, you're right. me and my sh.tty memory. it was dyqik in a post that quoted you & i put your name next to the statement in my head. d'oh

I don't think I said it was a good thing either, but that it's often considered to be a good thing.

From my understanding it was an investment firm that specialised in shorting which spotted the corporate malefesance both at Enron and Nikola. They go looking for dirt on companies, if they find convincing dirt, they short massively then out the company as being naughty, coining it when the share price collapses. Effectively acting as private regulators. This, in terms of corporate regulation, is not a bad thing. Of course they could only go after Enron because of the illegal accounting that affected investors, as opposed to the perfectly legal but ethically appalling manipulation of energy markets and prices.

Investors are estimated to have lost $930 million on their short positions in meme stocks GameStop (GME.N) and AMC Entertainment (AMC.N) over the last five trading days, data from financial analytics firm Ortex showed on Tuesday.

Shares in GameStop, which was at the heart of the so-called "stonks" retail trading mania earlier this year, have risen by a third in the last one week, while shares in cinema operator AMC are up 39%.

Ortex said short interest in AMC is currently estimated to be 18.3% of freefloat and in GME it is estimated at 21.8% of freefloat.

Yesterday alone, short-sellers lost over $200 million each in both of those stocks, Ortex data shows. GameStop closed 13% higher at $180.6, the highest level since April 30.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/game ... 021-05-18/

Impressive.

Shorting meme stocks and cryptocurrency is a mug's game. The irrationality quotient for these is off the scale.

So what happened between the first lot of this and now, then?

God knows. It's bitcoined itself - enough people believe it's a store of value that it's a store of value.

Financial markets have always had the ability to turn mass delusions into reality. Economic theory breaks down - in economics you can make the assumption of rational agents and indeed irrational agents, but it's tough to theorise about random unpredictable behaviour. A Ponzi scheme cannot be modelled, because models follow rules but reality doesn't.

lpm wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 8:35 am God knows. It's bitcoined itself - enough people believe it's a store of value that it's a store of value.

Financial markets have always had the ability to turn mass delusions into reality. Economic theory breaks down - in economics you can make the assumption of rational agents and indeed irrational agents, but it's tough to theorise about random unpredictable behaviour. A Ponzi scheme cannot be modelled, because models follow rules but reality doesn't.

There's a lot of extra stuff going on with bitcoin too. E.g. Tether injecting huge amounts of fabricated 'money' into the system, and exchanges mysteriously going offline or freezing user accounts whenever there looks like there might be a run (such as now). With GME there's also the myth of the massive short squeeze that will make the shares worth thousands if not more one day.

I have a friend who kept urging me to "get into crypto" as he was was making reasonable returns when Bitcoin was increasing in value, but I'm not sure how he's doing now.
Bitcoin has dropped a third in value since mid April.

Gfamily wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 9:53 am I have a friend who kept urging me to "get into crypto" as he was was making reasonable returns when Bitcoin was increasing in value, but I'm not sure how he's doing now.
Bitcoin has dropped a third in value since mid April.

The problem with crypto returns is that the price does not reflect the amount of actual money in the system. It's like a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, most people currently in 'profit' will find themselves holding the bag.

I have the worst hay-fever in forever. The most entertainment in a tragic kind of way is reading r/bitcoin today.

Gfamily wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 9:53 am I have a friend who kept urging me to "get into crypto" as he was was making reasonable returns when Bitcoin was increasing in value, but I'm not sure how he's doing now.
Bitcoin has dropped a third in value since mid April.

Crypto is the perfect example of survivorship bias. The people who make money tell you about it. The people who lose money don't want everyone to realise what a f.cking mug they were to "invest" in it.

Fruit machines, etc, are quite strictly regulated in Spain, but there is a Bitcoin machine in the entrance hall of our local hypermarket, which in effect performs much the same function but without the beeping and flashing lights. Interestingly, it only takes physical Euro cash, not cards; I guess they don't want any transactions to be reversed.

temptar wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 10:48 am I have the worst hay-fever in forever. The most entertainment in a tragic kind of way is reading r/bitcoin today.

Reminds me of one of the very first Alex cartoons.

WaPo Business:
Cryptocurrencies crash in brutal sell-off with bitcoin down nearly 10 percent.

The digital currencies have fallen sharply in recent days, and it’s unclear when it will end.

bmforre wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 11:09 pm WaPo Business:
Cryptocurrencies crash in brutal sell-off with bitcoin down nearly 10 percent.

The digital currencies have fallen sharply in recent days, and it’s unclear when it will end.

Here's another perspective on this.

The advice I gave my broether when he was investing in Aetherium was: pull out your capital and some of the profit and see what the rest does. If it grows, great, if it drops, no loss.

He did this, paid off his mature student loan and creams off a bit of profit every now and then - he bought very low the lucky sod. I've got some experience of financial markets so I did predict correctly the big drop that happened just after he pulled out capital+profit. He can now occasionally cash some out without worrying if he's lost money now

Glad he took my advice because he was very resistant at the time. Needed a couple of quick lessons in market movements, didn't take much though - smart lad my brother.

lpm wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:46 pm I think proposals need to be run through the Sheldrake test. How would Sheldrake respond? He's more representative of the country than we are.

He'd say all this is driven by the jealousy of the left and we'd rather have a lose-lose. Based on this episode it would be hard to counter. Politics is the art of the possible and you're a hell of a long way from the possible.

I think I'd get my proposals through the dud UK political system across the next 30 years. Sheldrake, like the electorate overall, would accept redistribution and higher investment in education etc, even if not personally voting for it.

Sheldrake 2.0 here.

I'm still pleased I voted for Brexit but I am now in favour of a draconian shakeup of taxation. I want to see Amazon paying *at least* the same percentage tax on its *revenue* that the tenuously surviving family greengrocers in the crappy midlands town I live in has to.

Tax arbitrage is bleeding big swathes of the UK dry. The windswept little town centres and estates. The kids born into generational debt servitude. f.ck it all. This is not the jealousy of the left. I still believe in being as self-reliant as possible. But there are f.cking rules.

sheldrake wrote: Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:43 pm I want to see Amazon paying *at least* the same percentage tax on its *revenue* that the tenuously surviving family greengrocers in the crappy midlands town I live in has to.

They already do. Both pay 0% tax on revenue.

lol. There are no rules, rules are bad, the people making the rules are idiots, that's the whole selling point from the capitalist-right. Your windswept teens are going through a harsh but fair learning curve that will serve them well when they enter the labour market. Your shabby out-of-date greengrocer is a relic who is *responsible* for the economic tumbleweed. If they got into debt then that's just another way of saying they squandered an opportunity. A brave new future awaits us. Everyone should retrain in IT - or not - it's their choice - and if they f.ck up that choice they get what they deserve.

plodder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:58 am lol. There are no rules, rules are bad, the people making the rules are idiots, that's the whole selling point from the capitalist-right.

They mostly don't think exactly that. A lot of Conservatives are kinder than they seem from across the political divide. A closer approximation would be 'the people spending the tax revenue are idiots because they don't really have any personal incentives to spend it well', and there's a great deal of truth in that, but my preferred version of capitalism and free markets is based on people competing under the same rules, not smaller entrants paying a bigger chunk of their cashflow in taxes than a few massive corporations at the top. That's closer to feudalism than 'free markets'.

My daughter refers to where I lived as 'District 12' and London as 'The Capital' in reference to 'The Hunger Games'. That's about right.

sheldrake wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:15 am

plodder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:58 am lol. There are no rules, rules are bad, the people making the rules are idiots, that's the whole selling point from the capitalist-right.

They mostly don't think exactly that. A lot of Conservatives are kinder than they seem from across the political divide.

A lot of conservatives are not free market zealots. They are being completely drowned out and overwhelmed (and persuaded) by the new gang though.

plodder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:36 am

sheldrake wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:15 am

plodder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:58 am lol. There are no rules, rules are bad, the people making the rules are idiots, that's the whole selling point from the capitalist-right.

They mostly don't think exactly that. A lot of Conservatives are kinder than they seem from across the political divide.

A lot of conservatives are not free market zealots. They are being completely drowned out and overwhelmed (and persuaded) by the new gang though.

There are certainly non-Thatcherite Conservatives (I'm using the Big C for now so as not to cause confusion with social conservatives who may vote Labour), but they still tend to like the idea of thriving small businesses and people trying to be self-reliant. It's closely tied to their concepts of 'personal responsibility' and even 'personal freedom' to a degree. Where they tend to part company from Thatcherites is that they often also hold socially conservative views that trump economic concerns (e.g. they might not like Sunday trading, or think that Murdoch-owned media is vulgar etc..)

I would say Peter Hitchens is a vocal example of a 'non-Thatcherite conservative'. I'm a lot more future oriented than that, but a world where all the windswept high-streets consist of boarded up shopfronts, fried chicken takeaways and slot-machine arcades whilst everything else is ordered online from 2 tax-evading megacorps is grim as f.ck from my perspective.

I would say both the main political parties are completely dominated by corporate-sponsored neoliberals now, and have been for a couple of decades.

plodder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:36 am

sheldrake wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:15 am

plodder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:58 am lol. There are no rules, rules are bad, the people making the rules are idiots, that's the whole selling point from the capitalist-right.

They mostly don't think exactly that. A lot of Conservatives are kinder than they seem from across the political divide.

A lot of conservatives are not free market zealots. They are being completely drowned out and overwhelmed (and persuaded) by the new gang though.

Yep. It was a broad church. Now conservatism is a meaningless concept thanks to entryists gaslighting everyone.