1 dayThey didn’t short rockets: They shorted Elon Musk’s promise machine. For years he’s sold investors a never ending stream of revolutionary breakthroughs that were always just around the corner. Eventually reality catches up. Even the world’s best engineers can’t justify a valuation built on perpetual hype instead of consistently delivered results.
- ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish2 days
I would have loved to short this stock, but Tesla’s idiotic valuation and stock price made me nervous about it.
Watching the big slide over the past month has been pretty funny, though.
- someacnt@sh.itjust.worksEnglish1 day
It looked like one of the easiest short, but I am not allowed to short individual stocks :(
- yesman@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
$15.5B dollars, invented out of ether, and bestowed on the lucky gamblers. The stock market is so efficient that it can create wealth without bothering with economic activity. No jobs created; no products produced; and nothing to trickle down.
- boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish2 days
Unlike the market cap numbers that get thrown around when people say X dollars “destroyed” from the stock market or Y dollars “gained”, this isn’t nearly as imaginary (or invented out of ether).
Depending on whether we’re talking about real shorting, or put options, it’s one of two things:
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They borrowed expensive SpaceX shares, sold them, bought back for cheaper, the people who bought shares at the higher price paid for it.
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They bought put options and exercised them. The bank or financial organization selling the put options paid for it.
Now I went to actually read the article and this particular number was #1, but I’m sure a lot of people profited through #2 as well (the wallstreetbets types).
It’s not just institutional investors selling put options. Lots of risk taking retail traders do it as well.
- boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish2 hours
Oh if you’re a retail investor selling options you’re a bit of a moron tbh, though at least with selling put options the downside is limited I guess
- Bustedknuckles@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
I did #2 except I didn’t exercise, I just sold it to someone else when the pice was up a bit on my small bet. I like to think that circuitously, Elon bought me a few lunches because screw that guy
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- Bustedknuckles@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
Short sellers are an important part of the equity ecosystem as it provides downward pressure in price discovery. Lucky gamblers have made, and are making, far more than that with long positions in equity and options.
It’s difficult to say that we don’t need markets at all (e.g. would you plant cotton with no idea what it will sell for at harvest?). It then becomes a slippery slope of abuse and wealth concentration.
If anything this all feels like a failure of regulation and the SEC not going far enough
- [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish2 days
It then becomes a slippery slope of abuse and wealth concentration.
That’s what stock markets are right now.
- stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
Not invented, siphoned off from those who can’t game the system like they can. That means you and me.
You can make money off the stock market just as they do. I’m doing it.
Although I don’t short stocks. I just buy and hold.
Investment provides resource allocation, which is not something that just happens on its own. That is, it says “this company or project is a worthwhile project to allocate capital to, and this is not”. The money here was also not invented out of ether, but rather lost by investors who shifted capital to SpaceX earlier, and gained by those who tried to shift capital away from SpaceX earlier; other investors came to agree with those shifting capital away. Those who do so earlier are rewarded; this encourages earlier efficient movement of capital.
Resource allocation is a necessary part of economic activity; any economic system will require such a thing to be done. You could have your government do it instead of investors, as in a command economy. Countries generally don’t do that, because it has run into more serious problems of misallocation.
- sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish2 days
It provides a service of figuring out what the value of spacex really is.
Why that service is allowed to generate so much money for people is bonkers to me.
- db2@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
This doesn’t hit these sociopaths, the whole stock market system is rigged so they make paper profits no matter what happens, at the expense of others who aren’t in the Epstein class. A pump and dump like this is just a little faster.
If investment and retail banks are not separate…you are always touching the stock market.
- 2 days
His net worth is still half a trillion more than it was a year ago.
He didn’t buy shares in SpaceX, he already had them before the IPO
FYI, that stock is used as collateral for the loans which fuel his lifestyle. When that stock drops to a certain price, those loans get called.
FFS, he doesn’t have anywhere near half a trillion in liquidity.
- Bustedknuckles@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
That only matters if lenders a) don’t believe he can pay the loans back, and b) would not themselves be hurt by calling in loans. With how incestuous the Epstein class is, my cynical bet is that he gets away with far too much for far too long
- Gorilladrums@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
This is actually pretty normal. The stock usually drops after the initial launch hype dies down, and then it begins to slowly rise again over time.
- 2 days
It’s just made worse this time by the smaller float, and the soon to be earlier than usual blackout window for insiders lifting
