Tags: anecdotes financial markets crisis financial markets institutions politics
- 2021-01-28: Robinhood and other trading platforms (probably pressured by citadel) lock down on ability to buy shares of the volatile short squeeze stocks triggering a fall but short interest still above 100%
- collusion from the highest level? too big to fall — institutions will prize institutions and order over individuals and freedom ^QcsXDJ96z
- tweets about robinhood employee overhearing the c-suite pressured by white house, investors to close trading
- citadel pressuring to cover their short positions
- maybe not?
- they are a money maker but not neutral as the “rules” say they “should be”
- we have all these complex rules around financial institutions to give the semblance of authority and neutrality but really everyone is opinionated and is for or against something
- zero-fee trading platforms taking advantage of you
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-27/reddit-driven-surge-puts-gamestop-and-ryan-cohen-in-a-weird-spot
- tweets from anand on feeling for people on [[wallstreetbets]
- https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1354798344657379330
- observation the people of reddit are real people who can be smart capable and loving, just as they can be hateful, prejudiced, and crass
- elite class loves to reduce them to the latter and as dumb and easy to be taken advantage of
- “we are protecting you for your own good” tweets me
- thing is that a lot of them now know that they are being taken advantage of and are sick and tired of it and using the only way they know how (the system through which they get taken advantage of) to fight back
- elite class loves to reduce them to the latter and as dumb and easy to be taken advantage of
- the core issue is free speech and the shutting down of free speech by discord when they shut down the private server
- common answer is decentralize everything so this can’t happen but brings other challenges
- questions how will decentralization work at scale?
- governance
- still problems with scale and supply/demand
- main benefit is the lack of control by any one entity
- tweets from James Medlock that retail investor is not the little guy
- https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1354985919527313411?s=20
- there is certainly some privilege that lets people be able to do this. People on robinhood come from all walks of life but you need some level of privilege to be able to even care about the stock market
- it’s a semblance of the populist anti-institutional sentiment, but its not how “the revolution” is going to happen
- needs to be the people that we can all identify with?
- the problem with why its getting so misinterpreted is that there’s a lot of elements of populism for the people and against corporations but it’s operating in a context that the rich are always meant to win
- not the same as occupy wall street because the biggest traders are in on it
- but the whole point is that you can’t find a battlefield that is not designed for the rich win, so you have to fight where you can, even if it’s something that they are going to hijack
- it’s a semblance of the populist anti-institutional sentiment, but its not how “the revolution” is going to happen
- proposed solution is a financial transaction tax, a small tax on each wall street trade to reduce high frequency trading — level the playing field