this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
229 points (96.0% liked)

Games

16734 readers
504 users here now

Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)

Posts.

  1. News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
  2. Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
  3. No humor/memes etc..
  4. No affiliate links
  5. No advertising.
  6. No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
  7. No self promotion.
  8. No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
  9. No politics.

Comments.

  1. No personal attacks.
  2. Obey instance rules.
  3. No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
  4. Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.

My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.

Other communities:

Beehaw.org gaming

Lemmy.ml gaming

lemmy.ca pcgaming

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works
229
GameStop axes its short-lived NFT marketplace as it retreats from crypto (www.engadget.com)
submitted 10 months ago by nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works
56 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 62 points 10 months ago (6 children)

What the GameStop bros fail to realize is that while they are essentially correct about the crookedness of the market, they have still backed a losing horse.

GameStop just doesn't offer most gamers good value so they don't spend their dollars there. This is on top of bad treatment of low-level employees, which is quickly becoming a death sentence for companies whose main demographics work retail jobs and know exactly how bad retail work like GameStop can be. Finally investing in shit like NFTs that no real gamer wanted or asked for. (On top of NFTs being a joke of a scam)

MOASS would be a beautiful thing but GameStop will not be the gust of wind that blows down this house of cards.

[–] weirdo_from_space@sh.itjust.works 35 points 10 months ago (3 children)

There is actually a fantastic video essay about Gamestop bros by Folding Ideas (the guy who made Line Goes Up) called "This is financial advise". I highly recommend listening to it, the whole thing turned out to be way more complicated than it seemed.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Here's the vid in question, I second, it's very good.

https://youtu.be/5pYeoZaoWrA

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 3 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/5pYeoZaoWrA

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl 6 points 10 months ago

Thanks for the suggestion! It was a good video. Also reinforces my belief that the rational, boring narrative is almost always the right one.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

I second this recommendation.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The market is crooked, but not at the level of crazy conspiracies the Superstonk bros think / thought. A company took a big gamble on Gamestop tanking, and they were caught. They paid a huge price, and it's over. There's still market manipulation going on, there's still trading in dark pools, and the regulators are not able to keep up. But, it's not a crazy conspiracy with everyone trying to screw the little guy. It's big guys all trying to screw each-other, and screwing the little guy if they have a chance, and the regulators are trying and failing to keep up.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. I think the market is, on average, a good representation of value, but only over longer time periods and across sectors. All bets are off with individual stocks.

So I buy index funds, and that has worked out well for me. Buying individual stocks has more to do with psychology and gambling than analysis (e.g. buy Tesla because it's popular and will get more popular, not because there selling a lot of cars and will sell more cars), and that's just not my bag.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would hesitate before buying any individual company's stock these days. There's just too much manipulation, hedging, FOMO, and just irrationality associated with any given company. Gamestop is a poster child for irrationality, but so is WeWork, where a lot of very serious investors somehow convinced themselves that a real-estate company should be valued like a tech company.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Throw Tesla in that bucket as well, especially since they'll see a ton more competition.

Large companies like Apple and Amazon are probably pretty safe, but mostly because they have so much momentum that big movements are unlikely in the short to medium term.

I don't bother though, because I just don't see much expected payoff to taking on more risk vs larger baskets of stocks

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I wouldn't touch Tesla with a 10-metre pole. That's a prime hype stock that IMO is massively overvalued. But, even if I'm convinced it's overvalued I wouldn't short it because the market can stay irrational much longer than I can stay solvent.

Large companies like Apple and Amazon are probably pretty safe, but mostly because they have so much momentum

The problem with that is that they're so big that the upside is not great. But, the downsides are murky. What if Biden is re-elected and the justice department, FTC, etc. get serious about breaking them up? Besides, in the medium term a lot of their share price is based on hype, FOMO, etc.

With index funds, you get a good hedge against any one company's swings. And, if Alphabet is hurt probably Meta will benefit so you in the end you're just tracking tech stocks in general.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The problem with that is that they're so big that the upside is not great

The upside should mirror the market because the top 10 companies in the S&P make up ~30% of the index. So if Apple, Amazon, etc make big moves, the market will likely make similar moves.

So buying a handful of massive companies is just an inefficient way to buy the S&P, which is just an inefficient way of buying the whole market.

It's not the worst idea, I just don't see much of a point. I don't know why I should expect Apple to outpace the market.

But yeah, I totally agree with you, buying funds makes a lot more sense. I do pretty much zero work and get most of the benefits for a fraction of the risk.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

So buying a handful of massive companies is just an inefficient way to buy the S&P, which is just an inefficient way of buying the whole market.

Mostly, sure. But, the difference is that the index contains some of the smaller companies too. If there's something that hits all the big companies at the same time (like robust anti-trust enforcement actions), the mid-sized companies are the ones who are most likely to benefit because they can take advantage of the pressure on the big companies.

If you just invested in the big companies you could be hurt, but theoretically if you invest in the whole market (or an index representing it) you could have the losses in the big tech stocks offset by growth in the mid-sized ones.

Anyhow, I think we mostly agree. The market is manipulated, many traders, even pros, are irrational. So, even if you know what you're doing, it's smart to hedge and spread your risk around.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

(On top of NFTs being a joke of a scam)

They really are the platonic ideal of a scam. There's just so much nothing there. No facade, no structure, no foundation. It's the wire mother of wire fraud.

[–] stevehobbes@lemy.lol 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Only sorta. I’m not sure how much they are right about the crookedness of the market - it’s just that retail investors are at a severe disadvantage to institutional ones.

What they did do was create a short squeeze for a bunch of folks (rightly) betting that GameStop is overvalued because it’s a shit company with no real path to an increasingly digital market.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The problem, basically, is that the people saying "buy Gamestop" originally were people who figured "Hey, this stock is probably slightly undervalued." As in, this is $2 but it could probably climb to more like $2.50 or $3 over the next five years.

Then WSB started to meme the thing like crazy, because WSB are a bunch of degenerate gamblers who don't give a fuck about actual sensible investment strategies, which created the conditions for a short squeeze, which pulled in a bunch of newbie retail investors who drove the squeeze even higher, but were given absolutely no realistic expectations about what that would look like.

I was one of those newbie retail investors, and I actually tripled my money on GME, because I saw the price spike, went "Yep, that's the squeeze, I'm out" and got my tendies, or whatever the fuck these idiots call it.

But for a lot of these people, the expectations of what this short squeeze would look like had basically snowballed into "Remake the global economy with us at the top" so they bought in hard, and kept buying in, way past the point where the squeeze was done, past the point of having any reasonable expectation of cashing out at anything other than a huge loss.

So now they're stuck basically praying for a miracle, because they've got nothing else left.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

degenerate gamblers

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah, there are way too many folks who let the hype about an interesting technical trading opportunity go their head, got emotionally invested, and now are confusing it with fundamental analysis.