Matt Levine: The GameStop Game Never Stops
bloomberg.comThe sober conclusion:
> That’s cool but it’s also a terrifying proof of concept. If pure collective will can create a valuable financial asset, without any reference to cash flows or fundamentals, then all you need is a collective and some will. Just hop on Reddit and create value out of nothing. If it works for Bitcoin, why not … anything? Why not Dogecoin? Why not Signal Advance? Tesla Inc.? GameStop?
And my idea for a weekend project, based on the paragraph below:
> We talked recently about how the stock of a micro-cap company called Signal Advance Inc., which shot up 5,100% after Elon Musk tweeted something about an unrelated app named Signal. The error, as it were, was quickly corrected: Lots of news stories, and a tweet from the “real” Signal, clarified that Musk was not talking about Signal Advance. The stock kept going up. (It’s still trading at roughly 10 times its pre-tweet price, weeks later.)
Has anyone created a news-skimming trading bot that does the equivalent of making trades based on typosquatting to buy call options on SIGL or ZOOM when the more famous companies show up in the news? I am disappointed I could only find one reference to Parler:
We create value out of nothing everyday for ages.The fact that it is been done with the internet now changes nothing.
Well, value is human concept. Things are valuable if people are willing to give up other valueable things for them. The fact that people parted with hard-earned cash to watch John Wick 3 but not Hellboy doesn't have anything to do with fundamentals or cash flows, human opinion is the only thing relevant.
It's also not really created out of nothing. A lot of real work goes into making bitcoin a thing. Electricity isn't made by magic.
On top of that people seem to forget that market caps aren't real. Just because no holder of X is willing to sell for less than Y, and nobody is willing to buy X for more than Z does not mean all X is worth Y each or Z each or anything in between. The real value of all Z is impossible to know but probably less than Z each.
I suspect lot's of folks here already read Matt Levine's Money Stuff col everyday, but if you don't, it is highly educational and genuinely funny (and free via email).