More like professional wrestling. The media frenzy around it.Just another myth. — fishfry
Or likely how rules don't matter (naked short selling) and what odd things gets the attention of the media and the people. In other times things like this would be an interest of a small group of market players, not something that politicians would be commenting about.The GME incident is a beautiful example of the free market in action. — fishfry
Now without a large segment of traders, as a US person you will only access the CME because brokers don't offer any alternative and certainly not at prices that would make sense for a retail investor. Good for you because price happens to be lowest at the CMEbut that's a matter of luck. But if you're a Singaporean, you're being screwed. And for the Singaporean to set up an investment account in the US is also prohibitively complex and expensive. — Benkei
There are no losers here... — Benkei
it all just tells how rotten the whole system is. — ssu
There's a wide variety of different reasons for such differences in price which don't constitute getting screwed, such as being closer to the source of a resource makes that resource cheaper for you. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes there are losers here, the traders. The traders don't make any money in your scenario. — Metaphysician Undercover
But it's not a good analogy because they cause other people to do this simply by adding their money to the market. — Benkei
What? The traders make money in the arbitration of prices. It's literally in my post. — Benkei
Here come the traders, driving broker and transaction prices down because they add transaction volume...
...
The inefficiencies are gone so if the price of SME gold is higher, traders will buy CME gold driving prices up and selling gold at the SME driving prices down. — Benkei
What? The traders don't make any money from the market, they actually add money to the market? — Metaphysician Undercover
I still don't see any reference to traders making any money. All I see is this. — Metaphysician Undercover
See, you portray the traders as interfering with natural market trends, to heroically create equality in prices to ensure that no one get's unlucky in the market. — Metaphysician Undercover
This trade is called arbitrage and the traders arbitrageurs. And those traders aren't typically appreciated.What exactly is your problem with some finding out he can buy low in one market and sell higher in another? There's a willing seller in the first and a willing buyer in the second. Who's being hurt here exactly? This is all a trader does. — Benkei
Buy low, sell high. That's implicit in arbitrage. — Benkei
The idea markets become less natural because more buyers and sellers (eg. Traders) enter it is something I don't even understand how you got there to begin with so I don't know how to reply to it. — Benkei
But let's go back. What exactly is your problem with some finding out he can buy low in one market and sell higher in another? There's a willing seller in the first and a willing buyer in the second. Who's being hurt here exactly? This is all a trader does. — Benkei
The person buying higher, could have bought lower, directly from the CME, so how is the trader not screwing that person? — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't care if you want to represent trading as a "natural" part of the market, we can represent greed and its associated activities of hoarding, stockpiling, monopolizing, and all sorts of other things which are morally wrong as "natural" too. The question is whether we ought to put modern day "trading" into this category of morally wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover
It seems to me you have a judgment ready and are hell bent on ensuring that you reach that preconceived conclusion. — Benkei
There are structural problems how our markets operate. You complain about the players and miss what's actually going on. — Benkei
Some of his responses to me also lead me to believe that he's never actually traded or used leverage so this discussion would appear to be entirely theoretical for him. — BitconnectCarlos
For someone who's never really participated in this type of activity to then come down and basically say "the need for the trader has been eliminated" is just drivel to me. — BitconnectCarlos
I wouldn't say "hell bent", but I do need some sort of an argument from you, to change my preconceived conclusion. I really haven't seen much from you as an argument. And I'm not even trying to change your preconceived idea, just laying out some opinions. — Metaphysician Undercover
Unless most of the Reddit bunch have assets in the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans, they were mere bystanders to last week's trading of 682 million shares at an average price of $218.20 — purchases totaling nearly $150 billion in a wildly volatile market. Only institutional investors have such resources to trade stocks, not self-styled populists with Robinhood on their iPhones. Since most big players are regulated public corporations with fiduciary responsibilities to avoid the enormous risks involved in this high-stakes game of chicken, the GameStop players almost certainly are all lightly regulated hedge funds.
There's no argument to be had where I'm still trying to explain the basics and you aren't interested to even listen. — Benkei
So an observer's opinion is not worth anything? One must actually participate in the activity to make a judgement about it? Do you think that one must participate in murder, or theft, before judging that there is no place for these activities in our society? — Metaphysician Undercover
Before trading I was a semi-professional poker player so I'm just not that interested in hearing someone's take on why poker is wrong. According to who? — BitconnectCarlos
but you don't really seem to be an observer who really knows quite exactly what's going on in financial markets. — BitconnectCarlos
but the difference between us is that I'm less inclined to make these kinds of overarching judgments. — BitconnectCarlos
I'll ask you the question I asked earlier in this thread: What is the difference between buying a stock at $200 and selling it at $300 and buying a piece of artwork at $200 and selling it for $300? Why is one okay but not the other? — BitconnectCarlos
Poker is a good analogy to use. What's the slant on poker players who consistently make money? They must be cheating, right? No, it's a skill and they're good at it. Same with trading. Institutional advantage doesn't negate that. — Baden
I haven't made any argument concerning the law yet. I simply don't equate winning with taking advantage of. Do you not see any distinction? — Baden
Generally yes, people are happy with the voluntary transactions they make.With a trade there's a willing buyer and a willing seller who trade precisely because they are getting out of the trade what they want. It's win-win. — Benkei
(DEC 28th 2020) Margin balances have reached a new record high as a widening class of affluent Americans borrowed against their portfolio investments to buy more stock. Margin debt has reached the highest point in two years as investors borrowed a record $722.1 billion against their investment portfolios through November, topping the previous high of $668.9 billion from May 2018, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).2
This amount is a 28% increase since the same time last year and is up nearly 10% from $659.3 billion in Oct. 2020. The surge in risk-taking indicates that investors were euphoric as COVID-19 vaccines neared. These investors are chasing bigger gains and exposing themselves to potentially devastating losses through riskier plays, including concentrated positions, trading options, and leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The milestone is not a good sign for the stock market since margin debt records often precede market volatility, as seen in 2000 and 2008.
Don't trade on margin then, which is basically borrowing money. People who complain about margin calls or close outs shouldn't be trading at margin anyways. Comes with the territory. — Benkei
It's not even comparable with a poker game. With a trade there's a willing buyer and a willing seller who trade precisely because they are getting out of the trade what they want. It's win-win. — Benkei
Don't trade on margin then, which is basically borrowing money. People who complain about margin calls or close outs shouldn't be trading at margin anyways. Comes with the territory. — Benkei
When poker players are betting on what they are holding, they are all willing, and getting what they want, at that time. They all think it's win-win, until "later" when it's decided who really wins. That "later" is when some don't get what they want. How is this different from trading? — Metaphysician Undercover
It may be easy for someone like you to say, "those people should not be playing that game". However, those people are the suckers, and if they weren't playing the game, the rest of you wouldn't be making the easy money. This just requires that you adhere to some fundamental principles while letting the emotional ones make the mistakes. So it's clearly a matter of the reasonable people taking advantage of the unreasonable, where "unreasonable" is defined by an emotional weakness. — Metaphysician Undercover
That looks.... worryingly unsustainable. — Benkei
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