Linus should stop his $GME "Investment"

[SansVarnic]

53 minutes ago, Jam Rocket said:

We had the power to do it... We have the power to stop AND WE SHOULD.

How, pray tell, do you think you can stop him from doing this? Serioulsy.. do you control his personal finances? do have some magic wand in your back pocket?

Comments like this make me facepalm and shake my head... the audacity that you think you can tell someone on how to handle their money.

 

Lastly what "power" are you suggesting anyone of us has over him? answer: None.

[helloman1556]

There are so many misunderstandings about how capital markets work within this thread and even from Linus himself on the latest WAN show. First thing, publicly announcing that you're committing capital to buying a stock based with the dollar amount being based partly on viewer donations can be considered price manipulation by the SEC or local regulatory agencies.

 

Second, his point on LTT generating value by creating videos whereas funds investing in companies does not generate value is an inherently wrong statement. I'd love to have a discussion on how the allocation of capital by institutional investors (eg. private equity funds, hedge funds, investment banks, retirement system pensions, etc.) actually contributes to the development of new companies and ideas which ultimately generates value.

 

Third, his assumption that short-sellers are the "bad guys" is the same view that major Wall Street players hold. Most of Wall Street hate short-sellers because short-sellers provide a contrarian view to otherwise unsustainable/fraudulent business models (see: WeWork, Enron, CDO shorts in 2008). By calling short-sellers the "enemy" of the people, you are taking the same position as the large incumbent players who want to pump up stock prices without any opposing views. This allows them to decide when to cash out and/or continue to drive up prices without actually creating value. 

 

Linus, I know you'll probably never see this, but I'd be happy to sit down with you to have a discussion on capital markets and the implications of the recent GameStop phenomenon. 

 

(Source: graduate degree in Finance)

(And no, I don't work for a hedge fund)

[Nena Trinity]

NO MERCY!

 

These bastardos most pay for their crimes against humanity.

[Twolf]

I missed the live show or I probably woulda thrown in as well just for the lulz tbh but at same time, I hope his wife talked some sense into him and he donates the money or something instead lol. Seriously, he doesn't seem like THAT bad of a guy, and honestly I wouldn't wish any hardship on him over a stunt involving him putting his foot in his mouth (though he should know what his fan base is like by now and to be careful about what he says LOL).

 

I can't wait to find out what he actually does though, whether he managed to go through with it, if even in part, or if he donates the money somewhere.

 

As for the wall street mess... i have an investments through a local investment firm for retirement purposes. Nothing huge, but hopefully enough that I don't have to be in my 60's and still working just to try to make ends meet like so many that I know. Though I am definitely not a fan of short selling or the billionaires that just keep getting rich by doing nothing more than being born rich in most cases, and stay rich because of the stock market (while in most cases paying next to no taxes on it, though that has more to do with just our broken tax system). I grew up poor, and honestly don't want to be rich. Like seriously, how much money do you really need? The billionaires can afford to lose a billion or 2 and still be billionaires with more money than they'll ever actually spend in their lifetime.

 

In the end though, it is Linus' (and his family's) money... he can do with it what his wife lets him do with it   Though hopefully he learned something about thinking (at least for a second or 2), before speaking, on his streams lol.

[Rugg]

5 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Can’t say the same of the dummy Hedge Fund Managers that chose to short the stock.  Linus may have shot himself in the foot here, but bears have pretty much shot themselves in the face.

 

The financial managers didn't promise to pay a certain price. They promised to buy back the stocks.

[I-NK]

He on live video said he will buy it. People explicitly gave him money for that.  He is legally bound to do that. Getting money for investing and spending it on something else is illegal. Also it's not market manipulation because he isn't a fiduciary or brokerage, private companies are free to invest raised capital how they see fit. He is totally fine.if anything him not spending on his word is what is illegal.

[Twolf]

9 minutes ago, I-NK said:

He on live video said he will buy it. People explicitly gave him money for that.  He is legally bound to do that. Getting money for investing and spending it on something else is illegal. Also it's not market manipulation because he isn't a fiduciary or brokerage, private companies are free to invest raised capital how they see fit. He is totally fine.if anything him not spending on his word is what is illegal.

that actually only applies if the purpose of the investment was to actually attempt to make money for everyone (even if no money is made and the money is lost, the intent was to try to get a return from the investment). since no one is getting a return off of this, it doesn't apply in that fashion. While I'm one that, ya if I say I'm gonna do something, I'll do it, at same time, people sometimes say things in heat of moment not really understanding what it is they're saying (like in this case) and it's acceptable to apologize, make good in some fashion, and move on.

[Loki0111]

15 minutes ago, I-NK said:

He on live video said he will buy it. People explicitly gave him money for that.  He is legally bound to do that. Getting money for investing and spending it on something else is illegal. Also it's not market manipulation because he isn't a fiduciary or brokerage, private companies are free to invest raised capital how they see fit. He is totally fine.if anything him not spending on his word is what is illegal.

Effectively this.

 

People gave him a non trivial amount of money to do this after he publicly said live on stream he would. So he either has to do this now or return all the money to the individuals who gave it to him specifically for that purpose. If he wants to go the route of returning all the cash and backing out that is of course his choice but that is his only other option.

 

Doing otherwise would obviously have legal implications. I've seen the arguments on here about the SEC and I honestly doubt its a big issue, he is Canadian operating inside Canadian territory and would be considered by the SEC as a smaller scale retail investor making a protest purchase and he is not planning to profit off of this himself.

 

When you consider the insanely huge volume of retail investors involved either they'll put a stop to trading on GME across the board or they are going to have to just let this ride. The hedge funds look to be still be locked into shorts on GME for something like 120% (down from the 140% or so I saw awhile ago) of the current stock so they have no exit right now.

 

The interesting part will be to see if this finally changes things longer term.

[Master Disaster]

14 minutes ago, I-NK said:

He on live video said he will buy it. People explicitly gave him money for that.  He is legally bound to do that. Getting money for investing and spending it on something else is illegal. Also it's not market manipulation because he isn't a fiduciary or brokerage, private companies are free to invest raised capital how they see fit. He is totally fine.if anything him not spending on his word is what is illegal.

Incorrect, he said he would match every donation made to the WAN show, very important difference. Nobody gave him money to invest with, they donated to a show.

[Toaster_Bloke]

Imagine accusing everyone saying that yeeting 50 fucking thousand onto a stock for the memes without discussing it with your partner who seems annoyed to say the least of being a hedge fund manager...

And also the guy saying it'd be illegal to NOT do it now. Really?

[urbancamper]

 

21 minutes ago, I-NK said:

He on live video said he will buy it. People explicitly gave him money for that.  He is legally bound to do that. Getting money for investing and spending it on something else is illegal. Also it's not market manipulation because he isn't a fiduciary or brokerage, private companies are free to invest raised capital how they see fit. He is totally fine.if anything him not spending on his word is what is illegal.

Oh my goodness who the f are you. Ya I only have a few more posts then you but I have been watching him a long time. Not sure if it was the cat vids or the firetruck one I saw first. It was a long time ago though. 

 

You come in here with one post saying the Guru "is legally bound." Dude get a law degree then start talking smack. You just another flippin troll that decides to join for no other reason then to be an... Well I guess I can't say that.

[Loki0111]

3 minutes ago, Toaster_Bloke said:

Imagine accusing everyone saying that yeeting 50 fucking thousand onto a stock for the memes without discussing it with your partner who seems annoyed to say the least of being a hedge fund manager...

And also the guy saying it'd be illegal to NOT do it now. Really?

Potentially yes. If you publicly say on record you are going to use any donation I make and match it 5X to on something specific and I give you 10k to do that and you change your mind and spend it on something else (especially if you personally profit in anyway from it) I can get a lawyer and sue you.

 

Also the people who can afford to drop 10k on a live stream probably can afford lawyers.

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, Rugg said:

The financial managers didn't promise to pay a certain price. They promised to buy back the stocks.

You can effectively insure, or hedge, a short by using Call options to provide an escape. Even going with a relatively high strike price (back in September, $20 strike prices for GME we’re probably still “out of the money”.) effectively caps off how much you stand to lose on a bad Short. You lose some profits in premiums, but the upside is you’re not putting your entire firm on the line for a Short. 
 

It was the financial managers’ failure to hedge against catastrophic loss that brought this reckoning upon their firms. 

[affa]

I'm sure it was more money that he expected. He had a chance to cap it at any point, and i'm sure the community had been fine with him capping at $1000 and just five x that. He chose to cap it at $10k.

It is a lot of money, for a guy like Linus, I'm sure he can get it all back, by just working a bit harder for some days with some extra gamestreams on twitch, and plugging his own merch a bit harder.

I'm not sure the SEC argument holds up, he never said what price point he would buy the stocks for, just the amount he was willing to spend on stocks. He could just wait until the shares drops to $4 and then buy the stocks for 50k.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Incorrect, he said he would match every donation made to the WAN show, very important difference. Nobody gave him money to invest with, they donated to a show.

It's not a donation. A donation can only, legally, be for a registered charitable cause. People have been burned for much less (eg the paypal "donation" button)

 

Superchats, Twitch bits and similar are tips. You are not obligated, and they are not purchases. It's like tipping the busker at the subway station, they don't have to play anything before or after you tip them.

 

[lieutent]

23 hours ago, Dtx1 said:

Okay guys, we all had fun at the WAN Show right now, especially seeing Linus squeal. He thought he'd be in for $10K at most and could ride it out as a meme. $50K is not chump change and who knows if this publicity stunt he just accidentally did couldn't be construed as market manipulation.

I don't think it's funny anymore and I would accept a "OK, I fucked up" from Linus, followed by a more reasonable donation to a charity. I don't want to see LTT or Linus get F-ed by some oversight body he didn't know existed and I would still enjoy his content and believe in his integrity if he bowed out of this mess. There are real jobs, real people, real lives involved and as much as i want to stick it to the big hedgefond guys i don't find it funny to see LTT or Linus get sucked into this.

 

[linuxChips2600]

I sense replies to this comment accusing me of "nitpicking Linus's every single decision" and "going off-topic" incoming (and even more likely getting ratio-ed by "TL;DR" comments but I could care less), but please bear with me here as my goal here is certainly not to do those things, but rather help more people (especially all those at LMG) become more aware of what exactly they face any time they do decide to join a massive "small-investors' movement" (yes you read that correctly) such as this "$GME" one.  And yes like many others I agree that Linus and his wife should ultimately make the final call on how to spend any of their own money (whether in terms of "business" or "personal" ownership), but I have also always believed in the value of making informed decisions.

Now ordinarily as someone who's mainly interested in tech and studying computer science, I would usually try my best to not blab too much about topics I'm not quite familiar with such as investment.  However, as someone who at least understand the basics of inflation and how it could negatively affect me, I started not too long ago looking into potentially doing some sort of investment myself in the future (not necessarily the "near future," mind you).  So I looked at various stocks, funds, ETFs, etc. until not too long into my digging I discovered an investment firm called BlackRock.  For the sake of simplicity I'll keep the rest of my comment relatively focused on this particular investment firm, but at least some of what I'm trying to say also applies to The Vanguard Group, Inc. and to much a lesser extent State Street Corporation, and this trio (Blackrock, Vanguard, State-Street) is "considered one of the Big Three index funds that dominate corporate America," as "[the trio] manage over $15 trillion in combined global assets under management, an amount equivalent to more than three-quarters of U.S. gross domestic product." (Too big to fail anyone?)

"But @linuxChips2600," you may very well ask, "what does any of those three investment firms have to do with $GME?"  I'm glad you asked.  If this Vice article is anything to go by, it means that BlackRock owns around 9.2 million shares of GameStop, which was valued at around USD 174 million back in December and is now sitting at around USD 3.1 billion, essentially netting BlackRock alone billions in revenue, and the same could basically be said of Vanguard as well going from USD 21 million to USD 1.8 billion in the same time-frame.  And given recent legal trends in "corporate personhood," one may start to see how this could potentially be worrisome for not only your everyday investor, but for most of the "99%" in general.

Unfortunately, the "potentially worrying" matters don't just stop here, especially if one looks into how a firm such as BlackRock (the largest of the aforementioned investment firm trio) is able to directly manage significant portions of one of the largest GDPs in the world (by country).  If data from this website is correct, it means the following in terms of shares held for any given corporation (i.e. BlackRock owns X shares in Y corporation which is worth USD Z) -

• Lockheed Martin - 16,564,711 shares valued at ~USD 5,880,141,111
• Boeing - 31,244,014 shares valued at ~USD 6,688,093,637
• Northrop Grumman - 9,489,583 shares valued at ~USD 2,891,665,732
• Anthem (health insurance company) - 22,413,819 shares valued at ~USD 7,196,853,143
• UnitedHealth Group Inc (another insurance company) - 73,223,633 shares valued at ~USD 22,828,933,000
• Pfizer (pharmaceutical corporation) - 396,973,522 shares valued at ~USD 14,612,595,345
• Johnson & Johnson ("medical goods" company) - 188,510,552 shares valued at ~USD 29,667,790,674
• British Petroleum - 1,603,686,550 shares valued at ~USD 32,907,648,006
• Exxon Mobil Corporation - 283,705,818 shares valued at ~USD 9,739,620,000

• NACCO Industries (subsidiaries include the North American Coal Corporation) - 262,502 shares valued at ~USD 4,780,000

• Advanced Micro Devices (a.k.a. AMD) - 80,339,991 shares valued at ~USD 6,587,077,000

• Intel (yes you read that correctly) - 309,411,673 shares valued at ~USD 15,414,889,549

• Nvidia - 44,799,156 shares valued at  ~USD 23,394,119,263

• Microsoft - 516,065,148 shares valued at ~USD 108,543,983,000

• Google - 20,332,329 shares valued at ~USD 35,635,253,099

• And many, many more...

And out of the literally thousands of different corporations across numerous industries that BlackRock owns shares in, I picked these particular ones not only to simply demonstrate the financial scope which is BlackRock, but also selected at least a few of those that have been at the heart of various massive controversies within the past few years (e.g. Boeing with their 737 max incident, deaths related to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines, etc.).  Not too surprisingly, despite the CEO of BlackRock himself, Larry Fink, calling for other CEOs like him to "[make] a positive contribution to society," BlackRock has still faced repeated criticism for being the world's largest "shadow bank", "for allegedly taking advantage of its close ties with the Federal Reserve System during the coronavirus pandemic response efforts," and perhaps most importantly (in relation to what Linus himself said about climate change during the 1/29 WAN show), inaction on climate change and Amazon deforestation.

Honestly, I do not blame Linus (or anyone else at LMG) the slightest for not knowing any of this information (if they haven't already, and even then knowing about the financial scope of BlackRock isn't typically considered "common knowledge").  This is especially in light of the current pandemic and how that may undoubtedly be putting LMG under a lot of pressure to keep everything operational at 100+% (whether it be selling merch or keeping up the daily video upload schedule to BOTH Floatplane AND YouTube).  Nonetheless, given the nature of the beast which is BlackRock (or any of the other two in the aforementioned "Big Three Index" trio), I would be absolutely stoked if LMG at least acknowledges the existence of investment firms like BlackRock and the major implications (especially for the tech industry) of the existence of such firms through something (at the minimum) like a TechQuickie (especially if LMG hasn't already done something like that; I'll make a separate post in the "Video Suggestions" thread linking to this post).  If nothing else, I agree with Linus more than ever that he should never, ever make LMG "go public" (in terms of investment), unless if he wants to basically guarantee at least large chunks of LMG being bought up (whether directly or indirectly) by investment firm (mega?)titans such as Vanguard and BlackRock.

So Linus, if you want to shoot for Pluto, by all means go for it; you "technically" won't be the first.  Just make 300% sure all navigation systems are good to go; nobody wants to be the one who ends up losing hundreds of millions due to some easily preventable error.  Let's all hope that it ends up being a "touchdown confirmed" instead.

P.S. I suppose that since BlackRock manages such significant portions of the U.S.'s GDP, most of us technically have been "living under a rock" this entire time... OK I'll see myself out.

[Loki0111]

Quote

 

I sense replies to this comment accusing me of "nitpicking Linus's every single decision" and "going off-topic" incoming (and even more likely getting ratio-ed by "TL;DR" comments but I could care less), but please bear with me here as my goal here is certainly not to do those things, but rather help more people (especially all those at LMG) become more aware of what exactly they face any time they do decide to join a massive "small-investors' movement" (yes you read that correctly) such as this "$GME" one.  And yes like many others I agree that Linus and his wife should ultimately make the final call on how to spend any of their own money (whether in terms of "business" or "personal" ownership), but I have also always believed in the value of making informed decisions.

 

So Linus, if you want to shoot for Pluto, by all means go for it; you "technically" won't be the first.  Just make 300% sure all navigation systems are good to go; nobody wants to be the one who ends up losing hundreds of millions due to some easily preventable error.  Let's all hope that it ends up being a "touchdown confirmed" instead.

 

 

I think it was clear in the stream that Linus understands this move has a high probability of losing the majority of the money he puts in. I am gathering with LMG he is making enough he can afford to throw 50k into what has effectively turned into a protest of the existing financial system. People who are buying into GME should be doing it with disposable income they are fully prepared to lose. If they make some cash great but this is not a traditional stock investment, this has way beyond any normal kind of risk.

 

He is throwing in for the same reason I did (with a much smaller amount). To put boots to the big Wall Street hedge funds and investment firms who frankly made a reckless short play. I knew when I put the cash in I may not get it out and it frankly made way more so far then I ever expected it would but that could flip at any moment. But my motivation here is not purely profit based which is why I kept the amount I put in to a valuation I was comfortable losing.

[linuxChips2600]

2 minutes ago, Loki0111 said:

I am gathering with LMG he is making enough he can afford to throw 50k into what is effectively a protest of the existing financial system.

 

2 minutes ago, Loki0111 said:

To put boots to the big Wall Street hedge funds and investment firms who frankly made a reckless short play.

Yes, but what I'm trying to say (and frankly my lengthy comment likely didn't make it clear) is that if Linus truly does want to protest the existing financial system, he might as well go create his own country, thanks to the existence of such investment firm titans such as BlackRock and Vanguard (and even then I doubt he is entirely safe as BlackRock has offices around the globe).  Yes, I still agree that he is "putting boots" to those who made a reckless short play, but that's imho the very most he is doing with his USD 50K GameStop investment.  Whether he likes it or not, he is still enabling the system as a whole (and for better or worse the same not only applies to LMG but also to almost everyone else, regardless of how little or how much each of us invests).

I typically am not a fan of being cynical to the bone, but I would much rather be that than to be blissfully ignorant if I had to chose one or the other.

[Letgomyleghoe]

17 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

You all talk about him losing $50k is nothing to him. You mean he's acting when he's showing disbelief for spending tens of thousands of dollars in camera gear or workshop tools? Is he acting there when he knows he will make that money back in long term? Vs now just dropping $50k to something he doesn't know anything about? He can't know (no one knows) when the prices will crash and stock is again worth nothing.

what I'm saying, is I'm sure he knows the possible outcomes, and worst case is he loses 50k, while that's extremely unlikely to lose all 50k, it's pretty simple to understand.

[LogicalDrm]

18 hours ago, urbancamper said:

None of it matters. Title of his latest LTT video is"My Wife Said No..."

So anyone with brains knows, happy wife, happy life. Wife wins!!!

 

Leave our tech guru alone.

That video is not about this subject. Title might have been just lucky accident.

 

10 hours ago, lieutent said:

 

That is informative in the thread overall. Meaning pretty much that he still is more of entertainer than businessman. But at the same time it shows that he is kinda becoming Elon Musk of sense. Anything he says or does will have aftershock, for good and bad. This, and some other threads lately, have been spawned by what he has said or tweeted, or how he has generally treated some situation. Its time for him to understand what position he is in, and acknowledge that he can't just go and joke around, since internet lacks sense of humor.

[Arika]

23 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

since internet lacks sense of humor.

Something I've learned about Twitter, is that context doesn't matter. Anything you say or have ever said can and will be twisted in such a way that people will be offended by it. 

 

Cancel culture has become a true cancer of the internet. 

[LogicalDrm]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

Something I've learned about Twitter, is that context doesn't matter. Anything you say or have ever said can and will be twisted in such a way that people will be offended by it. 

 

Cancel culture can become a true cancer of the internet. 

Not just in Twitter when it comes to Linus. He has been portrayed as discriminate towards Asians because of the inside jokes in he's videos.

 

... Also in some video years ago major of the YT comments were about how good person he is for adopting two half-Asian kids. Ignorance is another thing Internet never seems to lack.

[SparkShot]

On 1/29/2021 at 10:13 PM, TempestCatto said:

I'm not even gonna read what you wrote. It's his money that he earned by actually working. He can do whatever the fuck he wants with it.

 

Just let the man be.

His money, yes. However announcing it to the world before doing it could land him in some hot water.

[piemadd]

As a wise man once said, "RUSH BE DO NOT STOP MY FRIEND!" (War Owl, like every 2 hours), we're just gonna keep on going. Also, as many have said, you sound like a hedge fund manager or someone who doesn't get the point of the $GME short squeeze.