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Redditors vs the hedge funds

platinumsage said:
"late capitalism" is another phrase that's popped up on the left recently that appears to have no academic basis, it's just something that sounds good.

A brief look at this history of money and markets shows this is just capitalism-as-usual.
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I use "late capitalism" in writing a lot, it sounds better than "capitalism these days"...and carries that hint of death
 
ska invita said:
the point made here is that objective value is no longer particularly relevant to financial capitalists, that "financial capitalism finally broke with the world of real people, including capitalists antiquated enough to try to profit from producing goods and services."
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Objective value against what measure? You seem to be coming dangerously close to arguing that there is some sort Platonic ideal market.
 
platinumsage said:
NoXion - On the "late capitalism" meme:

“Late capitalism” often seems more like “the latest in capitalism...”
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cant argue with that - it is too hopeful

though tbf Yanis explicitly says "for want of a better term lets call it post-capitalism" and goes on to say postcaptialism could just be turbocharged more of the same riding head first into oblivion, without effective intervention

Capitalism isnt static, there are definable historic phases, and the suggestion this is a new one seems correct to me
 
ska invita said:
you stopped the quote there devoiding it of meaning - "give a damn" in context means, for example, for reasons of self-interest caring about what a company is actually worth and acting accordingly. the point made here is that objective value is no longer particularly relevant to financial capitalists, that "financial capitalism finally broke with the world of real people, including capitalists antiquated enough to try to profit from producing goods and services."
he thinks this is new, you're saying its always been like this
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How is this new? The value assigned to the Mississippi Company by stock holders was enough to bankrupt France. There were only a few hundred settlers there and they had no hope of generating that sort of return.
 
Idaho said:
Of all the targeted stock, Nokia at least seems like the one with some long term potential.
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The way the horde of small investors is behaving makes that kind of irrelevant though. Even if it does, it's probably already overvalued. Which doesn't mean it won't climb higher....
 
For what it's worth I think the qualifier that best describes capitalism at the moment is just 'intensely globalised'. I think it's just that increasing intensity of globalisation that accounts for many phenomena such as entire rich economies with barely any industry, and reddit investors being able to challenge hedge funds. Mackenzie Wark has tried to argue that the hold that certain internet companies have over vast amounts of data/capital justfies calling it 'vectoral capitalism' or something but I think that's just a small part of what's happening so I don't buy the need for a new name.
 
Brainaddict said:
The way the horde of small investors is behaving makes that kind of irrelevant though. Even if it does, it's probably already overvalued. Which doesn't mean it won't climb higher....
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They are targeting hedge funds with large short positions. In the case of GameStop and AMC, these are companies with a pretty shaky future. My point was that Nokia, at least, has a bit more potential in having a business model that might work in 10 year's time.
 
platinumsage said:
How is this new? The value assigned to the Mississippi Company by stock holders was enough to bankrupt France. There were only a few hundred settlers there and they had no hope of generating that sort of value.
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I dont really understand economics, I don't know for certain - I watch these things like a passenger strapped into the back seat of a kamikaze plane, eyes bulging wondering when death will be coming.

But my understanding here is its not about whether bubbles ever existed before, its saying the structural mechanisms underpinning finance capitalism have fundamentally changed post 2008, with too-big-to-fail socialism-for-bankers putting a floor below the whole enterprise, endless QE, buybacks etc etc amongst other factors fundamentally changing the logic of action.

The result being that the finance system is spinning further away from real-world reality, where in the past some unemployment news or productivity figures were so pivotal, into one that plays ever increasingly by its own internal rules.

I don't think YV is saying the split between the two worlds is total, he's saying the worlds are moving further and further apart - profoundly decoupling. Supposedly some older speculators used to making judgements on certain orthodox 20th Century understanding of markets have been caught out during Covid.

If you think he is wrong perhaps ask him on Twitter? He's quite responsive from what I can see. id be interested to know what the answer is.
 
ska invita said:
I dont really understand economics, I don't know for certain - I watch these things like a passenger strapped into the back seat of a kamikaze plane, eyes bulging wondering when death will be coming.

But my understanding here is its not about whether bubbles ever existed before, its saying the structural mechanisms underpinning finance capitalism have fundamentally changed post 2008, with too-big-to-fail socialism-for-bankers putting a floor below the whole enterprise, endless QE, buybacks etc etc amongst other factors fundamentally changing the logic of action.

The result being that the finance system is spinning further away from real-world reality, where in the past some unemployment news or productivity figures were so pivotal, into one that plays ever increasingly by its own internal rules.

I don't think YV is saying the split between the two worlds is total, he's saying the worlds are moving further and further apart - profoundly decoupling. Supposedly some older speculators used to making judgements on certain orthodox 20th Century understanding of markets have been caught out during Covid.

If you think he is wrong perhaps ask him on Twitter? He's quite responsive from what I can see. id be interested to know what the answer is.
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Stock prices have risen despite the economic outlook because thanks to QE the yield on risk-free government bonds etc is very low. This makes the risky future income from holding stocks proportionally more attractive. Add to that the realignment of the economy due to the pandemic, with more investment going into automation etc, and certain sectors of stocks will outperform others. Stocks prices are all about how the economy will perform in the future, hence pandemic-induced changes in unemployment and productivity having little relevance now, whereas for example in previous times they may have been indicators of approaching recessions. This is all capitalism functioning as expected. No doubt there will be loads more crashes, panics, booms and busts to look forward to, but they certainly won't signify the end of capitalism, but exactly the opposite.
 
Idaho said:
This is a good visualisation of the disconnect between actual production of stuff and the layers of financial machinations on top of it:
View attachment 251743

Hmmm.. Image quality is crap

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Interesting - I've just been looking for and totally failed to find a Chomsky quote I read years ago. He said (as I remember) that a major problem which makes financial markets so unstable is that stocks which actually reflect something tangible used to be ten? times the size of speculation in the form of derivatives/futures markets. Now the derivatives markets are ten? times the size of stocks which reflect something tangible. Which is what that graphic sort of shows.
 
platinumsage said:
Stock prices have risen despite the economic outlook because thanks to QE the yield on risk-free government bonds etc is very low. This makes the risky future income from holding stocks proportionally more attractive.
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yes, thats in part what i was saying - i think that describes a decoupling from reality
platinumsage said:
Add to that the realignment of the economy due to the pandemic, with more investment going into automation etc, and certain sectors of stocks will outperform others.
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yes, though the tech price increase (400% this year?) looks like a bubble to me - but wtf do i know

platinumsage said:
Stocks prices are all about how the economy will perform in the future,.
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clearly not!!

platinumsage said:
This is all capitalism functioning as expected.
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"as expected", well yes, the logic of a system playing itself out by its own rules - the point being the fundamentals underpinning the rule book are changing

platinumsage said:
No doubt there will be loads more crashes, panics, booms and busts to look forward to, but they certainly won't signify the end of capitalism, but exactly the opposite.
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well depends how big the crash is
i dont believe in the End of History

I understand your cynicism and take your point, and I don't know enough to argue differently, but I do think something is changing in the economic system that marks a change from what it was. characterised by austerity and shrinking real-world economic activity and an increasing self-referential world of financial capitalism. Going to stop posting and do some work now, I've scraped the barrel of my understanding of this already.
 
Idaho said:
I meant more that futures markets are related to risk offsetting, like insurance. But where you have a market for people selling their risk to minimise loss, you must have people buying risk to maximise profit.
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teqniq said:
:D
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In reality a futures deal is zero sum ie the buyer and the seller of the underlying commodity use the mechanism to mitigate risk and flatten their exposure to underlying volatility. In real reality the vast majority of people in the game have no interest in the underlying product and are just punting the futures for profit. These are the people who take the hit or make money iykwim . Meh
 
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Obvs decoupling is discussed above.atm these markets are more akin to gambling on the horses , whereby the odds are not a full reflection of the actual odds of winning but an hybrid of perceived odds + the size of the book behind the presented final odds
 
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two sheds said:
www.theguardian.com

GameStop's three largest shareholders earn over $2bn amid stock surge

Shares rise as video game retailer is at the center of a frenzied duel between Wall Street and small investors
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com



It's really going to plummet again when people decide they want to cash their winnings isn't it. Feels a bit like bitcoin.
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Other than BlackRock I don't think they can cash in their winnings - they are all insider shareholders, they invested in the company genuinely hoping to turn it around, selling their shares is difficult and has to be done on a pre-planned basis to prevent insider trading.
Wouldn't surprise me if it turned out BlackRock was behind all this and using reddit to manipulate the market for their gain.
 
ska invita said:
I understand your cynicism and take your point, and I don't know enough to argue differently, but I do think something is changing in the economic system that marks a change from what it was. characterised by austerity and shrinking real-world economic activity and an increasing self-referential world of financial capitalism. Going to stop posting and do some work now, I've scraped the barrel of my understanding of this already.
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What is the economic system in your view? What is "economic activity"?

Of course today's capitalism is different from that in 1975, 1900, 1800 etc but has the economic system changed? And if it has does not that mean that we are already in a post-capitalist world?
The distinction between capitalism and feudalism is that economic exploitation rather than extra-economic exploitation is dominant.
 
Apparently these redit peeps have been chucked off Discord for "hate speech" (I'll be honest I have almost no idea what a reddit or a discord is).

Interesting how the anti-speech mood of recent times is being used to further the interests of the most powerful. Who would have thunk it? I'm shocked, I tell you!

 
I don't doubt for a nanosecond that there were edgelords posting nasty shit there. The timing of the enforcement is super sus, though. Of course it could be just that Discord's corporate management wanted to be seen to be "responsible" and do something.
 
NoXion said:
I don't doubt for a nanosecond that there were edgelords posting nasty shit there. The timing of the enforcement is super sus, though. Of course it could be just that Discord's corporate management wanted to be seen to be "responsible" and do something.
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I fully imagine people were saying horrendous things. It is after all the internet.

But maybe allowing dicks to be dicks is the necessary price we have to pay to deprive those with power a weapon that can be used against any of us.
 
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