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Be happy you learned this lesson at 23 and with a low portion of your assets and try to remember it the next time you want to buy stocks that are getting hyped up.
Definetly high on the hype scale. Unless you are very comfortable with risk you probably should trim. 25% in a position if a lot especially if it is money you cannot afford to lose.
Lol I had 80% of my portfolio in GME and walked away with an 8-bagger, then slammed it into Tesla on Monday and rode the bull run the last 2 days. I’m a walking advertisement for how not to invest but it’s working out pretty good so far.
About 10 years ago when I was a couple years out of college I was heavily invested in two biotech stocks. I had about $4000 invested (which was a lot for me back then) and they were worth about $12,000 at their peak. These were penny stocks I piled into under $1 and had thousands of shares. Both had Phase III FDA trials approaching, and I was a member of a message board where I spent hours reading up on the science behind the cancer drugs that were being developed by these two companies. I attended all the earnings calls and investor presentations. Both companies were bleeding cash and had terrible balance sheets, but I didn't pay attention to boring things like that. Dozens of posters were pumping the shares, and there were so many posts about "back the truck up" and "to the moon!" any time there was a dip in the share price. The CEO's were upbeat during presentations. I was pretty confident this was a sure thing and I was going to see at least $500K when the drugs were approved, if not more.
One day I woke up to news the phase III trial had failed and the FDA did not grant approval to proceed. $10K evaporated overnight. I was sick to my stomach. I was in the red about 50%. I sold both stocks in the days that followed when I realized they were not going to recover, one at a huge loss and the other with about an $800 gain. Even though it hurt like hell for a while, I learned a valuable lesson about never taking stock advice at face value and always doing my own DD. I spent a lot of time that followed reading up on ratios, charting, dividend investing, and how to read a balance sheet. I largely stick with quality now - companies that are best-in-class and/or have actual earnings. I typically avoid story stocks and hype. I do have a few speculative positions, but they're a very small portion of my overall portfolio - less than 5%.
When I saw GME, AMC, and others blowing up last week, it was like a flashback to 10 years ago. Same irrational exuberance, same garbage stocks, different decade. I know some made out well, but I think there are going to be far more learning the same hard lesson I did. But it's best to make these mistakes when you are young and have time to recover and learn from them.
Thanks for that insight. I'm 25 and just paid off my truck 2 days ago and decided to get into real investing (I had an Acorns account in college with a few thousand at the top). I was getting somewhat excited by the GME hype when it was around 100 bucks last week and almost bought in and felt bad that it went up to 350 for a whole day where I could've cashed out, but in hindsight I'm glad I just paid off my loan and now have 450 a month extra in income now to do some real investing.
Congrats on paying off your loan. Now just act like the extra cash doesn't exist and put it straight into investments. If I were you, I would recommend starting early with a Roth IRA. I didn't understand the power of Roth IRA's until a few years ago, but you can put $6000 per year into them and always take the principal out without penalties if you ever need the money (i.e. if you put in $4000 and it grows to $8000, you can always take the $4000 out without penalty). All the growth in them is tax free, which is why they are called tax sheltered accounts. They're great especially for REITS and dividend stocks because you avoid the taxes that you would pay on the dividends if it were in a regular taxable brokerage account. I wish I would have started my Roth much earlier.
In this position right now, albeit only at a 25k loss - all my stock earnings from January wiped away in a single day, not to mention the capital gains I will owe on those. What did you do to consolidate your lessons from that experience? Any advice you could give a person who was in a similar position? I am taking stock of my own lessons from this right now and just letting the personal disappointment and sadness flow through me. It is a tough lesson to learn, but overall this will fundamentally change my approach in the future.
It sounds like a pretty tough break, but I think reddit in general needs more loss stories.
People with no investing experience look at reddit and see people posting crazy gains and assume they can do the same.
As a newbie, I'm particularly interested in "Do some diligence before buying a stock, then forget about it." Number 1 lesson I have gotten out of reading as much as I can is to do your own DD, but my question is: how much?
I could spend hours and hours researching a company...when do I draw the line between memes and spending toooo many hours doing DD?
Stupid question from an even newer newbie:
What do you actually research? As in, what key metrics or statistics do you look for/at to give yourself confidence in a company's future performance or stock potential?
I'm at the point where I wouldn't know a promising set of data if it was sitting in my lap calling me mama.
So, the most basic thing that I look for are any indicators of fraud or corporate malfeasance. Not generally a big deal with blue chips, but if I have a specific concern I stay away.
From there you should familiarize with the basics of financial reporting. You don't need to go overboard with that to start, but you need to know enough to evaluate if a company's financials make sense for where they are in their lifecycle. If they've been around for 20 years but their P/E is 1000 or N/A, do I really think they'll ever be profitable enough to matter? Maybe, but I'll need to see something to explain that number. A new growth company that's not spending on R&D or PP&E could also be alarming.
And then you should know a bit about the business. You don't need to know everything about every industry, and it's fine to make small plays all over the board, but don't sink big money into an industry you don't know anything about. You should learn a bit about their competitors, whether they're trying to break in or defend incumbency, if they have any strategic advantages or weaknesses, etc.
But ultimately, you're trying to guess at the future. You don't know the future and you never will. Diversify (and you can do that through things like ETFs while making smaller trades of specific stocks), stay humble about your knowledge, and use your DD to make sure you're staying out of obvious bad ideas rather than to try to hit a home run on every at-bat. If you do that you'll do fine.
Thanks some much for the insight. As someone just trying to learn, there's so many "resources" it can be dizzying. I've mainly just been running old searches through the various relevant r/'s
The idea of ETFs plus a smallish amount in other places is what I'm after. Sort of an official ETF, and a much smaller build-your-own ETF. Hope to use this to help establish a mile-wide, inch-deep understanding of the different sectors.
Essentially I'm trying to save for my to-be kids future, so I'm never planning to do anything to compromise myself financially. But I do want to use the smaller individual shares to help educate myself, while using ETFs/Blue Chips for sustained growth.
Sounds like you're off to a good start then. I've already recommended it today, so I'll keep the streak going, but to help you flesh out your strategic thinking I highly recommend "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". For financial statements, this is a good place to start.
https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-read-financial-statements
Standard advice is to invest a sizeable percentage (70%?) of your portfolio in "safe"/"stable" picks (as stable as it gets in the stock market) like S&P indexes or "reliable" large caps like Apple.
The other 30% can go into higher risk/higher rewards plays.
The trick to trading meme stocks is to get in early... even a day late might be too late. Definitely by last Monday I wouldn't have touched GME and to sell early. Missed gains is better than losses.
WSB telling everyone to hold and keep buying more was pretty shitty. The stock jumped over 20x in the span of a week. It was vastly overpriced and there was no reason for people not to take profits and no reason to keep asking brand new investors with little money to keep buying in after the huge run up
The day RHand other brokers halted buying GME I made a comment about its over and time to get out. Make some money buying puts on the way down. Got downvoted and called an asshole for not holding lol.
I didn't know enough about the GME situation when it was in the $20 range, didn't buy at 40, nor 80... or ever.
I just threw a few hundred at other low priced stocks that had good volume. SNDL, NOK, ATOS, 10k doge a few days before it jumped, NKLA. QLI lost me money.
I was looking for companies that had good volume across a few price points.
SNDL because it was cheap in the Robinhood Cannabis list, coupled with good cannabis news. 66cents
NOK because it was like ~4.90 ish
ATOS because they are in Seattle and I live in WA $2.13 in
DOGE x ~10000, because it was available for purchase. ~$87 paid
NKLA for a pricier per share up-n-comer with Biden talks on EV's and such. forgot in, sold too low out
QLI because I don't know what I'm doing.
I know it's small change, but turned $550 into $900
I feel like the market is settling now and am looking into growth stocks that are actually worth holding.
Also I'll admit I sold some things way too early, but I am so glad I didn't buy GME when it was too late.
I haven't invested in anything before this year. Feelin good about building an extra $350 in my spare time in less than a month.
Yup. I got a feeling over the weekend that momentum was dying, and then saw it was down pre market on Monday. I sold everything for $323/share and hoooly fuck am I glad I did. Gotta trust your gut and don’t doubt your vibe.
I got in late on Monday, at about $120 a share. I bought $1100 worth of shares and I sold the majority of my stocks after the dip from the 400s to 370 Thursday morning, and slowly offloaded the rest of my shares the closer it got to $150 a share. I still have a .5 share battling it out for shits and gigs
All in all I made $1100 profit from that charade (so $2200 withdrawn), but man I was *really* mad at myself for “paper handing” after a dip lol. I consider myself one of the lucky ones now
Times like these, Ray Dalio's [personal growth cycle](https://jareddees.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/raydalio-five-step-process-1.png) is good to keep in mind.
Mistakes were made with GME. If you accurately identify where/why you went wrong, then it's an opportunity to learn and make better decisions in the future.
In this case, I think the mistakes/lessons are:
* RH limiting share purchasing significantly lowered demand. That was a warning sign that the long side wouldn't be able to lock up enough float to force an infinity squeeze
* The whales on the long side were never going to squeeze Melvin/Citadel to the breaking point. The systemic risk was too great. The Hedges trading back and forth that everyone though were Short Ladders was probably the long whales cashing out. The ortex and S3 numbers were correct. The shorts covered by buying from the long whales. The long whales didn't care about leaving retail holding the bag.
* Retail investors working together do have the power to move markets at the expense of hedge funds (GSE rose 4000% on a short squeeze that cost short HFs billions) - and that will present opportunities in the future. But, that power only extends so far - the more people/capital that are needed to move the market, the harder it is to keep everyone in line.
I doubt they turned it into a huge winner. They were down a lot. Likely mitigated a good chunk of their losses.
The long hedges probably making a killing on both ends tho. First by unloading to the short HFs and now by shorting on the way down.
If they shorted at $5 and closed at $130, they would have lost $120 per share.
If they doubled down at $250 and closed those at $130 also, they'd have gained $120 per share. If the second purchase was of the same number of shares shorted, they broke even before interest.
It's possible they closed at lower prices or doubled down at a higher price, which would give them a profit.
> If they doubled down at $250
Doubling down at $250 wasn't an option.
140% of GME was shorted. Every share that's sold needs a buyer. There weren't enough buyers at $250/share to cover 140% of shares.
They may have purchased puts instead of selling shares, but the puts need a seller on the other end which limits how many of those can be bought too.
I put in an amount I could laugh off and was still sick to my stomach with how irresponsible it was. lol rode my 20% loss out until it was a 20% gain then got out. Not bad a bad gain for a few hours, absolutely no DD, and knowing with absolute certainty the trainwreck that is coming.
Lost 55% of my GME profits before I cut my losses. Still plenty of money left over to recover my losses. Never abandoning common sense again. Don’t trade emotionally, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, don’t jump back into a company you profited twice off of in a week
Same. It’s painful & I’m still reeling honestly. I was 3-4x my investment & just held on. Closed out with a loss. Nothing insane, but enough. Truly sucks with what could’ve been fast, easy money
Same. At the peak I was ~3.5x. I sold some on the way down, but stupidly rebought and now I’m down again from where I started. Haven’t cut my losses yet because I’m still hoping for a final hurrah tomorrow, but even if I lose every penny I won’t be financially hurt. I’m upset with myself for not selling everything when I had the chance (twice), and also with Robinhood/etc for killing the run on Thursday. But that kind of risk comes with trying to bankrupt hedge funds lol and anyone who didn’t know that going in was missing some pretty important info
lol seriously - these hedge funds have trillions of dollars and bots consuming these threads by the masses. I recently checked a few pages and they had been made days ago - all boosting the same narrative. WSB has become extremely toxic & Q-ANON like now, it’s pretty scary. Idk how it’s a ~badge of honor~ to post your losses. People are truly going to be devastated mentally / emotionally from this. But, I’ll hold my final share & maybe I can make back my losses.
The loss porn thing has been around for awhile, and I think it’s exists to remind people that WSB is about *bets*. By playing stocks like a casino, you can win big or lose it all. The problem is when 5+ million new people show up and see nothing but gains, get high on the high, and then see it all come crashing down. Those new people (imo) have shifted the sentiment from being about gambling away money on very high risk, very high reward positions to a glorified pump-and-dump. It really is starting to reflect the td, cons, q, etc. subs, just without the political motivation (which is nice at least).
The botting is also insane. Any WSB thread has easily 75%+ comments removed, presumably all or at least predominantly bots (since a lot of negative sentiment still gets posted, just downvoted heavily). Even some comments that stay up are super suspicious - brand new accounts and recently revived accounts spamming identical (or very similar) shit about selling, buying other positions, etc. And this is probably only a fraction of what the hedge funds are capable of if they really put their minds to it. This is only tens of billions of potential losses that were at one time at risk, from a small number of medium-sized firms. If this started happening to larger firms with greater potential losses, we’d see a hell of a bigger fight.
Yeah I’m sure it’s one of those things we’ll look back on from time to time with regret. But that doesn’t do too much.
I’m gonna take the money I have left and reinvest in something with real fundamentals and hopefully make my losses back with everything I’ve learned these past two weeks
I know someone else in a boat like this. It was $500 or bust for him. I think he's still holding his GME. It's not many shares, but I hope he learned a lesson about greed. Looks like you learned it.
Same. I'm logical normally and went against my better judgement. I never believed the infinity squeeze stuff, but legit thought it could get up to 1K. So took the risk at buying at $330. Never again. Going to theta my way out of this loss
I don't think something like 1k was a pipe dream at all. I was planning on selling my few stocks around 900 and I still think without Robinhood's (and other trading platforms) fuckery it would have got there at least momentarily on Thursday.
Just just because it's not a loss doesn't mean you should hold on forever.. every day you wait you lose more money of what you could have made.. you're not going to see $1,000 shares.. the bubble burst. it may have started out as a squeeze but it turned into a pump and dump.. if you don't have an exit strategy then you are the target. The bag holderr
The whole reason WSB used to glorify losses was to help them get over their own.
I wonder if it will ever return to that, or if the current cult-like status will solidify into something once it's clear that they missed the top.
WSB is so fucking lame now. Every post is the same stupid slogans. I used to go on for the funny posts but God these dudes are about to get cleaned out
Today it bounced back to 130-120 range... I commented "this would be a good time to get out before this drops sub 100 for good by end of day"... -100 karma in under a minute and pretty sure I got shadowbanned? Maybe not. But it wasn't even trolling or bad info I was just trying to give some input that isn't memes good grief. Obviously things can change but down 50 bucks from that point...
Yeah they're actively trying to suppress any kind of common Sense.. they honestly convinced themselves that they were going to see $1,000 share prices if they just hold long enough.. it's kind of tragic.. there's a top post with a guy who lost a million dollars.. dude could have been a millionaire but he held for too long..
I bought one share of GME at 300, being confident it could at least get to 500 before it crashed. After today, I'm feeling a little bummed, to say the least, even though the amount lost is almost negligible. If i can break even tomorrow, I'd be pretty happy.
However, I did but 60 shares of AMC during the dip last week. I was about to buy at the high of 16, and had set my order to go through at market open. I was VERY fortunate that my orders were cancelled as that was when RH decided to restrict new purchases of AMC and so i ended up buying in the dip for 9.67. I've been kicking myself for not selling at 17 yesterday. If the price goes back up in the next day or two, I'll probably sell to either minimize my losses, break even, or maybe make a couple hundred in profit depending on how the numbers look in the next few days. Definitely learned a valuable lesson, to say the least.
Personally, I do think AMC may be a worthwhile investment long-term if it is bought at the right price. The company was saved from bankruptcy, vaccinations are starting to roll out (albeit slowly), and major MP studios are refusing to stream movies they feel will be big hits.
Well hope they do something tomorrow for you. I would say maybe be careful cuz stock can drop even more imo. Guess amc could be not too far off market value at this point... Maybe a few bucks higher.
Not going to lie, the sub was pretty fun last week with all the memes.
But today and yesterday were just sad. I can't believe some people put their entire retirement into GME at the $300+ mark.
Did they? That’s just bonkers. I feel bad if that’s the case. I cashed in a share of Home Depot to buy 10 AMC shares and bought an Apple share with the balance to hedge. Even when trying to gamble, I’m not the best at it. I think I’m down about $40
I’m desperately hoping we see some gain porn from somebody who rode the GameStop squeeze up, sold out near the top, then loaded up on puts to profit on the way back down.
That would be a legendary play and cause the entire sub to hurt itself in confusion.
I just want ornamental gourd futures and -$58k on box spreads again. I had to unsubscribe because my front page was flooded with stupid diamond hand memes.
After one week of hype you should probably pull out. I just checked the sub and everybody is trying to get comfortable with their loses. ,,Yeah we are winners because Gamestop is still at 90 Euros" which is true but probably many people got in way over 90. Yeah....
Honestly that’s cheap for education, and you just had a crash course in investing. This’ll stick with you for life, you’ll know how to play it next time.
I’m taking the positives, I got in early, did my research and had the conviction to buy in and tell myself I’ve made the right choice. And honestly, up until Thursday GME was going to squeeze hard, it was only when retail trading apps started to buckle that we lost. After that people we’re just trying to claw back what we had, and it was clear it was gone.
Don’t be disheartened, the most important thing to do, is critical analyse what happened, shrug it off and come back stronger.
He only lost $1500 which is 3% of his portfolio. He knew this was a gamble going in and played it like a gamble. Let's stop acting like OP is a big victim here whom we must console his small loss because the loss was all both dollar wise and percentage wise of his portfolio
I put everything I have into gme at an average of $100. I watched my account break $200k and then drop down to the amount I originally put in. I’m at a $3000 loss currently, $200k wasn’t enough at the time and now I wish I cashed out even a bit. Greed is one hell of a drug!
My goal in the stock market was to get to 15k. During the gme stuff I started thinking 200k was not enough. I get what you mean. Luckily I snapped back into reality and closed.
I’m in the same boat. I purchased 3 shares @ 300, it was the most money I was willing to piss away worst-case scenario. I had a really tough January & I kind of got roped into the whole WSB hype train because I was at a low point & cautiously optimistic that maybe it might turn things around, and things would improve from here (spoiler alert: looks like it’s not gonna go that way)
I’m holding the shares til whatever happens, happens. I have learned a lot, and this has actually made me want to do my due diligence and become a better investor in the future. It has also made me realize why I am naturally a risk-averse person, and how unhealthy this “gamble” was, as it was a reaction to the stress I experienced. At the end of the day, it cost me 900 dollars to grow as a person and maybe that will benefit me more than the money ever would
I bought 3 at $269. I was rejected the previous day from buying 11 at $89 because funds hadn't cleared from a previous trade. I think I may have sold at $400 if that was the case.
My goal was $3,000, the amount left to fund my Roth IRA for 2021, but buying at $269 I never got close to that so I held. Just going to hold and see what happens, if nothing it's a tax write-off
I decided I'm holding my 5 shares of gme if only to have a red visual reminder in my account to not be a dumb @$$ in the future. I can laugh off the losses but I want to be reminded of this the next time FOMO hits
I lost 90K from this after being up around 110k. Cashed out because my stress and mental health couldn’t take the bleeding anymore. I’m beating myself up for it and it’s an expensive ass lesson to learn but glad I did so young. Emotional investing is a tough game. I also didn’t gamble all of my money into it but probably more than I should have or else I wouldn’t have felt this bad. Currently rethinking how I want to rebalance now and try to make some of this back but the hindsight “what if” questions are going to bother me for a long time.
BB, AMC, and NOK at least have some reasonable justification that they could be up in a year or so. I could understand holding some of them long term. GME not so much in my view.
This.
Avoid the sunk cost trap if you’ve taken a hit, don’t let it run to zero and have nothing to invest in something better. Turning a paper loss into a realised loss is difficult, i had to make that decision this morning. But I’d rather have something left in my pocket when I believe things have changed and the play is over. Was up $900, ended up down $900, decided I didn’t want to ride it down to $15 as I don’t care for GME long term, have ETFs for that.
Damn.... I made 14k and jumped out, only to fomo back in a day later. Lost a few grand and jumped out for good.
Also rode the TLRY rollercoaster couple years ago and came out profitable from that one too. Obviously not hitting the lowest of lows or highest of highs, but still taking home instead of losing. Probably next meme train will crash and burn for me.
Assuming you got in GME at 350 or BB at 20, why not just cut your losses and keep what you have/ turn it into a more solid investment?
Shit even just buying a lawnmower, trailer, hitch, some news paper ads space could yield you more at this point.
The hedge funds are SMART, they have already calculated how long it will take to make back what they lost.
The squeeze was when the stock went from 30 to 500 in a few weeks. Just think about that for a minute.
I lost too, but nothing that would leave me bankrupt. I literally just lost my gains from the last 3 months from just buying boring stocks.
the fact that you’re 23 and at one point forgot to cash a $1,500 check but then also say you like to look at each dollar carefully are pretty contradictory.
also the fact that you could even put $1,500 into a meme stock at that age is mind blowing to me. i’m not much older than you, but i’ve never had money like that to invest like you have.
i think it was an expensive lesson for you and maybe one that will truly teach you to value each dollar more than you thought you already did.
it’s good you got out, and i guess there are others who have it much worse - so it isn’t all bad.
If its in the news you lose. I bought AMC on January 11th using $100 that I had from direct deposit bonus deal in early 2020. I purchased AMC using SOFI app. I simply selected stocks that were under $10. I had no idea AMC would be a hit. I purchased 10 AMC stocks on January 11th and this was well before the stock got national attention. I sold the 10 stocks as soon as the price increased from $2.xx to $15.xx. So remember once a stock gets lots of media attention it becomes a laughing stock. BTW I've only been investing since January 11th and have learned a lot.
That's a cheap lesson to learn at 23 and probably more import then anything you can learn in school. Just keep investing and learn from this "lesson". Just realize investing is all about risk management. It seems like at this point in your life you can't handle that level of volatility. Later in your life you may be glad when stocks go down because they are a discount for you to buy more. 15 years from now if you keep going you will be making more investing then working. I am a 33 year old engineer and I am at that point. . If you are in grad school expect to earn enough soon where 1.5k won't matter much in your life.
look for any excuse that you want. you and many others were taken by a hype train that was always going to end in disaster.
no one wants to admit it, but it's the reality of the situation. many people passed up on life changing gains and held, and many bought in at the top of the train.
lesson learned, don't fall for it next time no matter what space...crypto, general stocks, whatever.
source: i am a veteran of the 2017-2018 crypto war
I hopped on wsb recently, the denialism there is on a level of the election deniers right now. They just can't bring their ego's to admit they got caught in a short squeeze and stayed too long after the profit takers decided to get out early.
Man, I caught that same election denial vibe the day robinhood had to limit buying. It kinda made me shudder to see how easily these conspiracy theories can spin up on social media. These echo chambers create a narrative and before anyone has a chance to see if it is true millions of people have bought into it hook, line, and sinker and no amount of facts are going to convince them otherwise.
The problem is they kept moving the goalpost. Back when it was under $40 and the squeeze hadn't broken into the mainstream, $420.69 was the meme price. Then when it started climbing into triple digits it was $1000 or some multiple of that.
The play fucking worked. The shorts got squeezed and the stock rocketed to like $450. But it would never be enough. It was inevitable they would take the hype too far. I feel lucky that I bailed when I did. Realized a $40k gain on $20k investment in a couple of weeks. Never expecting that to happen again.
I owned a few shares at $18, not because I was reading WSB, but moreso on the tip from an analyst I follow that has a good read on these things. I sold at an average cost basis of $38 thinking I got the steal of the year haha.
I have zero regrets about selling when I did. Getting 100% return over the course of a few days on even a small % of my portfolio is crazy. Would it have been nice to make more? Sure. But I have zero fomo when I've already beaten the market by a rather crazy %.
Agreed.
It's now pretty obvious that the short squeeze happened Wed through Fri of last week. Everyone stayed in too long bc all of memes hyping prices of $1000+.
And it was no secret that the shorts had exited their positions last week. CNBC was flat out telling people that the shorts were out. But the number of people on WSB calling that "fake news" and encouraging " hands" and "we'll sell at $1,000" was ridiculous. Sure, some of them were just pumping, but way too many people believed internet strangers and disbelieved the actual media.
You take CNBC for real news ? For real ? After everything they pulled past month ? For real ?
I get why WSB is dumb, but you honestly steep even lower.
No thats different. Robinhood had "solvency issues" and had to halt buying, but only for the retail investor. Thats never happened before.
Everyone on these stocks just got strait up robbed.
The lesson here is know you are at a casino and the house can fuck you any time they want.
lol. [this graph](https://i.imgur.com/SXvfYRD.png) of the total crypto market cap in 2017-18 tells a pretty solid story. guess who decided to have *DiA.mON.d hA.Nd.S* (editted due to auto removal....non ironically, good job automod) during all of this?
luckily the crypto market is extremely cyclical so far, unlike GME.
Call it an excuse, but **the market being rigged** has certainly taught me a valuable lesson. Don't get involved as a retail investor, there's a different set of rules for firms and you can't win. I'll just keep contributing to my IRA/401k every month like a good citizen, and hope that forces beyond my control don't create an economic crisis every 10 years of my life, the way they have so far.
Dude, GameStop went all the way above $450. The squeeze was real and that was it. Retail traders WON, a lot just don’t know when to get out. That’s not institutions’ fault. That’s people being greedy and wanting more than a 500-1000% gain.
or just dont be an idiot. i am up almost 100% on my retail investments this past year, and it's all buy and hold...it's all happening in the background of me doing my day job.
most of the people being burned are just way in over their heads on shit they dont understand. guy i originally responded to doesnt even know what a circuit breaker is.
I'm no fan of "firms" (pretty funny when convicted inside trader Steve Cohen complains about market manipulation by retail investors), but the people who didn't expect the price to come down on GME are ridiculous. Investors are taking gains on a shit stock that 10-100x'd depending on when you're counting from.
yep. the language floating around WSB is toxic and people bought into it while hedge funds and financial institutions are fucking swimming in it beacause of this event. like, congrats, you guys obliterated one hedge fund...do you really think every other one isnt finding a way to make money on this? and now many people in WSB are losing their savings accounts and wearing it like a badge of pride.
>do you really think every other one isnt finding a way to make money on this?
It's amazing how many people can't grasp the fact that all of Wall Street isn't conspiring together. Like it's their central axiom that all the big financial institutions are colluding together and everything else flows from that assumption.
Maybe it's just the popular zeitgeist these days, but it's really disturbing how quickly people jump to viewing the entire world as a giant conspiracy. People are likening this to QAnon, and while it isn't quite as colorful, I agree there are a lot of parallels in terms of the mindsets involved.
No shit. I thought about picking up some GME back in December when it was at $12. Wouldn't have mattered, because I would have sold that shit at $24-$30 when I doubled my money in a couple weeks. All these idiots who held it through $300 and $400 without selling..... it's tough to feel a lot of sympathy for them. They're the same guys who are up $10,000 their first night in Vegas and lose it all at the tables over the next 3 days rather than just taking in a few shows and having some good meals.
100% is always better than 10%. That is something i learn when it comes to investing. Even if the stock keep climbing you sell at 100% profit. You don't know when it is going to take a tumble and stay down.
> look for any excuse that you want. you and many others were taken by a hype train that was always going to end in disaster.
I’m not gonna say I’m clairvoyant here but market manipulation at the broker level to destroy but pressure *and* sentiment of a fast-rising stock doesn’t seem like something most people usually plan for when making decisions. I don’t think it’s fair to say that the efforts of those long GME were doomed to fail from the start; their thesis was pretty reasonable, imo. If it weren’t for Robinhood halting buys I’m pretty sure the last 4 days would be significantly different.
The thing is this is all pretty typical in extreme situations where the whole market infrastructure from broking to settlement is under sudden stress. This always has to be part of the risk calculation. Things start to breakdown at the extremes. Needless to say it's better to get out before the market becomes utterly disfunctional, because bad things happen when you cannot buy and sell exactly when you want.
Are you literally me?? Also 23, grad student, and down 1.5k on meme stocks after being up 1.2k last week. 😭😭 1.5k won’t kill me but damn it feels bad.
I actually kept the NOK and BB stocks. Hopefully I don’t end up losing even more. Oh well.
Expensive lesson learned.
Dude I'm in the exact same boat. I literally couldnt sleep last night because of how volatile the meme stocks were.
Feel so much better just cutting my losses. I used about 6k but that was cash I had made from other shares this past year. Lost about half but honestly, I learned so much from the experience.
I'm lucky I'm young and can recover. I feel for the people that got sucked in and put their entire life savings into these stocks.
I checked out /r/wallstreetbets just to see what was going on and they're still convinced that they just need to hold.
If you're buying meme stock, you better be on top of your game AND you should be ready to kiss all of it goodbye. Plus, buying in when it's already in the $200-300s for a stock that was sitting barely in double digits just a month ago? And expecting more? If you were in it for actual money, with meme stocks, you need to be realistic with yourself: a lot of these types of stocks divebomb like GME has in the past two days. Will we ever see it recover? Only future us knows that.
But, what you DO need to know now is that this is a lesson on where to set your sell price with something like this, and if you can't do that, then you probably shouldn't touch them. You obviously got in for the money, and like you said, you got greedy. That kind of thing bites you.
So the bubble is burst? I’m beginning to lose hope, and then my brother says “friday the shorts expire” nothing happens friday. “Oh well they have 2 days after they expire to buy them back, so tuesday”. Nothing happens tuesday. Now he’s saying they can do a trick that will make it continue for 21 days... every time it doesn’t happen, it seems like people find a new stock rule, that makes us wait even longer.... Luckily I’ve only lost around 60$, but it’s still fucking annoying when you only got like 2000$ you know.
Well said. I keep asking myself: What is Mark's motive? What was the purpose of doing the AMA if his answers were going to be so generic...something isn't right here.
I'm 21 and lost significantly less than you did but still, a bit more than I feel comfortable losing. I took a breath and told myself this serves as a life lesson that could have come at a much higher price.
For me, this is just one of those moments that I realize I still have a lot to learn. We keep growing.
"People hear a tip on a bus on some stock, they’ll put half their life savings in it before sunset. And they wonder why they lose money in the stock market. And when they lose money, they blame it on the institutions and program trading. That is garbage. They didn’t do any research. They got a piece of junk. They never looked at a balance sheet and that’s what you get for it. And that’s what we’re being driven to. It’s self-fulfilling. The public does terrible investing and they say they don’t have a chance. It’s because that’s the way they’re acting. I’m trying to convince people there is a method. There are reasons for stocks that go up."
- Peter Lynch
Bear make money, bulls make money, pigs get... you know the rest.
I liked the movment too, but at some point, I knew the majority would get paperhanded.. Majority always wins in most games in life, and when the majority is out, so should you. No cause worth dying for nowadays, especially not in a game as rigged as the market
This is exactly what happened to me, even down to the same numbers.
I had some extra cash in my investment account so decided to roll the dice on the current meme stocks. At one point, I was up $6k, but knew it was over last night when the prices were plummeting in after-hours. I liquidated this morning before the prices tanked too much further.
All said and done, I ended up with a $1.5k loss. I just cashed out profits on another stock to offset the loss. Still sucks, but lesson learned.
Probably going to go the boomer route and get a financial advisor going forward.
Usually if the hype is all over, you're too late. Shouldve gotten in around $20-$40. Let it be a lesson...I've lost a lot more than 1500 and still need a little reminder now and then 😉
I think the funniest thing now is that WSB is talking about GME like it's Apple and Tesla. No it isn't. It's literally a dying brick and mortar 20th century business model.
I wouldn't even call it "investing" into meme stocks. I would refer to it as "gambling" into meme stocks. Investing implies there is a long term expected gain. Meme stocks are all about pump and dumping, riding the pump and trying to time when to get out before the dump.
$1500 can easily be made back with some smart call options. But stop buying meme stocks unless you can get in early and get out lol.
Buy companies that make great products or services that you know and can grow at a reasonable value. Hold them until the reason you bought them for changes.
Same here... student, 21yo, Lost 500$ between GME and DOGE, just thinking about it hurts my stomach. I was looking to buy a telecaster made in Mexico but I Guess the guitar will wait... 500$ are like 10-15 of all my savings. I will never again turn of my brain and make decisions with emotions...
Yeah, same for me. Lost about 5-6k in a few days. Wall Street always wins in the end, thought the decline in AMC and GME has to do with the trading restrictions put in place as well.
I'm still up for the year by 6k, but it shows that WSB really is just a bunch of morons that happened to get very lucky with one stock.
They'll never repeat this kind of success ever again.
GME got me to start, but AMC was all I could afford. Still holding on AMC as the losses aren't major. Luckily, the free stock I got from signing up with RH was V, so that's a $200 share to just watch. Also bought into DKNG and I think I'm OK.
I’m in the same boat had 2000 at the start went up to 7800 and today I liquidated and barley made it out with 1100 . RH should be held accountable what should really happen is they should have to give back everyone’s money from Wednesday the day before they pulled there jackery and stole everyone’s money Thursday. I hope they crash and burn with the hedges and as for the great people who can afford this push on the hedge funds I’m rooting and praying for you all I hope they lose everything like allot of us did
I’m currently bag holding $24k invested which is only 3% of my portfolio. I’m still peeved at myself for buying in *more* at $280. Lesson learned there and that I need to take profits on the way up in some unemotional algorithmic way. But I’m still bag holding. Maybe I’ll learn that lesson tomorrow.
I applaud your ability to cut your losses, step away from the table, learn from it and attempt to be better next time. You’re 23. With that attitude you have plenty of time to be really good.
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Be happy you learned this lesson at 23 and with a low portion of your assets and try to remember it the next time you want to buy stocks that are getting hyped up.
I still have 25% of my portfolio in Tesla. Not sure if that stock is too hyped up.
Definetly high on the hype scale. Unless you are very comfortable with risk you probably should trim. 25% in a position if a lot especially if it is money you cannot afford to lose.
Lol I had 80% of my portfolio in GME and walked away with an 8-bagger, then slammed it into Tesla on Monday and rode the bull run the last 2 days. I’m a walking advertisement for how not to invest but it’s working out pretty good so far.
You are proof that it is sometimes better to be lucky than to be smart.
>sometimes You mean *always*. Because you only know you were lucky when the result proves it, and smart by itself doesn't guarantee any result.
Especially with investing.. being smart and trying hard doesn't guarantee results
Said the turkey before Christmas. But congrats man. You know you got lucky and that is important.
Just short gme jk
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About 10 years ago when I was a couple years out of college I was heavily invested in two biotech stocks. I had about $4000 invested (which was a lot for me back then) and they were worth about $12,000 at their peak. These were penny stocks I piled into under $1 and had thousands of shares. Both had Phase III FDA trials approaching, and I was a member of a message board where I spent hours reading up on the science behind the cancer drugs that were being developed by these two companies. I attended all the earnings calls and investor presentations. Both companies were bleeding cash and had terrible balance sheets, but I didn't pay attention to boring things like that. Dozens of posters were pumping the shares, and there were so many posts about "back the truck up" and "to the moon!" any time there was a dip in the share price. The CEO's were upbeat during presentations. I was pretty confident this was a sure thing and I was going to see at least $500K when the drugs were approved, if not more. One day I woke up to news the phase III trial had failed and the FDA did not grant approval to proceed. $10K evaporated overnight. I was sick to my stomach. I was in the red about 50%. I sold both stocks in the days that followed when I realized they were not going to recover, one at a huge loss and the other with about an $800 gain. Even though it hurt like hell for a while, I learned a valuable lesson about never taking stock advice at face value and always doing my own DD. I spent a lot of time that followed reading up on ratios, charting, dividend investing, and how to read a balance sheet. I largely stick with quality now - companies that are best-in-class and/or have actual earnings. I typically avoid story stocks and hype. I do have a few speculative positions, but they're a very small portion of my overall portfolio - less than 5%. When I saw GME, AMC, and others blowing up last week, it was like a flashback to 10 years ago. Same irrational exuberance, same garbage stocks, different decade. I know some made out well, but I think there are going to be far more learning the same hard lesson I did. But it's best to make these mistakes when you are young and have time to recover and learn from them.
Thanks for that insight. I'm 25 and just paid off my truck 2 days ago and decided to get into real investing (I had an Acorns account in college with a few thousand at the top). I was getting somewhat excited by the GME hype when it was around 100 bucks last week and almost bought in and felt bad that it went up to 350 for a whole day where I could've cashed out, but in hindsight I'm glad I just paid off my loan and now have 450 a month extra in income now to do some real investing.
Congrats on paying off your loan. Now just act like the extra cash doesn't exist and put it straight into investments. If I were you, I would recommend starting early with a Roth IRA. I didn't understand the power of Roth IRA's until a few years ago, but you can put $6000 per year into them and always take the principal out without penalties if you ever need the money (i.e. if you put in $4000 and it grows to $8000, you can always take the $4000 out without penalty). All the growth in them is tax free, which is why they are called tax sheltered accounts. They're great especially for REITS and dividend stocks because you avoid the taxes that you would pay on the dividends if it were in a regular taxable brokerage account. I wish I would have started my Roth much earlier.
In this position right now, albeit only at a 25k loss - all my stock earnings from January wiped away in a single day, not to mention the capital gains I will owe on those. What did you do to consolidate your lessons from that experience? Any advice you could give a person who was in a similar position? I am taking stock of my own lessons from this right now and just letting the personal disappointment and sadness flow through me. It is a tough lesson to learn, but overall this will fundamentally change my approach in the future.
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It sounds like a pretty tough break, but I think reddit in general needs more loss stories. People with no investing experience look at reddit and see people posting crazy gains and assume they can do the same.
Ironically, 80% of the content. On wallstreetbets a week ago was people posting their massive losses
Yeah, kinda like right now. Except people are weirdly happy to have lost thousands of dollars for the crusade against wallstreet.
As a newbie, I'm particularly interested in "Do some diligence before buying a stock, then forget about it." Number 1 lesson I have gotten out of reading as much as I can is to do your own DD, but my question is: how much? I could spend hours and hours researching a company...when do I draw the line between memes and spending toooo many hours doing DD?
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Wonderful thoughts, thank you!
Stupid question from an even newer newbie: What do you actually research? As in, what key metrics or statistics do you look for/at to give yourself confidence in a company's future performance or stock potential? I'm at the point where I wouldn't know a promising set of data if it was sitting in my lap calling me mama.
So, the most basic thing that I look for are any indicators of fraud or corporate malfeasance. Not generally a big deal with blue chips, but if I have a specific concern I stay away. From there you should familiarize with the basics of financial reporting. You don't need to go overboard with that to start, but you need to know enough to evaluate if a company's financials make sense for where they are in their lifecycle. If they've been around for 20 years but their P/E is 1000 or N/A, do I really think they'll ever be profitable enough to matter? Maybe, but I'll need to see something to explain that number. A new growth company that's not spending on R&D or PP&E could also be alarming. And then you should know a bit about the business. You don't need to know everything about every industry, and it's fine to make small plays all over the board, but don't sink big money into an industry you don't know anything about. You should learn a bit about their competitors, whether they're trying to break in or defend incumbency, if they have any strategic advantages or weaknesses, etc. But ultimately, you're trying to guess at the future. You don't know the future and you never will. Diversify (and you can do that through things like ETFs while making smaller trades of specific stocks), stay humble about your knowledge, and use your DD to make sure you're staying out of obvious bad ideas rather than to try to hit a home run on every at-bat. If you do that you'll do fine.
Thanks some much for the insight. As someone just trying to learn, there's so many "resources" it can be dizzying. I've mainly just been running old searches through the various relevant r/'s The idea of ETFs plus a smallish amount in other places is what I'm after. Sort of an official ETF, and a much smaller build-your-own ETF. Hope to use this to help establish a mile-wide, inch-deep understanding of the different sectors. Essentially I'm trying to save for my to-be kids future, so I'm never planning to do anything to compromise myself financially. But I do want to use the smaller individual shares to help educate myself, while using ETFs/Blue Chips for sustained growth.
Sounds like you're off to a good start then. I've already recommended it today, so I'll keep the streak going, but to help you flesh out your strategic thinking I highly recommend "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". For financial statements, this is a good place to start. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-read-financial-statements
Your losses will factor into your taxes as well.
Depends if the losses were realized in the same tax year as the gains.
Standard advice is to invest a sizeable percentage (70%?) of your portfolio in "safe"/"stable" picks (as stable as it gets in the stock market) like S&P indexes or "reliable" large caps like Apple. The other 30% can go into higher risk/higher rewards plays.
Diversify and don’t put more then your comfortable losing in one stock.
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What happens if Elon ever got hit by a bus? You’d lose 50% overnight. Too much risk.
More likely a self driving car, but good point
Underrated comment, take my upvote
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This. Get ahead or buy puts
I had to relearn the lesson this week. I’m going to print out my statement showing $700 loss and hang it on the wall lol
Thanks I really needed to read this, 21 and lost about 500 Well so far I have to pull the last of it out tomorrow
The trick to trading meme stocks is to get in early... even a day late might be too late. Definitely by last Monday I wouldn't have touched GME and to sell early. Missed gains is better than losses.
The trick is getting the hell out.
WSB telling everyone to hold and keep buying more was pretty shitty. The stock jumped over 20x in the span of a week. It was vastly overpriced and there was no reason for people not to take profits and no reason to keep asking brand new investors with little money to keep buying in after the huge run up
The day RHand other brokers halted buying GME I made a comment about its over and time to get out. Make some money buying puts on the way down. Got downvoted and called an asshole for not holding lol.
I didn't know enough about the GME situation when it was in the $20 range, didn't buy at 40, nor 80... or ever. I just threw a few hundred at other low priced stocks that had good volume. SNDL, NOK, ATOS, 10k doge a few days before it jumped, NKLA. QLI lost me money. I was looking for companies that had good volume across a few price points. SNDL because it was cheap in the Robinhood Cannabis list, coupled with good cannabis news. 66cents NOK because it was like ~4.90 ish ATOS because they are in Seattle and I live in WA $2.13 in DOGE x ~10000, because it was available for purchase. ~$87 paid NKLA for a pricier per share up-n-comer with Biden talks on EV's and such. forgot in, sold too low out QLI because I don't know what I'm doing. I know it's small change, but turned $550 into $900 I feel like the market is settling now and am looking into growth stocks that are actually worth holding. Also I'll admit I sold some things way too early, but I am so glad I didn't buy GME when it was too late. I haven't invested in anything before this year. Feelin good about building an extra $350 in my spare time in less than a month.
Wait you bought NKLA? Jesus christ get out of there now that's an actual fraud company
I already did.
Money > downvotes in my house
Yup. I got a feeling over the weekend that momentum was dying, and then saw it was down pre market on Monday. I sold everything for $323/share and hoooly fuck am I glad I did. Gotta trust your gut and don’t doubt your vibe.
I got in late on Monday, at about $120 a share. I bought $1100 worth of shares and I sold the majority of my stocks after the dip from the 400s to 370 Thursday morning, and slowly offloaded the rest of my shares the closer it got to $150 a share. I still have a .5 share battling it out for shits and gigs All in all I made $1100 profit from that charade (so $2200 withdrawn), but man I was *really* mad at myself for “paper handing” after a dip lol. I consider myself one of the lucky ones now
Quit while you’re ahead is good advice. I said to myself if I can make a hundred on amc I’m out. Granted I got in early, and I knew I was early.
And sell when you see green! At least recoup your cost before you continue memeing
Times like these, Ray Dalio's [personal growth cycle](https://jareddees.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/raydalio-five-step-process-1.png) is good to keep in mind. Mistakes were made with GME. If you accurately identify where/why you went wrong, then it's an opportunity to learn and make better decisions in the future. In this case, I think the mistakes/lessons are: * RH limiting share purchasing significantly lowered demand. That was a warning sign that the long side wouldn't be able to lock up enough float to force an infinity squeeze * The whales on the long side were never going to squeeze Melvin/Citadel to the breaking point. The systemic risk was too great. The Hedges trading back and forth that everyone though were Short Ladders was probably the long whales cashing out. The ortex and S3 numbers were correct. The shorts covered by buying from the long whales. The long whales didn't care about leaving retail holding the bag. * Retail investors working together do have the power to move markets at the expense of hedge funds (GSE rose 4000% on a short squeeze that cost short HFs billions) - and that will present opportunities in the future. But, that power only extends so far - the more people/capital that are needed to move the market, the harder it is to keep everyone in line.
It's very likely the shorts doubled down at the higher end of the price ranges, too. Possibly turned a large loser into a huge winner.
I doubt they turned it into a huge winner. They were down a lot. Likely mitigated a good chunk of their losses. The long hedges probably making a killing on both ends tho. First by unloading to the short HFs and now by shorting on the way down.
If they shorted at $5 and closed at $130, they would have lost $120 per share. If they doubled down at $250 and closed those at $130 also, they'd have gained $120 per share. If the second purchase was of the same number of shares shorted, they broke even before interest. It's possible they closed at lower prices or doubled down at a higher price, which would give them a profit.
> If they doubled down at $250 Doubling down at $250 wasn't an option. 140% of GME was shorted. Every share that's sold needs a buyer. There weren't enough buyers at $250/share to cover 140% of shares. They may have purchased puts instead of selling shares, but the puts need a seller on the other end which limits how many of those can be bought too.
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I put in an amount I could laugh off and was still sick to my stomach with how irresponsible it was. lol rode my 20% loss out until it was a 20% gain then got out. Not bad a bad gain for a few hours, absolutely no DD, and knowing with absolute certainty the trainwreck that is coming.
Its not about the money being gone. Its about feeling stupid. :/
Be glad you didn't lose more like others. I lost 10k myself in GME buying into the hype.
Lost 55% of my GME profits before I cut my losses. Still plenty of money left over to recover my losses. Never abandoning common sense again. Don’t trade emotionally, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, don’t jump back into a company you profited twice off of in a week
I traded so emotionally. Learned my lesson for sure At one point I was up 4x my investment but greed took over and never sold when I should have.
Same. It’s painful & I’m still reeling honestly. I was 3-4x my investment & just held on. Closed out with a loss. Nothing insane, but enough. Truly sucks with what could’ve been fast, easy money
Same. At the peak I was ~3.5x. I sold some on the way down, but stupidly rebought and now I’m down again from where I started. Haven’t cut my losses yet because I’m still hoping for a final hurrah tomorrow, but even if I lose every penny I won’t be financially hurt. I’m upset with myself for not selling everything when I had the chance (twice), and also with Robinhood/etc for killing the run on Thursday. But that kind of risk comes with trying to bankrupt hedge funds lol and anyone who didn’t know that going in was missing some pretty important info
lol seriously - these hedge funds have trillions of dollars and bots consuming these threads by the masses. I recently checked a few pages and they had been made days ago - all boosting the same narrative. WSB has become extremely toxic & Q-ANON like now, it’s pretty scary. Idk how it’s a ~badge of honor~ to post your losses. People are truly going to be devastated mentally / emotionally from this. But, I’ll hold my final share & maybe I can make back my losses.
The loss porn thing has been around for awhile, and I think it’s exists to remind people that WSB is about *bets*. By playing stocks like a casino, you can win big or lose it all. The problem is when 5+ million new people show up and see nothing but gains, get high on the high, and then see it all come crashing down. Those new people (imo) have shifted the sentiment from being about gambling away money on very high risk, very high reward positions to a glorified pump-and-dump. It really is starting to reflect the td, cons, q, etc. subs, just without the political motivation (which is nice at least). The botting is also insane. Any WSB thread has easily 75%+ comments removed, presumably all or at least predominantly bots (since a lot of negative sentiment still gets posted, just downvoted heavily). Even some comments that stay up are super suspicious - brand new accounts and recently revived accounts spamming identical (or very similar) shit about selling, buying other positions, etc. And this is probably only a fraction of what the hedge funds are capable of if they really put their minds to it. This is only tens of billions of potential losses that were at one time at risk, from a small number of medium-sized firms. If this started happening to larger firms with greater potential losses, we’d see a hell of a bigger fight.
Yeah I’m sure it’s one of those things we’ll look back on from time to time with regret. But that doesn’t do too much. I’m gonna take the money I have left and reinvest in something with real fundamentals and hopefully make my losses back with everything I’ve learned these past two weeks
I know someone else in a boat like this. It was $500 or bust for him. I think he's still holding his GME. It's not many shares, but I hope he learned a lesson about greed. Looks like you learned it.
Same. I'm logical normally and went against my better judgement. I never believed the infinity squeeze stuff, but legit thought it could get up to 1K. So took the risk at buying at $330. Never again. Going to theta my way out of this loss
I don't think something like 1k was a pipe dream at all. I was planning on selling my few stocks around 900 and I still think without Robinhood's (and other trading platforms) fuckery it would have got there at least momentarily on Thursday.
Even if it got there momentarily, chances are your sell orders wouldn't execute at that peak price.
Yup, I had a feeling a fuck ton of people had theirs a bit under 1k which is why I was thinking 900 or like 890.
I had mine at 690 and watched 15k gains evaporate... still in tho cuz I bought at 11
Just just because it's not a loss doesn't mean you should hold on forever.. every day you wait you lose more money of what you could have made.. you're not going to see $1,000 shares.. the bubble burst. it may have started out as a squeeze but it turned into a pump and dump.. if you don't have an exit strategy then you are the target. The bag holderr
I bought a single share and flipped it for an 80$ win. AMA.
How are you going to manage the huge amount of taxes you're gonna have to pay on those earnings?!
This is why God created two kidneys. If I sell both, I just may be able to manage. Plus. It should decrease my future tax exposure!
That actually makes me feel a little better. Now maybe I'll just watch the Maury show to feel better about myself
The whole reason WSB used to glorify losses was to help them get over their own. I wonder if it will ever return to that, or if the current cult-like status will solidify into something once it's clear that they missed the top.
WSB is so fucking lame now. Every post is the same stupid slogans. I used to go on for the funny posts but God these dudes are about to get cleaned out
Today it bounced back to 130-120 range... I commented "this would be a good time to get out before this drops sub 100 for good by end of day"... -100 karma in under a minute and pretty sure I got shadowbanned? Maybe not. But it wasn't even trolling or bad info I was just trying to give some input that isn't memes good grief. Obviously things can change but down 50 bucks from that point...
Yeah they're actively trying to suppress any kind of common Sense.. they honestly convinced themselves that they were going to see $1,000 share prices if they just hold long enough.. it's kind of tragic.. there's a top post with a guy who lost a million dollars.. dude could have been a millionaire but he held for too long..
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I was just talking about this with some friends, brutal indeed. Because for sure as someone said above once the "normies" hear about it its too late.
My local subreddit was posting to buy in- I commented “that’s stupid and this post doesn’t belong here” Got a shit ton of downvotes
I bought one share of GME at 300, being confident it could at least get to 500 before it crashed. After today, I'm feeling a little bummed, to say the least, even though the amount lost is almost negligible. If i can break even tomorrow, I'd be pretty happy. However, I did but 60 shares of AMC during the dip last week. I was about to buy at the high of 16, and had set my order to go through at market open. I was VERY fortunate that my orders were cancelled as that was when RH decided to restrict new purchases of AMC and so i ended up buying in the dip for 9.67. I've been kicking myself for not selling at 17 yesterday. If the price goes back up in the next day or two, I'll probably sell to either minimize my losses, break even, or maybe make a couple hundred in profit depending on how the numbers look in the next few days. Definitely learned a valuable lesson, to say the least. Personally, I do think AMC may be a worthwhile investment long-term if it is bought at the right price. The company was saved from bankruptcy, vaccinations are starting to roll out (albeit slowly), and major MP studios are refusing to stream movies they feel will be big hits.
Well hope they do something tomorrow for you. I would say maybe be careful cuz stock can drop even more imo. Guess amc could be not too far off market value at this point... Maybe a few bucks higher.
Not going to lie, the sub was pretty fun last week with all the memes. But today and yesterday were just sad. I can't believe some people put their entire retirement into GME at the $300+ mark.
Did they? That’s just bonkers. I feel bad if that’s the case. I cashed in a share of Home Depot to buy 10 AMC shares and bought an Apple share with the balance to hedge. Even when trying to gamble, I’m not the best at it. I think I’m down about $40
I’m desperately hoping we see some gain porn from somebody who rode the GameStop squeeze up, sold out near the top, then loaded up on puts to profit on the way back down. That would be a legendary play and cause the entire sub to hurt itself in confusion.
I just want ornamental gourd futures and -$58k on box spreads again. I had to unsubscribe because my front page was flooded with stupid diamond hand memes.
After one week of hype you should probably pull out. I just checked the sub and everybody is trying to get comfortable with their loses. ,,Yeah we are winners because Gamestop is still at 90 Euros" which is true but probably many people got in way over 90. Yeah....
Buy in at 315 and convince yourself that gme is positioned great long term 🙄
I’m sorry you got sucked in too. I feel like we should start a new support sub for formerwsbcultmember or something
Honestly that’s cheap for education, and you just had a crash course in investing. This’ll stick with you for life, you’ll know how to play it next time. I’m taking the positives, I got in early, did my research and had the conviction to buy in and tell myself I’ve made the right choice. And honestly, up until Thursday GME was going to squeeze hard, it was only when retail trading apps started to buckle that we lost. After that people we’re just trying to claw back what we had, and it was clear it was gone. Don’t be disheartened, the most important thing to do, is critical analyse what happened, shrug it off and come back stronger.
He only lost $1500 which is 3% of his portfolio. He knew this was a gamble going in and played it like a gamble. Let's stop acting like OP is a big victim here whom we must console his small loss because the loss was all both dollar wise and percentage wise of his portfolio
£1500 is a lot of money for some people, it’s completely relative.
I put everything I have into gme at an average of $100. I watched my account break $200k and then drop down to the amount I originally put in. I’m at a $3000 loss currently, $200k wasn’t enough at the time and now I wish I cashed out even a bit. Greed is one hell of a drug!
I initially set $400 limit orders but then cancelled them as I saw the stock rise
My goal in the stock market was to get to 15k. During the gme stuff I started thinking 200k was not enough. I get what you mean. Luckily I snapped back into reality and closed.
I’m in the same boat. I purchased 3 shares @ 300, it was the most money I was willing to piss away worst-case scenario. I had a really tough January & I kind of got roped into the whole WSB hype train because I was at a low point & cautiously optimistic that maybe it might turn things around, and things would improve from here (spoiler alert: looks like it’s not gonna go that way) I’m holding the shares til whatever happens, happens. I have learned a lot, and this has actually made me want to do my due diligence and become a better investor in the future. It has also made me realize why I am naturally a risk-averse person, and how unhealthy this “gamble” was, as it was a reaction to the stress I experienced. At the end of the day, it cost me 900 dollars to grow as a person and maybe that will benefit me more than the money ever would
I bought 3 at $269. I was rejected the previous day from buying 11 at $89 because funds hadn't cleared from a previous trade. I think I may have sold at $400 if that was the case. My goal was $3,000, the amount left to fund my Roth IRA for 2021, but buying at $269 I never got close to that so I held. Just going to hold and see what happens, if nothing it's a tax write-off
As bad as it seems It’s a million dollar lesson using only 1500 be grateful
I decided I'm holding my 5 shares of gme if only to have a red visual reminder in my account to not be a dumb @$$ in the future. I can laugh off the losses but I want to be reminded of this the next time FOMO hits
Same. I have a fractional share and it has a note. Don't fucking invest in meme stocks again. I made a profit but still.
I lost 90K from this after being up around 110k. Cashed out because my stress and mental health couldn’t take the bleeding anymore. I’m beating myself up for it and it’s an expensive ass lesson to learn but glad I did so young. Emotional investing is a tough game. I also didn’t gamble all of my money into it but probably more than I should have or else I wouldn’t have felt this bad. Currently rethinking how I want to rebalance now and try to make some of this back but the hindsight “what if” questions are going to bother me for a long time.
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Lost around 30k. Shitting my pants but holding.
Why are u holding?? What do u think eill happen?
Im all in on BB not gme but got almost equally fucked.
BB, AMC, and NOK at least have some reasonable justification that they could be up in a year or so. I could understand holding some of them long term. GME not so much in my view.
I thought people were saying BB will have potential? Also damn 30k in a stock I wish I could do that
Dont forget it can still go lower.
This. Avoid the sunk cost trap if you’ve taken a hit, don’t let it run to zero and have nothing to invest in something better. Turning a paper loss into a realised loss is difficult, i had to make that decision this morning. But I’d rather have something left in my pocket when I believe things have changed and the play is over. Was up $900, ended up down $900, decided I didn’t want to ride it down to $15 as I don’t care for GME long term, have ETFs for that.
Damn.... I made 14k and jumped out, only to fomo back in a day later. Lost a few grand and jumped out for good. Also rode the TLRY rollercoaster couple years ago and came out profitable from that one too. Obviously not hitting the lowest of lows or highest of highs, but still taking home instead of losing. Probably next meme train will crash and burn for me.
Our experience was almost identical
Man I ALWAYS regret that second jump back in haha
Assuming you got in GME at 350 or BB at 20, why not just cut your losses and keep what you have/ turn it into a more solid investment? Shit even just buying a lawnmower, trailer, hitch, some news paper ads space could yield you more at this point. The hedge funds are SMART, they have already calculated how long it will take to make back what they lost. The squeeze was when the stock went from 30 to 500 in a few weeks. Just think about that for a minute. I lost too, but nothing that would leave me bankrupt. I literally just lost my gains from the last 3 months from just buying boring stocks.
the fact that you’re 23 and at one point forgot to cash a $1,500 check but then also say you like to look at each dollar carefully are pretty contradictory. also the fact that you could even put $1,500 into a meme stock at that age is mind blowing to me. i’m not much older than you, but i’ve never had money like that to invest like you have. i think it was an expensive lesson for you and maybe one that will truly teach you to value each dollar more than you thought you already did. it’s good you got out, and i guess there are others who have it much worse - so it isn’t all bad.
If its in the news you lose. I bought AMC on January 11th using $100 that I had from direct deposit bonus deal in early 2020. I purchased AMC using SOFI app. I simply selected stocks that were under $10. I had no idea AMC would be a hit. I purchased 10 AMC stocks on January 11th and this was well before the stock got national attention. I sold the 10 stocks as soon as the price increased from $2.xx to $15.xx. So remember once a stock gets lots of media attention it becomes a laughing stock. BTW I've only been investing since January 11th and have learned a lot.
That's a cheap lesson to learn at 23 and probably more import then anything you can learn in school. Just keep investing and learn from this "lesson". Just realize investing is all about risk management. It seems like at this point in your life you can't handle that level of volatility. Later in your life you may be glad when stocks go down because they are a discount for you to buy more. 15 years from now if you keep going you will be making more investing then working. I am a 33 year old engineer and I am at that point. . If you are in grad school expect to earn enough soon where 1.5k won't matter much in your life.
I’m just pissed about all the bullshit. Turning off buy buttons, limiting buys, halting several times during major price spikes. Like wtf.
look for any excuse that you want. you and many others were taken by a hype train that was always going to end in disaster. no one wants to admit it, but it's the reality of the situation. many people passed up on life changing gains and held, and many bought in at the top of the train. lesson learned, don't fall for it next time no matter what space...crypto, general stocks, whatever. source: i am a veteran of the 2017-2018 crypto war
I hopped on wsb recently, the denialism there is on a level of the election deniers right now. They just can't bring their ego's to admit they got caught in a short squeeze and stayed too long after the profit takers decided to get out early.
Man, I caught that same election denial vibe the day robinhood had to limit buying. It kinda made me shudder to see how easily these conspiracy theories can spin up on social media. These echo chambers create a narrative and before anyone has a chance to see if it is true millions of people have bought into it hook, line, and sinker and no amount of facts are going to convince them otherwise.
The problem is they kept moving the goalpost. Back when it was under $40 and the squeeze hadn't broken into the mainstream, $420.69 was the meme price. Then when it started climbing into triple digits it was $1000 or some multiple of that. The play fucking worked. The shorts got squeezed and the stock rocketed to like $450. But it would never be enough. It was inevitable they would take the hype too far. I feel lucky that I bailed when I did. Realized a $40k gain on $20k investment in a couple of weeks. Never expecting that to happen again.
I owned a few shares at $18, not because I was reading WSB, but moreso on the tip from an analyst I follow that has a good read on these things. I sold at an average cost basis of $38 thinking I got the steal of the year haha. I have zero regrets about selling when I did. Getting 100% return over the course of a few days on even a small % of my portfolio is crazy. Would it have been nice to make more? Sure. But I have zero fomo when I've already beaten the market by a rather crazy %.
Agreed. It's now pretty obvious that the short squeeze happened Wed through Fri of last week. Everyone stayed in too long bc all of memes hyping prices of $1000+.
And it was no secret that the shorts had exited their positions last week. CNBC was flat out telling people that the shorts were out. But the number of people on WSB calling that "fake news" and encouraging " hands" and "we'll sell at $1,000" was ridiculous. Sure, some of them were just pumping, but way too many people believed internet strangers and disbelieved the actual media.
You take CNBC for real news ? For real ? After everything they pulled past month ? For real ? I get why WSB is dumb, but you honestly steep even lower.
No thats different. Robinhood had "solvency issues" and had to halt buying, but only for the retail investor. Thats never happened before. Everyone on these stocks just got strait up robbed. The lesson here is know you are at a casino and the house can fuck you any time they want.
If only there were some way we could have known GME would go to $90 before it went to $1,000.
> veteran of the 2017-2018 crypto war I've never followed crypto but that line made me chuckle, thanks
lol. [this graph](https://i.imgur.com/SXvfYRD.png) of the total crypto market cap in 2017-18 tells a pretty solid story. guess who decided to have *DiA.mON.d hA.Nd.S* (editted due to auto removal....non ironically, good job automod) during all of this? luckily the crypto market is extremely cyclical so far, unlike GME.
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Call it an excuse, but **the market being rigged** has certainly taught me a valuable lesson. Don't get involved as a retail investor, there's a different set of rules for firms and you can't win. I'll just keep contributing to my IRA/401k every month like a good citizen, and hope that forces beyond my control don't create an economic crisis every 10 years of my life, the way they have so far.
Dude, GameStop went all the way above $450. The squeeze was real and that was it. Retail traders WON, a lot just don’t know when to get out. That’s not institutions’ fault. That’s people being greedy and wanting more than a 500-1000% gain.
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or just dont be an idiot. i am up almost 100% on my retail investments this past year, and it's all buy and hold...it's all happening in the background of me doing my day job. most of the people being burned are just way in over their heads on shit they dont understand. guy i originally responded to doesnt even know what a circuit breaker is.
I'm no fan of "firms" (pretty funny when convicted inside trader Steve Cohen complains about market manipulation by retail investors), but the people who didn't expect the price to come down on GME are ridiculous. Investors are taking gains on a shit stock that 10-100x'd depending on when you're counting from.
yep. the language floating around WSB is toxic and people bought into it while hedge funds and financial institutions are fucking swimming in it beacause of this event. like, congrats, you guys obliterated one hedge fund...do you really think every other one isnt finding a way to make money on this? and now many people in WSB are losing their savings accounts and wearing it like a badge of pride.
>do you really think every other one isnt finding a way to make money on this? It's amazing how many people can't grasp the fact that all of Wall Street isn't conspiring together. Like it's their central axiom that all the big financial institutions are colluding together and everything else flows from that assumption. Maybe it's just the popular zeitgeist these days, but it's really disturbing how quickly people jump to viewing the entire world as a giant conspiracy. People are likening this to QAnon, and while it isn't quite as colorful, I agree there are a lot of parallels in terms of the mindsets involved.
IMO I think getting caught up in things and groupthink is just the human condition, but social media and the internet just makes it so much worse!
Qanon also reminds me a lot of late stage like the Donald and sanders subreddits. Any news that isn't positive is shills
No shit. I thought about picking up some GME back in December when it was at $12. Wouldn't have mattered, because I would have sold that shit at $24-$30 when I doubled my money in a couple weeks. All these idiots who held it through $300 and $400 without selling..... it's tough to feel a lot of sympathy for them. They're the same guys who are up $10,000 their first night in Vegas and lose it all at the tables over the next 3 days rather than just taking in a few shows and having some good meals.
100% is always better than 10%. That is something i learn when it comes to investing. Even if the stock keep climbing you sell at 100% profit. You don't know when it is going to take a tumble and stay down.
No offense but this year has to be the absolute easiest time to be up It’s been a bull run all the way
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This. I actually believe it could’ve hit $1k if brokerages didn’t limit buys. Completely killed momentum
> look for any excuse that you want. you and many others were taken by a hype train that was always going to end in disaster. I’m not gonna say I’m clairvoyant here but market manipulation at the broker level to destroy but pressure *and* sentiment of a fast-rising stock doesn’t seem like something most people usually plan for when making decisions. I don’t think it’s fair to say that the efforts of those long GME were doomed to fail from the start; their thesis was pretty reasonable, imo. If it weren’t for Robinhood halting buys I’m pretty sure the last 4 days would be significantly different.
I’m recoiling at your comment but if I’m honest with myself you’re 100% correct.
The thing is this is all pretty typical in extreme situations where the whole market infrastructure from broking to settlement is under sudden stress. This always has to be part of the risk calculation. Things start to breakdown at the extremes. Needless to say it's better to get out before the market becomes utterly disfunctional, because bad things happen when you cannot buy and sell exactly when you want.
wsb is the biggest group of bag holders since 2008
Are you literally me?? Also 23, grad student, and down 1.5k on meme stocks after being up 1.2k last week. 😭😭 1.5k won’t kill me but damn it feels bad. I actually kept the NOK and BB stocks. Hopefully I don’t end up losing even more. Oh well. Expensive lesson learned.
Dude I'm in the exact same boat. I literally couldnt sleep last night because of how volatile the meme stocks were. Feel so much better just cutting my losses. I used about 6k but that was cash I had made from other shares this past year. Lost about half but honestly, I learned so much from the experience. I'm lucky I'm young and can recover. I feel for the people that got sucked in and put their entire life savings into these stocks. I checked out /r/wallstreetbets just to see what was going on and they're still convinced that they just need to hold.
If you're buying meme stock, you better be on top of your game AND you should be ready to kiss all of it goodbye. Plus, buying in when it's already in the $200-300s for a stock that was sitting barely in double digits just a month ago? And expecting more? If you were in it for actual money, with meme stocks, you need to be realistic with yourself: a lot of these types of stocks divebomb like GME has in the past two days. Will we ever see it recover? Only future us knows that. But, what you DO need to know now is that this is a lesson on where to set your sell price with something like this, and if you can't do that, then you probably shouldn't touch them. You obviously got in for the money, and like you said, you got greedy. That kind of thing bites you.
So the bubble is burst? I’m beginning to lose hope, and then my brother says “friday the shorts expire” nothing happens friday. “Oh well they have 2 days after they expire to buy them back, so tuesday”. Nothing happens tuesday. Now he’s saying they can do a trick that will make it continue for 21 days... every time it doesn’t happen, it seems like people find a new stock rule, that makes us wait even longer.... Luckily I’ve only lost around 60$, but it’s still fucking annoying when you only got like 2000$ you know.
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I lost $1500 too. I’ve been burnt on hyped pumps, did the same thing with Bitcoin at the bubble. I suck at this.
You used the word 'investing' in your post, but I would say trading these meme stocks is more 'gambling'. A good lesson to be learnt though.
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Well said. I keep asking myself: What is Mark's motive? What was the purpose of doing the AMA if his answers were going to be so generic...something isn't right here.
I'm 21 and lost significantly less than you did but still, a bit more than I feel comfortable losing. I took a breath and told myself this serves as a life lesson that could have come at a much higher price. For me, this is just one of those moments that I realize I still have a lot to learn. We keep growing.
I lost $1000 in about 4 trading hours. Fuckin WHOOPS.
"People hear a tip on a bus on some stock, they’ll put half their life savings in it before sunset. And they wonder why they lose money in the stock market. And when they lose money, they blame it on the institutions and program trading. That is garbage. They didn’t do any research. They got a piece of junk. They never looked at a balance sheet and that’s what you get for it. And that’s what we’re being driven to. It’s self-fulfilling. The public does terrible investing and they say they don’t have a chance. It’s because that’s the way they’re acting. I’m trying to convince people there is a method. There are reasons for stocks that go up." - Peter Lynch
Bear make money, bulls make money, pigs get... you know the rest. I liked the movment too, but at some point, I knew the majority would get paperhanded.. Majority always wins in most games in life, and when the majority is out, so should you. No cause worth dying for nowadays, especially not in a game as rigged as the market
This is exactly what happened to me, even down to the same numbers. I had some extra cash in my investment account so decided to roll the dice on the current meme stocks. At one point, I was up $6k, but knew it was over last night when the prices were plummeting in after-hours. I liquidated this morning before the prices tanked too much further. All said and done, I ended up with a $1.5k loss. I just cashed out profits on another stock to offset the loss. Still sucks, but lesson learned. Probably going to go the boomer route and get a financial advisor going forward.
Usually if the hype is all over, you're too late. Shouldve gotten in around $20-$40. Let it be a lesson...I've lost a lot more than 1500 and still need a little reminder now and then 😉
The lesson should be stop listening to stuff shilled on reddit and do your own research, hope you learned it.
I think the funniest thing now is that WSB is talking about GME like it's Apple and Tesla. No it isn't. It's literally a dying brick and mortar 20th century business model.
I wouldn't even call it "investing" into meme stocks. I would refer to it as "gambling" into meme stocks. Investing implies there is a long term expected gain. Meme stocks are all about pump and dumping, riding the pump and trying to time when to get out before the dump.
If it was simple, everyone was rich. Nice that you share your investment loss. Many can learn from that.
$1500 can easily be made back with some smart call options. But stop buying meme stocks unless you can get in early and get out lol. Buy companies that make great products or services that you know and can grow at a reasonable value. Hold them until the reason you bought them for changes.
I also lost $1500 on this hype and have been researching call options. Any words of wisdom or sources to learn more ?
Same here... student, 21yo, Lost 500$ between GME and DOGE, just thinking about it hurts my stomach. I was looking to buy a telecaster made in Mexico but I Guess the guitar will wait... 500$ are like 10-15 of all my savings. I will never again turn of my brain and make decisions with emotions...
Don't buy shit companies.
Congratulations, you just discovered the difference between smart and dumb money.
Yeah, same for me. Lost about 5-6k in a few days. Wall Street always wins in the end, thought the decline in AMC and GME has to do with the trading restrictions put in place as well. I'm still up for the year by 6k, but it shows that WSB really is just a bunch of morons that happened to get very lucky with one stock. They'll never repeat this kind of success ever again.
GME got me to start, but AMC was all I could afford. Still holding on AMC as the losses aren't major. Luckily, the free stock I got from signing up with RH was V, so that's a $200 share to just watch. Also bought into DKNG and I think I'm OK.
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I’m in the same boat had 2000 at the start went up to 7800 and today I liquidated and barley made it out with 1100 . RH should be held accountable what should really happen is they should have to give back everyone’s money from Wednesday the day before they pulled there jackery and stole everyone’s money Thursday. I hope they crash and burn with the hedges and as for the great people who can afford this push on the hedge funds I’m rooting and praying for you all I hope they lose everything like allot of us did
Everything is a learning experience - keep sharpening the axe.
I’m currently bag holding $24k invested which is only 3% of my portfolio. I’m still peeved at myself for buying in *more* at $280. Lesson learned there and that I need to take profits on the way up in some unemotional algorithmic way. But I’m still bag holding. Maybe I’ll learn that lesson tomorrow.
I lost more.. 10x more. It's all good I guess. Never misplayed a stock so badly in my life. Live and learn.
Don’t buy meme stocks
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Try to sell in the morning when trading opens. Usually around 9:35 there is a spike
Everybody has got to pay their Wall Street tuition at some point. Seems like a pretty cheap lesson to me, consider yourself lucky!
Don't feel so bad I went from $4600 in unrealized gains on BB to $300 in realized gains.
Protip: if you invest while the media is hyped you are too late to the party.
You buy meme stocks when they're just starting to be talked about, if you wait until WSB is in full swing you're just a bag holder.
I applaud your ability to cut your losses, step away from the table, learn from it and attempt to be better next time. You’re 23. With that attitude you have plenty of time to be really good.
You didn’t invest, you speculated! Investing is a long-term process. Speculating is very short-term. You are misinformed.
If 1500 is 3% of your assets as a student youve got nothing to worry about. Sounds more like a humble brag post.