this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
235 points (97.2% liked)

News

23634 readers
3217 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Rooting for Donald Trump to fail has rarely been this profitable.

Just ask a hardy band of mostly amateur Wall Street investors who have collectively made tens of millions of dollars over the past month by betting that the stock price of his social media business — Truth Social — will keep dropping despite massive buying by Trump loyalists and wild swings that often mirror the candidate’s latest polls, court trials and outbursts on Truth Social itself.

Several of these investors interviewed by The Associated Press say their bearish gambles using “put” options and other trading tools are driven less by their personal feelings about the former president (most don’t like him) than their faith in the woeful underlying financials of a company that made less money last year than the average Wendy’s hamburger franchise.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 46 points 8 months ago (9 children)

I'm just surprised more people didn't do this.

I am in a position where I can invest in the market and have an account at etrade, so I might be able to short stocks? But I don't know how I would go about doing that. I knew from day one this would be a fantastic short opportunity, but I didn't know how to do that so didn't bother.

[–] ours@lemmy.world 39 points 8 months ago

Don't bother, it's one of the most shorted stocks right now so the price to short it is comparably high.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 36 points 8 months ago

Pro tip: if you're reading about it on mainstream news, it's probably too late to jump on the train.

[–] Chainweasel@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It's a HUGE gamble, if it goes up you could be millions in debt.
It seems obvious it would go down right?
But, there's always the possibility that a foreign entity (Russia) launders money to him by buying up a shit ton of his stock and drives the price up.
That would ruin the lives of people trying to make money by shorting it.
I wouldn't encourage anyone to gamble in this economy, but especially not on a con-man with connections to very rich foreign governments who have a vested interest in making sure he makes money.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago

Just look at Tesla. Not as absurd as this, but still absurd. People have lost entire fortunes betting against wildly overvalued stocks...

The market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.

[–] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you don’t understand how shorting stocks work then don’t do it. Better to just buy a bunch of put options or derivatives that go up in value when the stock drops and have a built in stop loss.

If you short a stock directly the theoretical losses are infinite and the max profit is only the money you received from the short sell.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

Unsurprisingly, the put options were crazy expensive at IPO.

[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Gambling is still gambling no matter how much of a "sure thing" it seems like it would be. The more "obvious" something is, the less pay-off and higher cost there would be.

Plus, the money from gambling on the stock market comes from all the people being financially ruined by choosing wrong. Is that where you want your money to come from? Would you be able to stomache that?

[–] djsoren19@yiffit.net 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Plus, the money from gambling on the stock market comes from all the people being financially ruined by choosing wrong. Is that where you want your money to come from? Would you be able to stomache that?

In any normal circumstances, no, but I've very little empathy for anyone who still supports Donald Trump. Someone will inevitably take their money because they're idiots, it might as well be me.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 8 months ago

It's either gonna be Trump or shorters, so...

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

The only people who actually believe DJT is worth anything (both the person and the stock) are typically the kind of person I'm OK with screwing over. They gleefully cheer when harm comes to people I love, so I have no problem doing the same to them. Plus, his tax cuts for the wealthy actually increased my taxes a noticeable amount (the hard limit on tax exemption for high state tax areas), so I would feel like I'm just getting mine back from the people who voted for him.

[–] Brokkr@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Shorting a stock can be fairly risky, and if you're not familiar with it then don't do it.

However, if you are willing to risk some money and think a stock will go down within a certain time frame, then you could buy a put. Owning a put will allow you to get some of the gains from the stock falling for a fixed price. The risk is defined because you can't lose more than you buy the put for. So if the stock price goes up, you will have a defined loss.

The other wrinkle with puts (or calls) is that they expire (which a short stock does not). So you need to be aware of how the price will change with time as well. It is worth doing some reading on this subject. Getting the basic idea isn't too hard, but it is necessary before you make a purchase.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Obvious shorts can be dangerous because they can always be squeezed if too many people try to get in on it. Holding puts is much safer because your broker can force you to close a short position if it doesn't like the risk involved in it (infinite downside potential). Holding a put has no risk (the only downside is the up front cost to buy the put, so you're already in for that regardless of what the price does). But that said, you can still lose 100% of whatever you put into it easier than you'll lose 100% of a stock investment.

That's why I didn't touch DJT or RDDT, despite being pretty confident that they will fail in the long run. Short and medium term prices are unpredictable and become more likely to go up the more people bet they'll go down.

[–] Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Well, if enough people short it, people can hold onto stocks knowing you have to buy them back. Then you're actually encouraging stock prices to go up, screwing yourself.

[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've dabbled in stocks and made some good/some bad choices (with a small amount of "play" money I was comfortable with losing if it all went to shit), but some of these gambling investment strategies, I just don't understand how you're even supposed to initiate them and I'm guessing I'd get into more trouble than it'd be worth.

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Shorting a stock is riskier than most bets, because theoretically there is no limit to your loss. In practice, we've discovered that during a short squeeze, institutional investors can suspend trading and manipulate prices by kiting fake transactions. Of course, if you or I tried to skip out on covering our shorts, we'd probably go to prison.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee -2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)