I was a bit surprised that both MSNBC and Netflix made documentaries about retail traders. Most of the action is done online. What is the look like here? Someone is typing into a box.
MSNBC's feature, Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets, uses a lot of stock footage. It seems like editors just slapped together whatever was handy and cheap in the case of Eat the Rich.
The shows seem to be less artistic and more content.
The kind of thing that is cheap for streamers to commission is what these seem to be. The story is gripping, but the choice to make a documentary or a TV show about it is baffling. Eat the Rich seems to be too contemptuous of its viewers to consider more creative uses of stock. The pieces of content were rushed, trying to grab attention while it was there.
Diamond hands uses several forum members as narrators so that viewers get to know and care about them Matt Kelly, a former military diver, recounts his sleepless nights and inability to focus on work as the stock began to soar. A woman who describes herself as having an "addictive personality" is moving into the world of gambling. It is tightly edited and has a good history of the immediate events.
Eat the Rich has bigger ambitions but they are not as great as they could be. It starts with the 2008 financial crisis, which is probably the cause of this deal. The financial crisis caused a lot of the under-40 retail traders using the company to lose their jobs. Younger people may have had to leave a foreclosed home because they couldn't get their first jobs. Wall Street was bailing out.
After the financial crisis, home prices and the stock market did not recover for the younger generation. They didn't have the money to buy those assets. They would often pay off debt. Most ordinary investors can't access the private markets that Silicon Valley boomed in. The rest of his age group didn't get rich. It's not much.
The cynicism and resentment from 2008 are needed to understand retail trading. Retail investors who got clobbered during the dot-com boom and bust are going to behave differently if you believe Wall Street is rigged.
Financial populism is defined by internet communities as Wall Street Bets.
The rise of Robinhood and other apps are included. Retail investors pooled their money so that they would be taken seriously by the broker. If you wanted to get into out-of-the-money options, there were other people, including the broker, who would try to convince you not to.
The first episode of Eat the Rich isbogged down with Wall Street jargon. A lot of time is spent explaining what hedge funds are. Most people who have read the business section of a newspaper in the past will be bored.
The choice to focus on Jim Cramer and Andrew Left was odd. The two men were popularizers. Cramer founded TheStreet.com and Left published his research so that anyone could use it. They were confused to be lumped in with the system they had spent their careers differentiating themselves from.
Both men were in charge of the younger people. Left started working with StockLemon.com in 2001. He is a hedge fund guy, but he also writes on the internet. He thought publishing his research might make it easier for retail investors to make informed decisions.
We are going to go ape like Michael Burry did in 2008
Wall Street Bets are what constitutes populism today. I think shorts are unpopular because of how they can make money off other people's pain. The SEC stopped short selling completely.
The keystone species in the financial system is the shorts, they help remove fraudulent activity from the marketplace. The fraud was exposed by the research company. The entire strategy at the firm is that. Jim Chanos was a big fan of Enron.
Some practices are eyebrow raising. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 According to data from S3 Partners, short interest was 140 percent of the float in GameStop.
After a short rap from a wannabe from New Jersey, the second episode starts. A sample song says we are about to go ape.
Eat the Rich focuses on the crazy. We met a service worker who was out of a job because of carbon dioxide. A worried father. A man who wants to make a TikTok house because he wants to do TikToks all day in a big mansion with pretty girls is here.
On September 8th, 2020, Jeff Amazon posted his thesis, "The REAL greatest short burn of the century." They rose another 22 percent on January 22nd before flying on January 25th.
For a documentary that promises to explain the GameStop short squeeze, and which luxuriates in backstory, Eat the Rich doesn't include the development of retail investor development.
The use of social media by Muskpredates anything by Gill.
Musk is a big fan of the two companies, which are often shorted on his account. The internet slapfight between Musk and Einhorn has been going on for a long time. Einhorn had taken a lot of losses on a short position in the company. Retail investors who own stock in the company were able to ask questions during the company's earnings calls last year.
The use of social media by Muskpredates anything done by Gill. Musk is so influential that he can change the prices of both Doge coin and Bitcoins. Setting up Musk's history with retail investors would help explain why so many retail investors jumped in after Musk's "GameStonk" Eat the Rich has a bunch of retail investors who say they love Musk but don't know why. It is difficult to understand why some savvy investors called the top when Musk started using the internet.
There are some things that are said about the importance of social media, but not much else. I get that TikTok is sexy for filmmakers, but as Ranjan Roy wrote, a redesign of r/WallStreetbets may have drawn the curious into it. It was part of what formed r/WallStreetBets in the first place, just as traditional media was more important towards the end of the run.
Gill-as-YouTuber is central to Eat the Rich because he can use his clips on the video sharing website. He didn't take part in the series Jeff Amazon did read Alvan's post. His brother is an aspiring actor. He made $8 million on his trades, but he is not a main character in the movie. He was insightful and I liked him here again. He knew he was a pilot fish. He doesn't seem like a person who harbors many illusions.
There was a David puppet in front of the game store.
It could have been better for Eat the Rich. Some odd speculation is entertained by it. Gill was engaged in market manipulation. Is it possible that the Citadel forced Robinhood's hand. It's odd that the series spends so much time on both possibilities when the answer seems to be no. It feints at the populism of Musk but doesn't explain them It doesn't talk about the Silicon Valley investors who got rich on Robinhood, it was just the company's founder and CEO.
According to Eat the Rich, hedge funds have clients that include pension funds, people's 401(k)s, and so on. It's fun to root against the hedge funds and the little guys. As long as it goes, that is fine. This wasn't a retail revolution. Some hedge funds made money as well. There was a David puppet in front of the game store. The narrative of retail traders taking their revenge on hedge funders was easy to understand.
It is a hell of a story and I am still writing about it. It is not particularly fun to look at. If you're interested in watching a documentary about the phenomenon, Diamond hands is a good place to start. The ambitions of Eat the Rich are not as big as they could be. It doesn't feel right.
I think that both Diamond Hands and Eat the Rich would have been better if they had been made into a show.
I don't know why they exist. Online things aren't always visual. The Eat the Rich and Diamond Hands would have been better if they were podcasts. Money could have been saved on stock footage.
There are 37 meme stocks now, and they weren't the only one. Retail investors are helping Bed Bath & Beyond get more credit. After allowing it to zero out $600 million in debt, AMC Theaters began to cater to the retail crowd by offering free popcorn to its retail investors.
Retail investors seem to have stopped buying stock this year. Zero percent interest rates caused a lot of money to be put into the economy. If you didn't like the acquisition target, you could put your cash in an SPAC and take more risks in your stock portfolio. You may have taken out a loan to buy a house because it was cheap.
A lot of froth went away when the Fed raised rates. In the second quarter, transaction-based revenue fell by half. In the second quarter of 2022, there was an exodus of active users, which was a third less than the year before. Assets under custody fell by a third. It is possible that a motivated community of retail investors could cause a stock market crash, but I wonder if that will happen more often now that money is tighter.
I don't know if it's possible to make a better documentary about the people on the internet. Maybe that's true. It won't happen if you just think of them as "content."
All Rights Reserved © 2024
