THERE IS A whole bunch of crap going on in the news about the Stock Market, you musta heard about this, and look, I don’t know anything about the Stock Market, except that I would like to Get Paid, and buck for your bang-wise, Lottery Tickets and the Stock Market are definitely ways to Get Rich Quick, American Dream-wise, because as far as the American Dream is concerned, I am talking about doing as little work as possible and hitting the jackpot, OK?
So right now there are these people—as opposed to Robots, which are automatically bad—on the Internet, who are doing this thing where they agreed together, as, like, a party mob, almost a goof, to buy the stock of a company called GameStop, which is one of those places I have definitely walked past in a strip mall, but I’m not good at electronic games, so I have never been in a GameStop, and I have no fucking idea what goes on in there, and I am not going to expend any energy finding out, because it doesn’t matter, it’s just a thing that has stock you can buy, and this bunch of like-minded people, they just keep buying the stock, you can Google this shit if you haven’t heard about it, all these people who are playing the Stock Market game decided to buy the shit outta this stock to make some cash, maybe, but to also tear a big money-shaped spite-hole outta these other people who were buying the GameStop stock, for the purpose of remaining rich, which is what a Hedge Fund does, I think.
A Hedge Fund is totally a Rich People thing, when you have so much fucking dough and so many investments in the Stock Market and stuff that you start to worry about if it’s gonna melt, so you hire a bunch of big brains to push your dough around on both sides of the Market, so you can make your Rich Person pile while you protect the Core of the Nest Egg with all these little hedged-bet crumbs. Or like, you’re the worst person at the racetrack, plopping down $100,000 on the favorite to show in each race while also betting $10 apiece on a field of exactas. So you collect $120,000 in each of the first nine races, lose a hundred grand in the tenth race, and you’re up $79,500 for the day even if none of your exotics hit, and then every coupla days (because you’re a high roller and you go the the track for a week, or a month—you DO hit a triple or a super pick six or something insane, while the rest of the poor schmucks at the track (me) have to choose between volume bets on the favorite to show—where if the favorite loses the first race instead of the tenth race, they’re ruined—or bleeding away their money on failed exactas. I’m starting a band called Failed Exactas.
Basically, if I was a Rich Person, I’d be rich! I’d put my dough in the bank and get a Certificate of Deposit or something like that, seriously, someplace where I didn’t have to worry about it, or hurt anybody, you know? Government Bonds or something, lend money to cities that need to build Infrastructures or something. When I see these Rich People do this shit where they wanna protect their pile but also play the Market, it’s hard to feel bad about them when a bunch of gamers decide to fuck with their play. I mean, it’s the world of High Finance, right?
Of course there’s all those movies and stuff about how the Wall Street people are animals and pirates and it’s Blood Sport. I used to watch a dramatic TV series called Billions on Showtime, which features a bunch of shitty selfish people who make money playing the Market. I haven’t seen it in awhile because I cancelled my cable to save money, goddammit.
So that’s where I learned about the Stock Market, there’s this move called Buying Short—which, unless you are a serious Wall Street thief and have Inside Information—is where you get your dealer to front you some, just like when you call a bookie to make a bet, it’s a bet, and you’re wagering in America’s Casino that the stock will go down, and the marker is the share of stock you bought, and if the price goes up, you are fucked, because now you gotta pay for the shit you bought, except now it costs way more than you pretended to pay for it.
Last time I looked, the GameStop thing costs way way more than it did a month ago, because these goofballs keep buying the stock, and that drives the price up, supply-and-demand-wise, but while you have this one group buying the stock, you have the other group, who got all fucked up by the stock-buying, either dumping their stock and losing a buncha dough, or buying more so they can stay in the game, which is Chicken! The game! Where you run at somebody or even worse, get in your car and drive it toward another car, and the first person to decide that they don’t wanna die swerves outta the way and they lose, because they are a Chicken, which apparently is an animal that gets scared or something, I don’t get it, I mean, I know some people who have a chicken coop and some chickens, and there’s a rooster in there who wants to kill anything that’s not a chicken, so if a chicken is not a chicken, why the fuck are people buying this goddamn stock, you know?
Meanwhile, there’s gotta be sharpies looking at all the action on this GameStop and realizing they can jump in and out and make some quick dough, My American Dream!
Also, I’m sure there’s lotsa regular Stock Market traders who do this shit as well, it’s not just big faceless evil companies of bad Rich people, it’s regular squirrels, trying to get a nut, but also, what about people’s Retirement Plans, where they have their hard-earned cash in some deal where it gets invested for them? I would feel bad if a bunch of regular people got burned behind this shit, if the people running their plans got in on this shorting stuff.
Also-also, what about my 401(k)? I used to have a job with good benefits, and one of the things I got was the ability to pay into a 401(k), which is made out of a bunch of different money-things, but also a lot of fucking Stock Market shit, and now I’m mad because I don’t understand all the things in my 401(k). I mean I don’t understand any of it, so I split my dough up into a million little pieces of all the different things in the 401-fucking-(k) because I figured, goddammit, I figured I’d hedge my bets! I’m acting like a rich person, what the fuck?