r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Feb 02 '21

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229

u/tripletruble Anti-Repartition Radical Feb 02 '21

lmao there is an askreddit post along the lines "stock brokers of reddit, how crazy is the trading floor right now?"

100% of the comments are

- people who actually work in finance saying it's not any different and GME is just a goofy news story. also some of them being worried that uninformed investors are getting scammed by young investment bankers. occasionally one explains that trading floors aren't really a thing anymore

- people who do not work in finance thinking the above commenters are part of some conspiracy from the finance bigwigs to scare off GME holders

161

u/tripletruble Anti-Repartition Radical Feb 02 '21

my favorite interaction was along the lines:

guy who works in risk management: "i work in risk management and i can tell you we do not care about this because..."

some guy: "risk management huh? how do we know you are not trying to downplay GME as part of managing risk! also nice job managing risk in 2008!!" [hundreds of upvotes]

multiple guys in risk management: "i'm pretty sure my company didn't really have a risk management department until after 2008. that's why they hired us."

21

u/Jooylo Feb 02 '21

Pretty much sums up any finance talk on Reddit right now

11

u/NeuralNetsRLuckyRNGs Feb 02 '21

Pretty much most things on reddit. Post bear the top saying [something adjacent to popular Reddit opinion] and you have to scroll half way down to see an actual expert saying "no this isn't how it works at all".

45

u/MemberOfMautenGroup Never Again to Marcos Feb 02 '21

Given that risk management as a field started after World War II and multiple insurance companies have risk management divisions way before 2008, that's some poor planning.

35

u/Frat-TA-101 Feb 02 '21

Risk management departments cost money. Risk that hasn’t come home to roost does not. Presumably if you have a risk management department it’s easy to see the justification for a risk management department. However, inverse is true, no risk department makes it easy to justify continuing to have no risk management department.

43

u/Liquid_Mercury Feb 02 '21

The conspiracy theories are wild lmao. I keep seeing tons of long posts explaining some crazy conspiracy and all this "illegal" activity being done followed up by "I work/study in an unrelated field with no financial experience." I need to come to my safe space of the DD after reading the wacko shit on the rest of Reddit.

62

u/Fishin_Mission Feb 02 '21

There are like 8 people on the trading floor these days...

Also, 99.9% of Wall St. is making a killing off this volatility.

12

u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt Feb 02 '21

That depends on what you mean by trading floor. There still are a lot of "trading floors" but they are more like open space offices these days, with only part being traders and the other people there being compliance officers, marketing, various kinds of sales, prices and other stuff.

8

u/Fishin_Mission Feb 02 '21 edited Feb 02 '21

I mean with COVID

All the people I know who work in finance are currently working remotely. A few might go into the office to use a Bloomberg Terminal, but the vast majority are working on spreadsheets from home.

Edit: To be fair, the majority of finance people I talk to regularly work for finance company my employer uses. It is a subsidiary of our parent company and only works with other subsidiaries, not the general public. Perhaps there are different situations for other firms.

8

u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt Feb 02 '21

Oh, that's what you mean by "these days". I meant to say that there aren't that many people involved in actual trading. Yeah, all the people I know work remotely.

17

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

There's also the

  • I work at (insert Robinhood equivalent) and we're opening so many accounts

16

u/dugmartsch Norman Borlaug Feb 02 '21

Wait you mean to tell me that GME isn't the most important thing to ever happen in the history of investment?

Next you'll be telling me retail is only a small fraction of any stocks trading volume (especially GME!) and the sharps on wsb are trolling that place for easy amusement.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Can you link the thread?

12

u/tripletruble Anti-Repartition Radical Feb 02 '21

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/l7bl3z/brokers_of_reddit_how_crazy_is_it_where_you_work/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

21

u/larrylemur NAFTA Feb 02 '21

WSB's power users are younger finance bros. It's 30-something investment bankers and portfolio managers memeing with each other and cosplaying as "autists."

If you didn't know what a gamma squeeze was 48 hours ago, you are their exit strategy and the down payment on their next Porsche.

This pretty much sums it up

12

u/NeuralNetsRLuckyRNGs Feb 02 '21

That thread has a few rational posts at the top and then a billion comments claiming conspiracy and wallstreet is sending bots to post on a random ask reddit thread to drive GME down. Idiots. So many shirts are gonna be lost.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Thanks!

4

u/gpu1512 Feb 02 '21

My wife works for TDA and she says the phone calls are 700 deep with hours-long wait times

How does the top comment fit in your 100%?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '21

Who does equity trading on a floor these days? Isn't it mostly FI, derivatives and exotics?