$15.5B dollars, invented out of ether, and bestowed on the lucky gamblers. The stock market is so efficient that it can create wealth without bothering with economic activity. No jobs created; no products produced; and nothing to trickle down.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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Unlike the market cap numbers that get thrown around when people say X dollars "destroyed" from the stock market or Y dollars "gained", this isn't nearly as imaginary (or invented out of ether).
Depending on whether we're talking about real shorting, or put options, it's one of two things:
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They borrowed expensive SpaceX shares, sold them, bought back for cheaper, the people who bought shares at the higher price paid for it.
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They bought put options and exercised them. The bank or financial organization selling the put options paid for it.
Now I went to actually read the article and this particular number was #1, but I'm sure a lot of people profited through #2 as well (the wallstreetbets types).
I did #2 except I didn't exercise, I just sold it to someone else when the pice was up a bit on my small bet. I like to think that circuitously, Elon bought me a few lunches because screw that guy
It’s not just institutional investors selling put options. Lots of risk taking retail traders do it as well.
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That's what used to be called a scam.
Some still do
Short sellers are an important part of the equity ecosystem as it provides downward pressure in price discovery. Lucky gamblers have made, and are making, far more than that with long positions in equity and options.
It's difficult to say that we don't need markets at all (e.g. would you plant cotton with no idea what it will sell for at harvest?). It then becomes a slippery slope of abuse and wealth concentration.
If anything this all feels like a failure of regulation and the SEC not going far enough
It then becomes a slippery slope of abuse and wealth concentration.
That's what stock markets are right now.
Investment provides resource allocation, which is not something that just happens on its own. That is, it says "this company or project is a worthwhile project to allocate capital to, and this is not". The money here was also not invented out of ether, but rather lost by investors who shifted capital to SpaceX earlier, and gained by those who tried to shift capital away from SpaceX earlier; other investors came to agree with those shifting capital away. Those who do so earlier are rewarded; this encourages earlier efficient movement of capital.
Resource allocation is a necessary part of economic activity; any economic system will require such a thing to be done. You could have your government do it instead of investors, as in a command economy. Countries generally don't do that, because it has run into more serious problems of misallocation.
Not invented, siphoned off from those who can't game the system like they can. That means you and me.
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It provides a service of figuring out what the value of spacex really is.
Why that service is allowed to generate so much money for people is bonkers to me.
This doesn't hit these sociopaths, the whole stock market system is rigged so they make paper profits no matter what happens, at the expense of others who aren't in the Epstein class. A pump and dump like this is just a little faster.
In the same vein, this is partly why I’ve never understood the mindset of individual investors. Like, it’s extremely arrogant to seriously believe that you have an edge over highly resourced institutions and billionaire investors who can afford the best analysts and mathematical models on top of their market influence. I can assure you that whatever strategy you have, theirs is better, and they don’t have to play by the same rules. What can you hope to bring to the table when you’re swimming with these sharks?
who can afford the best analysts and mathematical models on top of their market influence.
Why bother with that when you can just do a little inside trading during the next child raping party?
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Any edge that I have as an individual isn’t relevant against these people. They have far superior information. I don’t have a chance.
yeap, you are 100% correct
Plus, it's not anecdotal AND goes beyond your statement.
Through the years and statistical analysis, it has been proven that picking stock, even by professionals is still mostly luck. I think analysts have ran out of ridiculous examples of animals picking stock randomly and still coming on top in a long enough time period.
So if even the "professionals" are not really doing much, why would any individual nurture the thought that THEY could do better?
https://unwall.app/www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/12/20/any-monkey-can-beat-the-market/
https://acquirersmultiple.com/2018/04/daniel-kahneman-the-illusion-of-stock-picking-skill/
So if even the "professionals" are not really doing much, why would any individual nurture the thought that THEY could do better?
Because they think the luck factor gives them a chance. they are gambling addicts.
To explain why you did so well, so the chumps who didn't bother have to go and sit in court sometimes, which probably gets them loser points at the next child raping party.
Fuck, this is dark. I'm gonna go hug someone.
What can you hope to bring to the table when you’re swimming with these sharks?
..more food..
Some folks like to gamble! More and more people are desperation gambling these days out of doomer mindsets that see 0dtes and kalshi bets as their way out of crushing poverty.
And here and there, it's possible to look at pricing and conclude it's pants-on-head bananas. Trading and therefore price action is dominated by algorithms which amplifies hype cycles. Who couldn't see SpaceX as being overvalued? Other than the assholes at NASDAQ
And here and there, it’s possible to look at pricing and conclude it’s pants-on-head bananas. Trading and therefore price action is dominated by algorithms which amplifies hype cycles. Who couldn’t see SpaceX as being overvalued?
But that's the problem. Many of us definitely knew SpaceX was overvalued. It should have been a no-brainer to short this stock at IPO... however, look at Tesla stock. That shit should have cratered years ago but still hasn't. I wanted to short this stock, but I didn't trust the Musk morons to not continue humping his sack. Even when you can see that something is pants-on-head bananas, there are enough idiots out there (and enough insider traders) making shit irrational.
Movies like the Big Short, Margin Call, shows like Billions, or whatever the inheritance show was, make people think they can be the ones smarter.
However, most individual investors aren't usually of the arrogance that they'll do better than the billionaires and hedge funds just of the arrogance they can still get more scraps than others and won't get eaten themselves.
There’s also the individual investors who care about the morality of their investments more than the profits. Not putting money into Nazi owned companies for example. Fuck anyone with a single cent in spacex or Tesla or anything with musk’s disgusting fingerprints on it.
I think this is a much more attainable goal. You’re not trying to do better in a numeric sense but in a moral sense.
Why I'll never touch the stock market.
If investment and retail banks are not separate...you are always touching the stock market.
Shill account for townflex dot com
I would have loved to short this stock, but Tesla's idiotic valuation and stock price made me nervous about it.
Watching the big slide over the past month has been pretty funny, though.
It looked like one of the easiest short, but I am not allowed to short individual stocks :(
At what price point does Muskrat get his loans called in?
His net worth is still half a trillion more than it was a year ago.
He didn't buy shares in SpaceX, he already had them before the IPO
FYI, that stock is used as collateral for the loans which fuel his lifestyle. When that stock drops to a certain price, those loans get called.
FFS, he doesn't have anywhere near half a trillion in liquidity.
That only matters if lenders a) don't believe he can pay the loans back, and b) would not themselves be hurt by calling in loans. With how incestuous the Epstein class is, my cynical bet is that he gets away with far too much for far too long
He does have loans, but a lot of people think he still has them from purchasing Twitter, but he actually went away from that during the Twitter purchase. Im sure its a lot without twitter even, but its not the crazy large number it was briefly.
AI generated image 💔
I dont think this was due to short sellers…
You are confusing correlation with causation.
They didn’t short rockets: They shorted Elon Musk’s promise machine. For years he’s sold investors a never ending stream of revolutionary breakthroughs that were always just around the corner. Eventually reality catches up. Even the world’s best engineers can’t justify a valuation built on perpetual hype instead of consistently delivered results.
This is actually pretty normal. The stock usually drops after the initial launch hype dies down, and then it begins to slowly rise again over time.
It's just made worse this time by the smaller float, and the soon to be earlier than usual blackout window for insiders lifting
Not at my old company... no wonder they laid off so much of the workforce and dismantled and sold the rest
Lets wait to see how low and how long it goes until it starts to raise.
This is the correct explanation
Only if they sold.
And I hope they did. Squeeze the bastards.
The short sellers were guaranteed sales at those prices
Nothing is really guaranteed in investing (unless you're in public office and can insider trade or you're a billionaire), though the post IPO dip has happened often enough that, yes, it probably isn't the worst idea to have a plan.
I mean... short selling requires a buyback at a set price... it's one of the few guarantees there are in the stock market.
Granted the value isn't guaranteed to go down, just the buyback and price
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