This is an excellent overview of the GameStop stock situation. A breakdown of the GameStop situation – The Washington Post:
…For investors who think in terms of fundamentals, what was happening with GameStop’s stock was a slap in the face — anathema to “the point” of the market. On Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) penned a letter to the acting chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, asking: “What steps will the SEC take to ensure that securities markets better reflect prices that are in line with the intrinsic and fundamental value of underlying companies?”
Hopefully the answer is “nothing.” Free markets mean that people get to make their own choices. It that means a tulip mania on the Dow Jones, so be it. In the short-term the markets can be absolutely irrational. We should not care particularly, though I’m on board with the idea that we don’t necessarily reward this behavior. I’d be fine with a higher short-term capital gains tax and a correspondingly lower long-term capital gains tax. Society is better served when the markets are for investment, not straight out gambling.
“At some point, it ends. Famously, the market can stay irrational longer than people can stay solvent,” said Harry Mamaysky, professor at the Columbia Business School. “I feel like this is the kind of thing that everyone can lose money on. It’s one of those situations where it’s not obvious that it ends well for anyone. … I think when it all ends, it’ll be very, very obvious to everyone how it should have ended.”
I think so too.