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The Almighty Buck

Wall Street Fund Wants To Hire r/WallStreetBets Users To Help Pick Meme Stocks (gizmodo.com) 27

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Cindicator Capital is the kind of investment fund that relies on software and algorithms to model investment strategies based on any number of disparate factors. In the wake of the WallStreetBets subreddit throwing hedge funds into chaos and driving stock prices to non-sensical extremes, Cindicator has posted a job listing on LinkedIn hoping to hire one of the Redditors to conjure up some unintuitive data points.

The listing, for a Sentiment Trader, limits its search to applicants who have at least a year's active membership on WallStreetBets and at least 1,000 of Reddit's goodwill karma points. Job seekers should understand probabilities, but "higher education in economics or finance" is disqualifying. "In-depth knowledge" of the language of the finance world and its mechanisms is required. The rest of the listing gets more esoteric, saying prospects should display "unbiased thinking that defies authority," and they will spend most of their time "on Reddit, Discord chats, and Twitter to feel the pulse of the tens of millions of retail traders." Additionally, "a refined taste for memes and a sense of humour" is essential. The salary is $200,000 plus bonuses.

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Wall Street Fund Wants To Hire r/WallStreetBets Users To Help Pick Meme Stocks

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  • by JonnyCalcutta ( 524825 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @08:07AM (#61050766)

    As an anarcho-syndicalist whose goal is to destroy capitalism from the inside, I think I'm the perfect candidate. Also, I like memes about sherry and antique hunting.

  • by bluegutang ( 2814641 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @08:11AM (#61050786)

    Whether or not Cindicator Capital goes on to hire any of these Redditors, and whether they go on to listen to the advice of any Redditors they do hire, they just bought them a lot of seemingly good publicity at minimal cost...

    • Good publicity? They plan to hire people to perform pump and dump scams for them.

      My guess is they will keep their usernames secret so the idiots at WSB don't catch on.

      • All publicity is good publicity, and most people reading this story will not think about the implications or what that means. Hell, people still believe this was little people on one little sub on reddit that moved the market on this one etf, despite their capitalization. The data doesn't bore that out, but no one likes a story about how the little guy on reddit is being manipulated and used by other hedge funds to manipulate the market and do naked shorts. Not to mention, doing research real investigati
  • by fleeped ( 1945926 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @08:13AM (#61050796)

    In a 2 player game, if you're playing both players, you'll definitely win. Or at least that's what they think. Way to sow discord in a community though. "Who's the shill?"

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @08:15AM (#61050800)
    The magic happens because they aren’t in the confines of the “system”.
    • Kinda where my head was here too. If they do hire someone, the system will beat the spirit out of them that lead to the GME craziness within a month or two and they'll just be another cog in the wall street machine. No way they'll actually listen to them or let them trade as they please.

  • A no brainer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @08:21AM (#61050842)
    $200k is cheap to see if having a non-finacial person trade on sentiment and make money. They say they have tools already to do this and want to add in a human to see if the combination produces better results. If it does, they'll hire more, if not they simply fire the person and move on. Eiither way, it is a cheap experiment.
    • by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      $200k is cheap to see if having a non-finacial person trade on sentiment and make money.

      Don't they also generate sentiment?
      I thought the bigger effect came from them leading/influencing a bunch of people on reddit, not their financial analysis per se.

      • $200k is cheap to see if having a non-finacial person trade on sentiment and make money.

        Don't they also generate sentiment? I thought the bigger effect came from them leading/influencing a bunch of people on reddit, not their financial analysis per se.

        My guess, from reading the job posting is they want to gauge sentiment and trade on that rather than create it.

        There approach seem to be to trade on what they calculate is the market "sentiment" and use that to predict what stocks to short or go long in. It looks to me like a variant on the chartist approach and it will be interesting to see how well it works long term. It's interesting they want someone with no training in finance; the cynic in me says the reason is not they want an "untainted" person

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          My guess, from reading the job posting is they want to gauge sentiment and trade on that rather than create it.

          They're not going to advertise for someone to 'astroturf and the manipulate market'.

          It's interesting they want someone with no training in finance; the cynic in me says the reason is not they want an "untainted" person but that someone who could gauge sentiment and understands finance would demand a lot more than 200K

          The cynic in me says the reasons are more likely that they don't want someone that knows the law, or they want someone that doesn't know what they're actually doing, or both.

          As for creating sentiment, I suspect that would come close to doing a pump and dump so they'll stay away from that and simply make money trading

          That's a fair point. I maybe lack the faith that they'd accept large profits when they can flirt with the boundaries of the law in pursuit of massive ones.

          • It's interesting they want someone with no training in finance; the cynic in me says the reason is not they want an "untainted" person but that someone who could gauge sentiment and understands finance would demand a lot more than 200K

            The cynic in me says the reasons are more likely that they don't want someone that knows the law, or they want someone that doesn't know what they're actually doing, or both.

            Fair point. Either way they want someone who'll work cheap and be easy to get rid of.

            As for creating sentiment, I suspect that would come close to doing a pump and dump so they'll stay away from that and simply make money trading

            That's a fair point. I maybe lack the faith that they'd accept large profits when they can flirt with the boundaries of the law in pursuit of massive ones.

            True, but if you can accurately gauge sentiment and watch what other big traders are doing you could legally make a lot of money and, depending on how good you are at it, the amount left on the table simply wouldn't be worth the risk; especially since

    • Just don't tell them what the real traders make.

  • I'll tell them to buy tons of RKDA.

    Not because I bought thousands of shares, or anything. I just feel like it would be a good meme.

  • by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Thursday February 11, 2021 @09:43AM (#61051182) Journal
    "Hi! We would like you to tell us which stocks you are going to manipulate next so we can get in on it. We will pay you if you tell us which ones you are going to manipulate before you do it."
  • Back in the old days, there was Hamster Dance. A crude (even for the time) Web Page, with animated hamsters and a catchy wav file being played in a loop.

    Because the site got popular, they made a new version full of flash animation and extended the song and gave each hamster personalities.... To a point no one cared, and it never got a Blockbuster movie out of it. (Yet?)

    The Redit GameStop surge, was a blip, it just got popular for a little bit, then it became old news and it died down. Stocks were a bit c

  • You can't centralize decentralization.

    Memes are a complex distributed function of social media, unpredictable and uncontrollable. You could know everything there is to know about memes and still be helpless to guess what will spread and what will die.

    This job makes about as much sense as corporations and governments creating their own blockchains. Arguably the most useful part of a blockchain is decentralization, which becomes pointless when you try to own one.
    • If they want to understand memes, it is probably best for them to talk to their PR department..

    • They don't want to centralize it. They want a head's up so they can make money.
    • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      The point or expectation isn't to bat 1.000. Perfect is the enemy of good, or even decent given the very insignificant 200k annual cost.

      • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

        And the job isn't to create meme stocks. It's simply to spot them as they ferment. Granted the observation may affect the germination, but the observation simply needs to adapt. Being a little bit behind is a lot better than being totally unaware.

  • Going to need at lot more than that compensation to pay for your defense when the SEC comes knocking accusing you of market manipulation.

Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

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