GameStop Investors Who Bet Big – and Lost Big; When Do People Take Huge Risks?; My latest strategies for getting a COVID vaccination appointment
1) This Wall Street Journal article captures precisely what I've been warning about again and again: It's the "little guys" who get sucked in at the top of enormous bubbles like GameStop (GME) (aka, GameStink) and are incinerated... GameStop Investors Who Bet Big – and Lost Big. Excerpt:
Salvador Vergara was so enthusiastic about GameStop in late January that he took out a $20,000 personal loan and used it to purchase shares. Then the buzzy stock plunged nearly 80%.
GameStop's volatile ride is hitting the portfolios of individual investors like Mr. Vergara who purchased the stock in a social-media-fueled frenzy. These casual traders say GameStop was their "YOLO," or "you only live once," trade. They bought around its late January peak, betting it would continue its astronomical climb. While some cashed out before it crashed, others who hung onto their shares are in the red.
Mr. Vergara, a 25-year-old security guard in Virginia, started investing four years ago after deciding he wanted to retire young. To save money, he drives a 1998 Honda Civic, eats a lot of rice and lives with his dad. He stashed his savings mostly in diversified index funds, which are now valued at about $50,000. Then Mr. Vergara, a longtime reader of the WallStreetBets page on Reddit, saw others posting about buying GameStop shares and the stock's colossal rise.
He didn't want to touch his index-fund investments, so instead he got a personal loan with an 11.19% interest rate from a credit union and used it to fund most of his GameStop purchase. He bought shares at $234 each.
GameStop shares started the year around $19, zoomed to nearly $350 (and almost hit $500 in intraday trading) in late January, and then began to spiral back to earth. The shares closed Friday at $52.40, down 85% from the peak close.
"I thought it could go up to $1,000. I really believed in that hype, which was an awful thing to do," Mr. Vergara said.
He plans to hold on to the shares because he believes in the company's turnaround, he said, and use his paycheck to cover the monthly payments on the personal loan. Once the pandemic is over, he hopes to move back to his native Philippines, live off savings and start a charity. The GameStop loss set those plans back about six months, he said.
2) This research perfectly captures what happened on Reddit's WallStreetBets message board: The "courage" to buy GameStop was lauded – and led to a debacle... When Do People Take Huge Risks? Excerpt:
If we're so loss averse, why do we take such big swings in our lives?
Their theory: courage. The ability to take purposeful action in the face of fear is widely prized across cultures; one study found that courage was among just six values shared by nearly every philosophical and religious tradition.
Because much of the research on risk and loss aversion focuses on low-stakes financial gambles, Rucker and Gal suspected different patterns might emerge if they studied important life decisions, where courage is most likely to emerge.
Indeed, across several experiments, that's precisely what Rucker and Gal found. When facing a risky choice with meaningful consequences for their lives, people have the opportunity to display courage. And because people prize being courageous, in contrast to prior research findings, they may be more likely to opt for the high-risk, high-reward path.
"This suggests that, in contrast to some of the findings in controlled laboratory gambles, people might have a radically different response to risk in some situations," Rucker says. "When people see an opportunity to be courageous, and want to see themselves as courageous, that may actually lead to a preference for the riskier option."
The article concludes:
The Gifts and Perils of Courage
To these researchers, this work highlights an important and understudied aspect of decision-making: values like courage can override other psychological impulses, especially when the real-world stakes are high.
It also suggests that we need to evaluate how our desire for courage might push us toward decisions that aren't wise in the end. "You could imagine where you might get into trouble," Rucker says. "There's a danger of saying 'I want to feel courageous' when you're going down a path that is not a good decision."
"Sometimes you do need to be bold and courageous. But other times you might want to ask yourself, 'Wait, is being bold the right decision here, or do I need to take a step back and think through an appropriate, measured action?'"
3) In Tuesday's e-mail, I shared tips to help my fellow New Yorkers get a COVID-19 vaccination appointment.
Since then, I've learned a great deal more, so I wanted to share an e-mail I sent to friends and family that covers the latest strategies for getting one of the coveted shots... (Even if you don't live in New York City, I think a similar approach is likely to work elsewhere.)
I've volunteered twice in the past two weeks at a vaccination center in the South Bronx, so I've been closely following my fellow New Yorkers' efforts to get vaccinated.
I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that, as of Monday, a new category of people now qualify to receive the vaccine: In addition to anyone age 65 or older and people holding particular jobs with high potential for COVID exposure (full list here) – a total of 7 million New Yorkers – now an additional 3 million folks with certain underlying conditions like cancer, heart conditions, and severe obesity (full list here) also qualify.
The bad news is that, even if you qualify, it can be maddeningly difficult to get an appointment for the first shot (once you've done this, it's generally much easier to get the second shot, which is 28 days later for the Moderna vaccine that most New Yorkers are getting). The city says it's working on this problem: NYC finally fixing COVID vaccine sign-up system.
Here are my suggestions:
If you are a resident of the Bronx, you're in luck, as Yankee Stadium has a lot of capacity – and is only open to borough residents. Go to this website to see if there are appointments. When I first started writing this early in the evening of February 17, there were available appointments on February 25, 26, and 27. But two hours later, they were gone, so keep checking. You can also check Yankee Stadium appointments on Somos here, and lastly, you can show up in person to schedule an appointment.
If you are age 65-plus, your best bet may be Walgreens/Duane Reade and CVS (note: they're not vaccinating people with qualifying jobs or comorbidities in NY; here's the info for other states):
- Here's the Walgreens site, where you can enter your zip code (nothing within 25 miles of Manhattan for the next three days)
- Here's the CVS site, which lists locations in 19 states (and shows no available appointments in the entire state of NY right now)
(Rite Aid is also doing vaccinations in five states and two jurisdictions – California, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and New York City – but it doesn't have its own scheduling site.)
If you're not age 65-plus or a Bronx resident, it's going to be more difficult. Sadly, the official city website (https://vaccinefinder.nyc.gov) is worthless – it shows hundreds of vaccination sites, but when you go to each of them, after wasting your time entering all sorts of information, it tells you every appointment is booked. I've also heard the city's phone line at 1-877-VAX-4NYC is worthless as well.
Instead, go to the six sites listed below. None show any appointments right now, but don't despair! Keep the tabs for all of them open in your browser and regularly refresh them (maybe try odd hours like late night and early morning) until something opens up – and then grab it!
1) and 2) Here are two unofficial websites, which scan the official sites and show appointments as soon as they're added:
- TurboVax, which also posts new appointments on Twitter here
- NYC Vaccine List. Here are three tips for this site:
- Keep the default as "all available NYC regions" unless you prefer or are willing to drive to Long Island, Westchester, and/or Hudson Valley (none of which show any appointments right now).
- Uncheck the box that says "Include locations that only have appointments for 2nd Doses" – unless you're looking for a second dose.
- Lastly, one reader suggested installing the "Easy Auto Refresh" Chrome extension, which enabled him to get an appointment "during one of its 10-second refreshes."
3) The NYC Heath and Hospitals ("NYCHH") website is here (note that their vaccination centers are open only to NYC residents). After you answer a dozen questions at the bottom of the page, you will likely see this:
Don't give up, and don't refresh the web page or you'll have to answer the questions again... Instead, just uncheck and then re-check the blue box here:
(Don't click the link for "Click here for vaccine sites near you," as it will take you to the worthless city website.)
If you see an appointment, no matter that location/time/day, grab it – even if it's not at a location/time/day when you can make it. Here's why: Once you have an appointment in the system, you can then call the hotline (1-877-VAX-4NYC) and reschedule for a better location/time/day.
4) Somos runs the appointments for many smaller centers – its website is here, and its phone number is 833-SOMOSNY.
5) The official NYC website is here. Similar to the NYCHH website, it can also be refreshed without answering all of the questions again. When you get to Schedule an Appointment, just modify the zip code or date.
6) New York state runs 13 large-scale vaccination centers, and you can quickly check appointment availability here. I've also heard reports that if you repeatedly call the state hotline at 833-697-4829, you might get lucky.
Currently, only the Potsdam one has appointments, but that's a six-hour drive from NYC:
However, appointments regularly open up at the other 12 centers... so fill out your eligibility here, and then it'll show you a page listing each center, sorted by distance from you, and whether each one has availability. Here's what the page looks like right now for my zip code:
(Given that TurboVax and NYC Vaccine List scan the other websites, you may wonder why I recommend also checking the others yourself. The answer: Due to high demand, TurboVax and NYC Vaccine List may only list availability when, say, more than 10 appointments open up, so you might be able to find appointments if you check the other websites yourself.)
Lastly, you can find the latest tips in these groups on Reddit and Facebook.
Best regards,
Whitney