Do you think you will need to explain the trading frequency to the tax authorities next year?
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I assume that he has a separate gambling account 
That’s a good point, haven’t thought about it 
I am sure the tax authority is familiar with Reddit and r/WSB
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They don’t have to. Trading frequency is one of the criteria they look at when deciding if they should tax your capital gains: Taxes on Trading Profits in Switzerland - moneyland.ch
I have been avoiding selling within 6 months, but in practice in depends on the canton and on the rest of picture. I imagine they won’t be very trigger-happy, but still, I’d keep the tax aspect in mind. Or reach for the sky, if I’d made serious money with frequent trading I’d be too happy with the gains to mind paying taxes on that 
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Translation: They don’t care since it’s just one of the points.
To help avoid thiniking about it every fricking time you buy or sell stocks: If you make more money selling stocks than your actual wage, then have a look at the rules. Otherwise don’t worry.
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Someone is salty. 
“If you want to gamble, go to the casinos. This is not what the markets are for,” Loop Capital analyst Anthony Chukumba warned retail investors playing GameStop (GME).
“This is not investing,” he told Yahoo Finance Live during Monday’s trading session.
If those analysts think they are more clever than the regular Robinhooder/WSBer, why don’t they apply their supreme knowledge to use them to their own benefit, and strip cash off them?
I find this “public announcement” hilarious, like telling 4y/o kids playing at the football pitch they are not allowed to pick up the ball with their hands. 
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I do worry because of exactly this reason. These professional trader classification thing seems just very unpredictable and somehow massively out of tune with todays smartphone trading. If you hang out on WSB and trade on your mobile I would not say that I am a professional, but at any given point the tax office might decide that I am and that I actually owe them 30, 40, 50k? How am I supposed to sleep at night? 
Well if you bet 1k and make 100k and your wage is 90k you might get asked a few questions, otherwise (probably) not.
(probably) not.
The problem lies in the vagueness of it. No one can tell for sure. And the consequences are potentially hitting fairly heavy with added income tax + AHV/AVS on top. But then again we enjoy untaxed capital gains in Switzerland, how is that even a thing haha.
Relax, it’s only January, there are 11 months left to lose those gains .
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That’s good to know! 2020 is the first relevant year for me and I did break 2 rules. Sold one stock within 6 months and invested far, far more than I had at the beginning of the year. But my capital gains are a fraction of my salary.
Markets are regulated tho, if it causes market distortion there might be some intervention (didn’t that happen on the VW squeeze?). I don’t know if regulations are prepared for crowdsourced pump/dump though, so it might take a while.
Also GME can still sell more stock if people are willing to buy that much (would be the smart thing to do for them 
)
This scheme exists for long (end 1990’s) and at least the SEC knows (or should know) how to handle it. For example look here.
11 months, out of which I will have to stick to GME for 5 more months before selling. Bumpy ride ahead.
And apparently the shorts did not get any less today btw. The squeeze lies still ahead.
Looks a bit different, but interesting. I wonder how it might turn out if (when?) people get hurt on the way down, could the people who promoted the scheme be charged?
(Best case it becomes one of those “no relation to valuation” stock like TSLA and nobody gets charged )
If we talk about regulations the institutional investors, short sellers and market makers can distort the market much more than an internet forum. In this particular case GME has been on the SEC watchlist for failures to deliver about 30 days and nothing has happened.
On the other hand, if the retail investors are able to share knowledge and play against the institutions, suddenly we see news articles about casinos and alleged market manipulation.
This has been funny to follow. Hedge funds with billions are now crying ”not fair, they took our ball.”
And today’s Money Stuff is about the regulatory implications. Matt Levine seems to imply that at least there’s no clear cut precedent on the market market manipulation/coordination part.
The short squeeze might be an issue tho:
I suppose a really coordinated successful effort to squeeze borrow might count as market manipulation, at least in the SEC’s view, but I’m not sure how serious this effort was. In any case it hasn’t worked. “Despite a punishing two weeks and relentless chat-room taunting, GameStop Corp. haters are showing no signs of surrender,” Bloomberg reported yesterday; short interest has barely budged, and there are still shares available to borrow.
But for that it probably would need to be successful first.
Melvin Capital, one of the original big GME shorters, received a $2.7B bailout from other funds this week. Melvin was down 30% in 2021 due to various short positions.
"He was short in a market that no longer allows people to stay short,” complained one hedgie. “Today, you take a position after doing the work then some guys on Reddit use their phones to buy penny stocks and you end up with your face ripped off. It’s nuts.”
The “hedgies” conveniently omit that a new activist investor jumped on board and they are reworking the company strategy. It was not just redditors who created this situation.
The total amount of shorts has not changed a lot but there has been a rotation. Those who shorted when the stock was <$10 have probably had to cover but new shorters have been eager to get in.
It still looks like more than 100% of available shares are shorted.
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Yes, some indeed some people might have given up (does the bailout imply that, or they’re just getting extra capital but still sustaining it?), but stock isn’t squeezed yet so there’s no reason for the SEC to pursue it I suppose.
By the way, the taunt reddit trade idea is kinda fun, I wonder how meta this thing might get.
I also appreciate the conclusion (and IMO that’s where the SEC should intervene, as it disrupts the markets, but then it might not be able to do anything anyway):
A popular conclusion from the GameStop story is “well I guess the stock market is nonsense now,” and I’m not sure that conclusion is wrong. Seems like the sort of thing the SEC wouldn’t like. But what can they do about it?
