Critical Support for r/wallstreetbets
You must live under a rock if you haven’t heard the story about GME stock, but just in case you haven’t heard the news, here is a very brief summary of what happened.
Melvin Capital, a big hedge-fund, was engaged in short-selling stock of Gamestop, a company that did very well as a brick and mortar retailer in malls about 20 years ago, but was struggling in the digital game era. Short-selling means the hedge fund was borrowing GME stock to sell, betting the company’s worth would continue to drop, and then would purchase those shares back at a lower price later when they were due. The difference between the sell and buy-back price is where they make their profit. Short-selling is pretty common when a company is expected to go bankrupt, and hedge funds making that call can actually push a company into bankruptcy by setting the market tone. So that’s what was happening with Gamestop.
But a bunch of retail investors — small fry with small accounts on cute little apps, like Robinhood or CashApp, or your boomer-age dad checking stock prices in the newspaper — mostly operating on reddit, got the news that this hedge fund was way over-leveraged on stock of a shop most of them had nostalgic, warm feelings for. They didn’t want Gamestop to go bankrupt. So they snapped up GME stock, driving the price up. Way up, for way longer than any of the hedge funds expected. Instead of short-selling for a profit, they were forced to cover their positions to the tune of billions of dollars, sparking rumours that Melvin Capital went bankrupt (it didn’t). Ultimately, r/wallstreetbets cost the hedge funds $19 billion.
With all the attention they’re getting, the subreddit has been flooded. They bill themselves “4chan that found a Bloomberg terminal,” so I expected a bunch of Trump-voting, basement-dwelling, crude assholes who only wanted to get rich quick. But that isn’t what I found, and at this point, I firmly believe they are selling their community short.
This is reddit we are talking about, and a forum filled with a ton of straight white dudes being bros. They regularly call themselves and each other autists and r*tards, albeit with camaraderie and good humor. They absolutely hate regulation, and they absolutely want to get rich quick. These are not your socialist comrades, and while some of them remember Occupy Wall Street and the 1% fat cats who drank champagne while smugly looking on, these people are capitalist to their bones.
But they also genuinely care about each other. In the few days I spent lurking, I have seen lots of folks talking about rockets to the moon, tendies, APES TOGETHER STRONK, and diamond hands. But I’ve also seen people offer total strangers some money to get some food, their only source of brotherhood being participation in this subreddit. I’ve seen people congratulate each other on their wins, and console each other on their losses. I saw people console a woman with late stage breast cancer, and congratulate a transgender person on being able to afford their gender-affirming surgery using the gains they made on some of their stock sales.
And, not for nothing, but in a subreddit dedicated to treating the stock market like the casino it is, I have not seen a single Soros meme, nor Rothschild rant. Not a single goddamn one. I cannot tell you how impressive that is, especially in the hyper-polarised, conspiracy soaked, thoroughly bigoted cesspit online spaces are in these days.
Above all, the users in this subreddit have turned decidedly….populist. So many people have truly heart-breaking stories about how fucked they were in 2008. How these hedge funds and Wall Street shenanigans broke their families and ruined their lives, killed their dreams, with no bail out for the little guy in sight. In some cases, the downturn killed members of their families by prompting illness, destitution, and suicide. And the slow rage at seeing them bailed out while they were condemned to useless suffering and more than a decade of a slog just to stay above water….if they even managed that.
Some of these people are well-off, but a number of these people are poor. All of them detest the 1% and the rigged game that is our financial system. They all agree that this isn’t an economy that works for most people, and they are eager to make predatory institutions and the people behind them pay. Once Robinhood restricted trading in a blatant act of market manipulation, it was war. What more proof do you need that the system is rigged when they change the rules on you to benefit the hedge funds without warning?
The vast majority of these people are aware this won’t end well. Many of them are not going to make money. Many of them will bet the farm and lose it all. And they are alright with that. r/wallstreetbets is about making money, but this push is about bloodying the nose of Wall Street. These people have already lost it all before, sometimes multiple times. They aren’t scared of poverty. They are perfectly ready to play chicken with the fat cats and lose $1000 just to see these untouchable fucks lose billions.
And it’s working.
In conclusion, critical support for r/wallstreetbets. If you can afford it, buy into GME and AMC, and then you stick your diamond hands in your pockets and you FUCKING HOLD.
This isn’t financial advice. I just like the stock.
