Goliath story, where David - at least on some fronts - appears to be winning.įamed investor and CNBC personality Jim Cramer called the GameStop drama the “ squeeze of a lifetime.” Bloomberg opinion columnist Matt Levine posited that one possible explanation for what happened could be “utter nihilism” on the part of the Reddit crowd, a story “perhaps best told with a series of rocket emojis.” Or maybe one of the WallStreetBets moderators put it best to Wired: “It was a meme stock that really blew up.” An army of traders on the Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets helped drive a meteoric rise in GameStop’s stock price in recent days, forcing halts in trading and causing a major headache for the short sellers betting against it and banking on the stock falling. In the GameStop saga, at least, the answer is yes. Sure, small-time investors trade a lot, sometimes to the annoyance of more traditional institutions, but are they really consequential? And one big question amid the frenzy has been how much the little guys really matter. Who knew the first big 2021 stock market story would be … GameStop? But here we are.ĭay trading and individual investing have boomed over the past several months, with activity often taking place or being discussed on platforms such as Reddit and Robinhood instead of in more traditional arenas.
