Reddit vs. Wall Street
Can you believe 2021 was the year that regular folks decided to have fun with stocks and kind of upend the entire financial system? What a wild ride.
In January, retail investors who congregated on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit decided to start buying up the stock of decidedly not cool companies to stick it to hedge funds who were counting on those companies to fail. When a coordinated move sent GameStop’s stock up 1900%, traditional investors took note—and they were big mad about it. AMC and Nokia also benefited from the chaos, and for a few weeks it seemed like Wall Street was in for a brutal year. Things eventually calmed down, but GameStop’s stock continues to trade higher than anyone at GameStop really had any right to expect.
In a fitting close to the year, GameStop just joined a payment network that lets you pay for games with Dogecoin, a meme cryptocurrency. Does anything make sense anymore? Not really.
