You would have to have been living under a rock this week to not have heard about how a bunch of Redditors shorted the Gamespot stock and almost caused a hedge fund to lose three billion dollars – it even attracted the attention of The White House FFS – and it looks like these Redditors aren’t going anywhere fast.
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If you don’t understand what’s going on then you aren’t in the minority, but I found this pretty sweet explanation on Reddit:
Anyway, the only way that Melvin Capital is gonna be OK (aside from their $3 billion bailout off all their buddies) is if all these Redditors sell their stocks and the price goes down again, but it turns out that a whole bunch of them aren’t in it for the money and actively want to punish these hedge fund managers for their part in the 2008 financial crisis. Here’s what Reddit user Ssauronn said in an open letter to them:
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I vividly remember the enormous repercussions that the reckless actions by those on Wall Street had in my personal life, and the lives of those close to me. I was fortunate – my parents were prudent and a little paranoid, and they had some food storage saved up… those close to me, my friends and extended family, were not nearly as fortunate.
To Melvin Capital: you stand for everything that I hated during that time. You’re a firm who makes money off of exploiting a company and manipulating markets and media to your advantage. Your continued existence is a sharp reminder that the ones in charge of so much hardship during the ’08 crisis were not punished.
I bought shares a few days ago. I dumped my savings into GME, paid my rent for this month with my credit card, and dumped my rent money into more GME (which for the people here at WSB, I would not recommend). And I’m holding.’
This is personal for me, and millions of others. You can drop the price of GME after hours $120, I’m not going anywhere. You can pay for thousands of Reddit bots, I’m holding. You can get every mainstream media outlet to demonise us, I don’t care. I’m making this as painful as I can for you.
To all the boomers out there, we’re not enemies, we’re on the same side. Stop listening to the media that’s making us out to be market destroyers, and start rooting for us, because we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to punish the sort of people who caused so much pain and stress a decade ago, and we’re taking that opportunity.
Hot damn that’s dramatic isn’t it? This seems to be the general sentiment behind a lot of people taking part in all this though, as it really doesn’t seem like a lot of them were in it for the money and they just wanted to make these people pay.
At the time of writing a lot of apps have stopped trading on Gamespot and all the other stock that had been shorted so who knows how this is all going to end? Was good while it lasted though and I’m sure a load of people got rich off it as well. Badass. Can’t wait for the movie/true crime documentary/miniseries or all three!
For more of the same, check out when Donald Trump wiped a billion dollars off a company’s value with one tweet. Those were the days hey?
