GameStop Takes

Too many things I don't know for me to have one, but here's dday's.

This is, and there’s no other way to put it, hilarious. A bunch of people trading stocks on their phones have brought some of the lords of finance to their knees. They weren’t using some amazing or novel strategy: The run-up in GameStop is just the “pump” of a pump-and-dump scheme, where hype pulls people into a stock before the rug gets pulled out. In fact, that’s what hedge fund managers do all the time, making bets and using research to puff up a stock, then taking the profits off moving a stock, through force of will—theirs—rather than the inherent value of the company.

The only real difference here is that ordinary investors are driving the train, and the hedge fund guys are getting run over. The hedge funders are mad because distorting corporate stock prices beyond the fundamentals is supposed to be their thing, not the work of the hoi polloi. Now, they’ve been outfoxed. If you can think of a better use of $600 stimulus checks, let me know. Never was there a more apt name for an app in this moment than “Robinhood.”

Written before all the easy mass market retail brokers stopped letting people buy (but not sell) the stock, it crashed, and all trading was prohibited, then allowed again, then up somewhat again.