GameStop mania

Are we witnessing the democratization of finance, or just a dangerous ruse?

GameStop.
(Image credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

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For a brief time over the past two weeks "a bunch of amateur traders made Wall Street's finest look like idiots," said Jason Zweig at The Wall Street Journal. "A ragtag army of individuals," exchanging tips in online forums like Reddit's Wall​StreetBets, bought up shares in the video-game retailer GameStop, and the stock went from $40 to as much as $400 in just a few days, before falling back down to about $95. "Hedge funds on the other side of these bets lost billions." Trading in GameStop shares was so frantic that "leading online brokerage firms restricted buy orders for some of this month's hottest stocks." That created a wave of "populist anger" and bipartisan calls for an investigation of whether brokerages favor big funds over small investors. Still, the victory for a flash mob of small investors was a remarkable moment in the "democratization of markets," even if it was short-lived. "Step aside, Wall Street," said Amber Petrovich at The ­Washington Post. I taught myself about investing 15 years ago. Now I'm part of a "new class of investors" who can move markets in just a few clicks. Yes, some of us may get hurt if GameStop continues to fall. But "that's a risk of investing" we choose to run.

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