This generated enough momentum to trigger a “short squeeze,” and the price of GameStop shares shot to the moon. Here is another: A group of small-time speculators - including some finance-industry professionals - orchestrated a pump-and-dump scheme that involved convincing a lot of financially inexpert (and/or politically disaffected) people that they could stick it to Wall Street’s largest money managers by … bidding up the price of an equity that is owned by Wall Street’s largest money managers. That is one way of recounting the GameStop rally, anyway. Unfortunately, right when these working-class retail investors had Wall Street’s titans on the run, the plutocracy’s visible hand appeared to reach down and thwart them: Robinhood, a trading app popular with young recreational investors, suddenly barred its users from buying GameStop shares, thereby relieving pressure on the hedge-fund shorts. Through their collective intelligence and audacity, users of the Reddit forum WallStreetBets executed a sophisticated “short squeeze” that took money away from some billionaire speculators, gave it to some badly indebted workers, and made a mockery of neoliberal capitalism’s legitimizing myths. Last week, a motley mass of shitposters, gambling enthusiasts, and disaffected Zoomers - united by hate for Wall Street and love of chicken tenders - beat a multibillion-dollar hedge fund at its own game.
The road to socialism probably doesn’t run through WallStreetBets.