Here Are The Best GameStop Meme Stock Memes We've Seen
Well, it's Wednesday, and there's only one thing on everyone's minds:
In case you missed it, Wall Street and hedge funds are freaking out because a large group of Reddit users banded together to drive up the price of GameStop stocks.
What does this mean? How did it happen? Why are people mad? What is a meme stock? Having learned this information mere hours ago for the sake of this article and a few other informational posts, and as someone who is still not entirely convinced the stock market is even real, let me tell you!
Essentially, investors and hedge funds frequently turn a profit by doing what's known as short-selling, or shorting: they borrow and then immediately sell shares that they predict will fall, and then buy them back at a significantly lower price, keeping the difference as profit. This depends very much, though, on the predictability of certain stocks.
GameStop, the video game retailer that used to be in every mall in America, has seen its stock fall steadily over time in the digital age. Investors have counted on its becoming obsolete — and they have been successfully shorting its stock. But in past months, the subreddit r/WallStreetBets has been working together to manipulate the stock market, and their work has paid off: by collectively throwing money into GameStop stock, they succeeded in deliberately driving up the share price. This has forced a "short squeeze," in which investors are no longer able to predict the stock well enough to profit from short-term trading.
Because of this, hedge funds that have been betting against GameStop are losing their minds, because some stand to lose millions of dollars. This morning, hedge fund Melvin Capital finally bought back its shares at a significant loss, though they haven't specified exactly how much. (It's worth noting that some Redditors manipulating GameStop stock aren't totally convinced Melvin Capital actually bought back their shares, suspicious that the hedge fund might have pretended to cave in order to push people to sell their stocks and deflate the GameStop bubble.) It also looks like stock for AMC Entertainment — yes, the movie theaters that are all but defunct due to the pandemic — has been creeping up as Redditors and other investors target it in a similar way.
Speaking of Reddit: Wall Street is also struggling to understand what it is in the first place, which is almost endearing. And as of this afternoon, Reddit's r/WallStreetBets subreddit broke all-time traffic records with 73 million page views within the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, most non-investors on Twitter are enjoying the ride. Here are some of the best reactions and memes about GameStop stock that have flooded the internet this week — many of which center on the fact that most of us know pretty much nothing about Wall Street, but we know just enough to get a kick out of this news cycle.
In all honesty, people should have seen this coming. A system of abstract and largely arbitrary dollar valuation of companies that can be manipulated at will? Wall Street, you played yourself on this one. Good luck out there.
