r/WallStreetBets, Robinhood, and the Stock Market
February 5, 2021
Beginning Monday, January 25th, users of the r/WallStreetBets subreddit drove up the price of Gamestop’s stock, ruining Wall Street hedge funds’ plans and securing a win for the underdog. If you want to have a chance to win as well, it won’t hurt to learn details such as Binance Futures Referral Code.
This produced billions of dollars in losses for investors who were short selling these stocks, just as intended. These investors believe the stock market is like rigged gambling by the 1% against the little man trying to keep them from financial success. Despite the success of their plan, the market has continued to rise, resistant to this volatility, as the economy has been on an uptick. Hoping to continue their success with Gamestop, contributors to the subreddit have attempted to spike other stocks similarly, just to stick it to Wall Street. Before we dive into why it won’t work, let’s review some financial definitions.
Listed below is a series of definitions for common financial terms used in the article below.
Stocks: Stock of a corporation is all of the shares into which ownership of the corporation is divided. In American English, the shares are collectively known as “stock.” A single share of the stock represents fractional ownership of the corporation in proportion to the total number of shares.
Short Squeeze: Borrowing shares and selling them, with the expectation that they can buy them back later at a lower price, return them to the lenders, and pocket the difference.
Short Seller: People who short squeeze.
Puts: A put is an options contract that gives the owner the right, but not the obligation, to sell a certain amount of the underlying asset at a set price within a specific time. The buyer of a put option believes that the underlying stock will drop below the exercise price before the expiration date.
Call options: The agreement to automatically purchase a stock if it reaches a certain price.
Hedge fund: A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives.
The biggest reason for the lack of continued success is likely Robinhood’s ban of the purchase of stocks they know the users of r/WallStreetBets are going to drive up. Robinhood had made it easy for people with little to no financial know-how to purchase stocks in minutes, creating a massive force of people able to change the entire market, just through collaborating on a subreddit. Reddit users knew if they bought a bunch of this stock, they could skyrocket the price, aided by people who had purchased call options on these stocks catapulting the price nearly 2,500% from $18.83 to $483, just in January. However, the stock has since declined slightly. Once the Reddit users’ plan came to fruition, Robinhood appeared to show their true colors, protecting the hedge fund short sellers. Pundits believe Robinhood must cater to a Wall Street bigwig company called Citadel. Citadel is responsible for the actual buying and selling of stocks on Robinhood, and Robinhood is just the middleman making it easier for the consumer. Citadel pays Robinhood to send your stock orders to them in a shady system called “payment order flow.” Robinhood was a pioneer in this market, the first company to offer commission-free and mobile stock trading. Due to their business model as the middle man, they must pay fees related to market volatility, so Robinhood was having to pay high fees because users of their brokerage were responsible for the volatility. So as a business, Robinhood had to restrict the purchase of Gamestop and the other 49 stocks on their first list, as they did not have the cash on hand to pay the fees. Robinhood has always valued the little man, as it was once them, and they will continue to drop their restrictions as quickly as they can, aiding the users of the r/WallStreetBets and their mission to hurt the 1%.