Over the course of a few days last week, Gamestop, AMC, and BlackBerry share prices have soared to an all-time high after short-sellers on Reddit coordinated to drive up the prices. These Redditors chose their investments based on businesses that were logically going down in share price. Hedgefunds and other major investors who had bet that the share price would go down significantly lost millions due to tech-savvy short-sellers on Reddit. They lost money because they were forced to buy back the stocks for crazy amounts. This works by investors paying to borrow stocks to sell, then buying them back for less so they could make profit. However, this didn’t work out when Gamestop shares went up by 1,700%, which made investors lose tons of money.

All these people who invested were led by a few people or groups, including Elon Musk and Wall Street Bets (a Reddit page with over two million followers). Elon Musk posted a tweet, “Gamestonk!!”, which was taken in a positive way by many small investors and Redditors. Lillie Thayer supports the movement, by saying, “The reason people are backing the Redditors is because of a big social issue.” Thayer continues by saying, “Elon Musk is the class that they are against, so it is very hypocritical of him.” Another student, Lucee Mikek, disagrees, by saying, “ I think that Elon Musk supporting the short sellers was very much in his character, and by him doing that it was vital to the movement.” 

Most of the people who had invested were young, tech-savvy millennials. Some wanted “the rich” to lose money, while others wanted to make significant gains. They did this through applications like Robinhood. Both political parties have come together to agree that what is happening is incredible. A lot of people were also upset when Robinhood limited Gamestop Share prices because they feel that “the rich” have unlimited control of what happens on Wall Street while they have none.