The dominant narrative around the $gme story is that some weirdos in their mom’s basement are manipulating the stock market.
That’s is so, so wrong.
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A prominent user of the #wallstreetbets community has been publicly posting about their position and positive outlook on $GME since September 2019. #YOLO
They didn’t pick the stock randomly. There are reasons to like GameStop. Google “Ryan Cohen” for more on that.
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So, many on #wallstreetbets already liked $GME since late 2019.
Then, someone realized that there was a lot of money shorting that stock, essentially betting that the stock would go down.
And, I mean A LOT of money!
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Shorting a stock, in simplest terms, is borrowing shares of a stock for a fixed amount of time, and immediately selling it at the current market price.
When the stock price goes down, you buy it back at the lower price, pay the lender back and pocket the profit.
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There are lots of legitimate uses for shorting a stock, like hedging your risk, which is sort of like buying an insurance policy.
However, that’s not what the impacted hedge funds were doing. They were making a big risky bet that GameStop’s stock was going down.
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