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Last week, all anyone could talk about was money-losing video game retailer GameStop, after an army of smaller investors rallied on Reddit and elsewhere to support its stock and beat back the professionals.

The Redditors bought huge numbers of GameStop stock, trading at low prices, and then kept buying more as the prices rose, forcing something called a “short squeeze”, and elevating the price.

This amounted to one of the largest wealth transfers from the financial ruling class to the middle and middle-upper classes in recent memory, sending Wall Street spiralling.

To keep the ball rolling as stocks rose at one point to just shy of $500 a pop, investors were encouraged to ‘hold the line’ (not sell their stocks) in an effort to, as VICE puts is, “buck the capitalist system entirely”.

It didn’t last long, and many who held onto their stocks are starting to feel a little bleak about the whole thing as GameStop stock prices plummet.

Investor Jeff told VICE’s Patrick Klepek that his dreams of “not working a 9-5 for the rest of [his] life” and being “free to be able to do whatever [he] wants” have been dashed:

…over the course of several days, as the GameStop stock inevitably imploded, Jeff went from having more than $200,000 to just $50,000.

“This whole thing has numbed me to money,” Jeff told me recently.

“The highs that I had were among the biggest of all time,” said Jeff. “I felt like a different person. I haven’t been able to sleep for about a week now”.

Then there’s Anthony (not his real name) and his wife, who invested $100 000, and as the movement gained traction, planned to sell when the stock hit somewhere between “$500-$1,250” per share, which would have left them with more than $1 million.

Having held on for too long, Anthony eventually sold, making just enough to cover his initial investment.

You can read more personal stories of highs and lows here.

The price over a five-day period leading up to the price at 4PM yesterday now looks like this:

Image: Yahoo Finance

For a larger version of the graph above, head here.

It’s not great for anyone still holding onto their stocks, but, per POLITICO, it’s an important development in activism.

The masses are feeling the power of new technological configurations, matching the old with the new, and are experimenting much faster than the speed of law.

From the last decade of social media, one outcome seemed assured: A future of institutional destabilization by any memes necessary.

In other words, Wall Street should watch out.

[source:vice&politico]