Jack Kelly, 29 January 2021
It’s telling that regulators aren’t asking why high-end hedge funds were allowed to target vulnerable corporations, such as GameStop, in an alleged short-selling scheme to drive their victims into bankruptcy. As the stock price of their prey goes to nearly zero, the hedge fund honchos could earn multimillions—or billions of dollars–in profits off of the companies closing their doors and laying off thousands of employees into the worst job market in modern history.
Instead, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into the young, goofy, fun-loving, scrappy and foul-mouthed novice investors on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit of Reddit. There is the feel of an institutional knee-jerk reaction to accept activities from established Wall Street professionals (no matter how odious it seems), while shining a harsh light on new—mostly naive—entrants into the financial community.
The storyline against the loosely knit confederation of emerging investors, who are still fuming over the 2008 financial crisis that bailed out the banks, but put their parents out of work and wiped out their savings, are on a mission. It’s the “little guy” against the wealthy hedge fund elite
