For the past month many people have taken an interest in a situation concerning the stock market. Hedge funds have been looking at companies such as GameStop and AMC theatres and “short-selling” stocks. In other words they believed the company was overvalued and wanted to sell stock in hopes of coming back in the future when the price is lower. This manipulation of the stock market led a group of investors on a subreddit called “wallstreetbets” to intervene and take the stocks for GameStop and AMC theaters “to the moon.”

Investors in “wallstreetbets” decided that they were all going to buy GameStop and AMC shares through an app called Robinhood. Robinhood allows users to buy “commission-free stock and exchange funds.” By doing this they would cause the stock of both companies to skyrocket “to the moon” as they would put it. The events caused great commotion and endless amounts of memes. 

“I think it’s pretty funny that GameStop and AMC went up out of nowhere and people are becoming rich,” junior Jonah Remsberg said. “It’s also unfair to a lot of investors because there was a point where, I don’t know who exactly, but they were trying to crash the market for a little and it’s literally people’s livings.”

The skyrocket in stocks caused a lot of people to gain great amounts of money in a short period of time. This caused great panic to many people following the situation since the stock market was beginning to be affected greatly. The situation began to get so out of hand that Robinhood put a limit to how much stock buyers could purchase which angered many investors. For many people this situation was ironic because the whole point of the company’s creation was to give aspiring investors the opportunity to win big on the stock market.

“I think it’s hypocritical for Robinhood to put a limit on those stocks considering that their whole idea is to allow the average person to buy stocks,” junior Owen Mick said. “But once they start to lose money because of it, they put a limit on certain stocks.”

The event also got the attention of many notable people such as Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. Ocasio Cortez and Trump Jr. both expressed their outrage of the situation on Twitter describing how unfair it was for investors to not be able to purchase stock of what they want. This surprised many people all over the country who realized the situation had gotten “really bad” if Ocasio Cortez and Trump agreed on something together. 

“I think it’s really unfair, especially with how our country’s economy is built,” Remsberg said. “It also doesn’t help with your average investors who could’ve had their lives change if they were able to buy shares.”

The ongoing series of events has greatly impacted the way investors on Wall Street are viewed. Many believe that the Wall Street hedge funds are ruining the opportunity for new investors to make money on the stock market. This has caused many people to form a negative opinion of those on Wall Street and how they conduct their investments. Despite the current state of the stock market, many people support those who participated in the act on Reddit, as with their alteration of the stock market many were able to learn about how the stock market is run behind the scenes.

“I think it makes Wall Street look bad and I hate Wall Street,” Mick said. “I think they manipulate the market which is highly illegal and they just want your money.”