How the GameStop inventory squeeze performed out on TikTok

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There’s not much to be said about last week’s wild Redditor Stonk Squeeze-a-Palooza that hasn’t been said by people who really understand the stock market (for a really great explanation, just read our own Emily Stewart’s comprehensive guide) . A lesson from the pandemic investment boom: money is fake, but day trading is TikTok’s most popular new program for getting rich quick.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but when you consider how little financial literacy is taught in schools, it’s easy to get the feeling that everyone on the internet is making thousands of dollars per minute – and you can get involved if you have that one app, too download which makes stock trading easy and cute now. And last week’s meme stock spikes were especially tempting and especially dangerous for stragglers. I know because this happened to me!

On Wednesday, I spent $ 18 on AMC stock, just like r / WallStreetBets told everyone to buy it, and when it immediately started to decline, I heard that I was supposed to be buying BlackBerry stock. I spent $ 24 on it. to. And then, because Nokia shares only cost seven dollars, I was sure!

The problem is, by the time someone like me – someone who doesn’t compulsively update r / WallStreetBets or don’t have access to their Discord channels – it’s too late to find out what’s going on. The only people who really win are the earliest adopters, which is fine! It’s extremely cool that some of these people cleverly invested their stimulus packages and were able to repay their student loans through collective action. (I love this piece from the Times about the mostly young men coordinating the squeeze.)

I didn’t really expect to make any money; Most of the time I wanted to feel what it is like to take part in such a rare and paradigm-changing internet event. But I was a little worried about how many times I came back to check out Robinhood and how disappointing it was to see the numbers go down, and how outraged I felt when the app announced it was making purchases for all meme Stocks stopped.

However, it was a good reminder of why options trading isn’t the smartest move for most people. When Emily and I were recently working on a story about risky financial advice going viral on TikTok, she stressed that when the stock market is generally up, if you’ve made a little money you can’t lose that. ‘

“Some investors are drawn to options trading because it is exciting and feels more like gambling than investing,” she wrote. “But investing shouldn’t really be exciting. And it’s possible to make some good bets early on and eventually get wiped out – a common story. In June 2020, a 20-year-old day trader died of suicide after believing he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars trading options. “

It’s easy for me to imagine teenage amateur investors losing their savings due to a misguided sense of security and normal stock market fluctuations, but I doubt they’ll be making TikTok videos about it. Those who hit the jackpot will surely document their winnings while glossing over the fact that no one, not even the most experienced hedge fund types, necessarily knows what they are doing here. Once again, money is wrong! (But I still lost $ 10.)

Anyway, here are my favorite TikTok videos about #stonks:

  1. Hey Wall Street, what’s my shape?
  2. This is what the r / WallStreetBets Discord looked like (and sounded like) when it was still online.
  3. POV: Your toxic friend explains the economy.
  4. POV: Billionaire’s intolerable know-it-all is punishing you for investing in GameStop.
  5. The inevitable GameStop Sea Shanty
  6. You can tell the Planet Money TikTok guy said, “This is my Super Bowl.”

TikTok on the news

  • The 22-year-old songwriter Abigail Barlow and the 19-year-old child prodigy Emily Bear created the crowdsourcing musical Bridgerton (not to be confused with the crowdsourcing musical Ratatouille). Now they’re getting Broadway attention.
  • I love this story about black deaf TikTok creators!
  • An Oregon man was wrongly accused of kidnapping and sex trafficking near a college campus after a TikTok video went viral of driving his van while a woman screamed in the background. It turned out that the woman was just someone on the street and happened to be passing by. “I can’t work here in my company car without people taking my fault,” he said. Local police assured the community that no one is currently missing from the college and that there is no evidence of a crime. TikTok Vigilante Conspiracy Theory: Maybe Relax?
  • The TikTok famous leggings, which are said to make your butt look great, are $ 30 on Amazon.
  • Everyone does the Silhouette Challenge, which usually involves showing yourself standing in a doorway and then putting on a sexy red filter to make your silhouette stand out (some people do this part nude because you can’t see the ~ details ~). But be careful: people found a way to remove the red filter.

One last thing

It’s 3 p.m .: Do you know what your child is doing? Spoiler: This one.

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