In 2007, Glenn Reynolds wrote An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths.
Shortly afterward, citizens around the nation used the power of the internet and social media to form “Tea Party” groups. They used the principles discussed in Reynolds’s book to protest the massive power-grabs and wasteful spending the Obama administration thrust upon the country. And while there were successes and failures in those organizations’ efforts, many Americans retained the personal connections and new awareness of media and political manipulations.
President Donald Trump’s presidency could be seen as a high point, as he and his policies are popular among many Americans in “flyover country.” Therefore, it became imperative for Big Tech and Big Media to cut off the resources aiding the political “army of Davids.”
Nearly 12 years after the Tea Party’s start, a Reddit group appears to be leading an investing army into battle against hedge fund groups that take advantage of stock trading rules that are arcane and seem designed to transfer wealth to themselves. The investors have taken the chain from $2.57 a share at one point last year to a high of $483 a share.
They celebrated with billboards across the country, such as this one in New York City’s Time Square:
“$GME GO BRRR,” blared a digital ad on the corner of 54th and Broadway in Manhattan. The ad ran for an hour on Friday and was a creation of digital billboard maker Matei Psatta.The line refers to a popular internet meme that uses “Brrr” to signify the sound a money-printing machine makes. GME is the stock’s ticker symbol on the NY Stock Exchange.
The ad was reportedly displayed for only an hour but managed to make the rounds on social media. Meanwhile, the Reddit crew arranged for other billboards and banners.
Over on the west coast, a plane was spotted flying a banner over Santa Monica reading, ‘WE ARE ALL GAMESTOP WALLSTREETBETS’.A similar stunt took place in San Francisco where a plane was seen flying a banner over the city saying ‘SUCK MY N*TS ROBINHOOD’.Kaspar Povilanskas, the co-founder of Nowadays Media, promoted the display on Twitter informing followers he had hired the plane to circle above Robinhood’s headquarters ‘for a while.”Got take some photos I don’t even live there,’ Povilanskas tweeted along with a map of the flight path.Meanwhile in Oklahoma, another billboard was erected on a Oklahoma City highway saying: ‘We’re not leaving! $GME’, along with a series of emojis.
That the elites in both media and finance are upset with the dynamics is clear. For example, they describe the self-organized band of investors as a “mob” and smear them like the “astroturf” derision used for Tea Party organizations.
“The internet can democratize access, upsetting power dynamics between the people and traditional institutions,” tweeted Tiffany C. Li, a law professor and tech attorney focusing on privacy and technology platform governance.With GameStop, she added in an interview Friday, the goal was to upset the interests of a few large hedge funds.“But in other places the goal can be more nefarious. Online spaces are being used to radicalize people toward extremism, to plan hate crimes and attacks,” she said.
Understandably, many Americans would like to push back against Wall Street and enjoy fiscal karma. I know I am and tempted to purchase one share.
However, there are likely to be real market consequences for participating in this “short squeeze.”
…[T]he GameStop bubble will have the same practical effect as any other pump-and-dump scheme: transferring wealth from those who got into the scheme late to those who got into it early. The fact that there are short-sellers on the other side of some of these trades doesn’t change the analysis.So if you’re thinking about getting in on the GameStop craze—or buying other stocks promoted by the WallStreetBets crowd—you should be cautious. The biggest winners will be the folks who bought into the scheme days, weeks, or months ago. If you buy in now, there’s a good chance you’ll be one of the suckers who gets left holding the bag after the stock crashes.
Given the complexities of the stock market, is there more to the short squeeze tactic than turnabout-is-fair-play? Perhaps.
But as Professor Jacobson notes, the destruction of jobs and the imposing of unpopular and unfair social policies are likely to result in the “Davids” organizing any way they can to bring down the “Goliaths.”
No matter how the GameStop “short squeeze” saga ends, one thing is exact: Our nation is not going back to the way things were just because the next administration is in place.
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