As one Reddit user puts it so eloquently, “This is some Bruce Wayne shit. We saw what they did to our parents, we gained super powers and we are back for blood as the anti hero.”
What is going on on r/wallstreetbets is bonkers, and it’s a pretty incredible sight.
Just read u/ssauronn’s post to see what’s going down (the above quote is from the post thread).
The GameStop stock is currently soaring because of the community’s bullish push and ability to get more people involved in what is effectively The People vs. Melvin Capital, a hedge fund that is taking a massive beating because of WSB’s unique ability to rally everyday people around boosting GameStop’s stock price.
Tons of young people with a smartphone able to download Robinhood for free have been pulled in to support the effort.
As Ben Winck states from Business Insider, many people have rallied to “the cause by posing the GameStop trade as an antiestablishment movement, a middle finger to an industry that underestimates Redditors’ influence. They proclaim that, with fee-free trading platforms, easily accessible margin, and enough allies, they can beat the funds that have dominated Wall Street for so long.
The thing that makes this interesting is that Robinhood has been the most popular freemium-based financial investing app in history. What we are seeing would not be possible if normal people did not have the ability to have fee-free investing.
Robinhood, a freemium product, does not just represent innovation; it’s an avenue for revolution.
I didn’t see this coming at all. But it speaks to the power of the freemium model because of its cost appeal and its ability to be leveraged by a majority for positive change.
Sadly, because of the chaos of this unprecedented event, Robinhood has banned users from trading GameStop. But, you can still use fee-free M1 Finance to leverage support for the effort against Melvin Capital.
And so that is what I am doing. I was never a supporter of WallStreetBets, and I will not be following the high risk, high reward antics of many who commune there, but I do support their community at large.
Love them or hate them, they are one of the first true freemium communities and they have my full support.
I just redistributed my portfolio in M1 Finance, and now GameStop represents 3% of my total holdings. The buy order should go through soon during the morning trade window, and I reallocated some previously unrealized earnings from Nvidia ($NVDA) and First Trust ETFs ($SKYY;$FDN) to finance the new move.
In conclusion, WSBs was born out of the freemium nature of apps like Robinhood and M1 Finance, and the people’s fight against Melvin Capital has not gone unnoticed by the Freemium Fellow.
After all, any effort to set “some new rules” in how people fight against people like Melvin Capital would undeniably get Bruce Wayne’s support (see below).
It gets my support, too.
Fight on, boys.
-TFF
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