Great explanation. IMO the GameStop phenomenon is the result of the combination of democratization of trading through software (Robinhood no fee trading, doing it on your cellphone) + social media enabled mass scale online community building (around some previously fringe niche). Any area that is subject to this kind of combination of change could face similar situation where the old institutions guarding the area would face increasing challenge from grass root efforts ("retards/autistics" as in wsb's lingo).
I don’t think it’s about that at all. If you follow the subreddit at all, you’d see that WSB investors have been losing immense amounts for a long time now.
I think the primary thing that baffles the more traditional investing establishment is how irrational WSB investors actually are.
I think there have always been potential "investors" that never really lost money because they were never investors in the first place. Lots of Robinhood, r/wsb users/members are 1st time traders because Robinhood significantly lower the barrier to entry for investing, and they don't feel as alone and scary once found an online community similar to themselves.
