Heroic is a dumb word but WSB have done something important.
Again AOC was right in drawing a straight line from the organization that happened a decade ago at Occupy Wall street to what happened this week. A group of regular people, many of whom had ties to Wall Street in some tangential way, used that knowledge to transfer wealth from the richest people to average people. This is important because as we all know 99.99% of the time it occurs the other way because the incentives are for people with financial knowledge to spend all their time figuring out more efficient ways to transfer wealth to the rich.
Lol, they’re running an open pump and dump scam, and a broad cast of amoral ~engagement~-hungry takesters and power-demagogues are providing PR for it.
It’s certainly funny that a hedge fund got caught out by some goofy memes, but it’s definitely not important.
The only way this becomes “important” is if the repercussions become even worse and Wall Street gets even more protections. We don’t live in a world where the opposite occurs.
This has come up a few times. There are some superficial similarities to traditional pump and dump schemes but also important differences. The boiler room guys would usually lie about their pump and dump penny stocks, telling investors BS about a fictional regulatory approval or amazing financial results that were about to happen but if you buy right now you can get in before the price goes up.
The WSB guys didn’t tell any lies as far as I know. And they’re talking about securities that trade on public exchanges with extensive continuous disclosure obligations. Its a different beast.
The $200 might not be coming from the customer, it could be coming from the proceeds of a stock sale that hasn’t closed yet (meaning that the money is coming from another broker).
the moon