Retail to Wall Street: who's side are you on?
EDITOR'S NOTE
I was talking to my best source on all things culture and society--a.k.a., my younger brother--last night, when he started chuckling.
"What now?" I asked. (We'd been going through the best tweets and reddit posts of the day. Since I deleted the Twitter app off of my phone for this maternity leave, I now rely on his daily recaps.) "Dogecoin is through 7!" He exclaimed. My husband and I started cracking up, too. It's been a running joke that my brother will be able to retire if the Dogecoin he bought for one cent ever hits a buck. Getting up to seven cents is no small feat.
Why was Dogecoin surging last night? Because if platforms like Robinhood are going to shut down the little guy from trading GameStop and AMC, he's got little choice but to pile into the one last game in town--crypto. There was so much demand last night that the most popular crypto apps, like Coinbase and Voyager, were down and people who own stuff like Dogecoin were fretting their holdings would be sold out from under them, much as Robinhood was accused of doing with stocks yesterday.
It all has a Custer's-Last-Stand feel to it at this point. Hordes of retail traders furious that the response of big institutions to their crushing of Wall Street pros is to shut them down are now grabbing hold of whatever else they can, while they still can. It's a lot of what Gino wrote about yesterday in "Occupy Wall Street 2.0."
And it's no coincidence this all comes in the aftermath of Trump's loss and Biden's ascendancy as president. Where Trump tweets provided an ongoing dopamine hit for social media followers over the past four years, there's now a vacuum and a host of bored young people craving their next "hit"--especially with little else to do as the pandemic drags on. Enter the stock market, where they've discovered a new way to raise up their voice against the elites.
Which leaves regulators and trading platforms in a difficult place. They may say they're shutting down trading and restricting activity to protect the little guy, but to the little guy it just looks like retribution for upsetting the elite status quo where big money insiders seem to always win.
We'll see what happens today, with options expiry looming and GameStop shares already halted two minutes into the trading session after surging above $350 again. This after Robinhood said it would once again allow "limited trading" of previously restricted stocks. Perhaps they've realized they better think carefully about who's "side" they're going to be on as this battle plays out.
A special thank you to the baby for taking a well-timed nap so I could quickly jot down some thoughts here! -Kelly
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