https://themargins.substack.com/p/game-stop
Finally, and of most immediate concern, it is what will happen to those 'retail traders' everyone is cheering on. To everyone sharing the same screenshot of someone supposedly paying off their student loans, or chiming in about how this is some Zach De La Rocha rage against the financial machine, are you serious? Did you convince yourself that the folks who do comprise the retail component of this trade, who are the beneficiaries of a sudden windfall of cash that they will attribute to their own genius, will calmly take their profits, walk away, and channel that cash into bettering their lives? I mean, have any of you ever bought an option? Have you ever bet on anything? Have you been a bro chat of any sort? That's just not how this works.
I noted in that Robinhood Gravy piece, I was an intern in Atlanta the summer when a day trader killed nine people at his office. Most of you might've read about Robinhood adding bulletproof glass after traders kept showing up at its office, or the 20-year old who killed themself after misunderstanding their options exposure. We all know this, yet I can't stress this enough: things can (and likely will) move just as fast on the way down.
And that really, really scares me.