GameStop stocks come crashing down — company loses $27 billion of market value



GameStop, the company at the center of the Reddit retail investor uprising against hedge funds, lost $27 billion of its market value on Tuesday after their stock crashed back down to Earth.

The stock price of the video game retail store had soared to a dizzying high of $347.51, skyrocketing the value of the company and costing billions to hedge funds that had bet against the company.

By Tuesday, the stock value crashed to $90 per share, less than a third of the top value and the company had lost $27 billion of market value, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The battle between the Reddit crowdsourced retail investors and the professional investor class seized headlines after some complained of market manipulation when a popular stock market app restricted users from buying the stock. Robinhood's CEO later denied accusations that he was trying to help the hedge funds by shutting down trading.

Critics called for Robinhood to be investigated over the incident, while others were satisfied with the explanation from the CEO that the company needed to shore up its capital amidst historically high volatility in the market.

Despite the value of GameStop falling precipitously from its high, its $90 price tag is still many times higher than its value of $4 per share a year before the "short squeeze" campaign by retail investors.

While some have called the crowdsourced uprising from retail and amateur stock traders against the professional investor class a David and Goliath story, others have noted that there are signs other hedge funds were able to cash in on the rebellion.

One hedge fund that reportedly lost billions over their bet against GameStop simply obtained a bailout from another hedge fund, and other companies appeared to buy in to the stock on the way up and profited by its rise.

Ortex, a market data analysis company, said the Reddit investor rebellion signaled a shift of power in the investment community.

"Regardless of the final outcome, the GameStop saga points to an increasing democratization of the markets, with fairer access and a more level playing field," the company said in a blog post. "The information advantage that has maintained the status quo for so long is crumbling, and that has far-reaching consequences for investing, markets and the industry itself."

The broader market saw large gains Tuesday.

Here's more about the GameStop Reddit uprising:

GameStop stock extends losses in sell offwww.youtube.com

Social media spread a deceptively edited clip of billionaire Leon Cooperman appearing to attack retail investors



A deceptively edited clip of New York hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman railing against the term "fair shair" went viral Thursday, leading many to accuse Cooperman of attacking the retail investors of the Reddit discussion board WallStreetBets.

Cooperman was interviewed on CNBC and spoke about the WallStreetBets day traders who drove up the price of GameStock's stock to squeeze Wall Street hedge funds who wanted to short GameStop. In an edited clip of the interview shared on Twitter by Disclose.tv, Cooperman appears to belittle the WallStreetBets investors as people who are "sitting at home getting their checks from the government."

Disclose.tv's tweet frames the clip as "billionaire Leon Cooperman fumes at retail traders and shouts: 'It's a way of attacking wealthy people.'"


New York hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman fumes at retail traders and shouts: "It’s a way of attacking wealthy… https://t.co/yatYrPezeu
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@Disclose.tv 🚨)1611859371.0

This clip, however, is edited to cut out several of Cooperman's statements that provide needed context for the points he makes.

Cooperman told CNBC that he believes the meteoric rise of GameStop's stock will end poorly for many of the retail traders who are climbing aboard the bandwagon while the stock price is artificially high, but he does not find fault with the initial Reddit investors who decided to put the squeeze on the hedge funds and make some money. Cooperman believes that several factors have contributed to what the market is experiencing, including near-zero interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve and the stimulus checks sent to most Americans by Congress.

"It's all interconnected," he explained. "The reason the market is doing what it's doing is, people are sitting at home, getting their checks from the government, basically trading for no commissions and no interest rates. I'm not saying they're stupid. Show me a guy with a good record consistently, and I'll show you a smart guy."

"I'm not damning them. I'm just saying from my experience, this will end in tears," he added.


Incredible CNBC moment about GameStop - billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman trashes the “people sitting a… https://t.co/5NWg3xFb75
— Steve Krakauer (@Steve Krakauer)1611859260.0

He went on to explain that based on what he's seen, GameStop is not worth the extraordinary price the stock is trading at. As of Friday afternoon, the stock was trading at about $330.

"GameStop is not worth $500, not worth $400, not worth $300, not worth $200, not even worth $100, not even worth $50," Cooperman explained. "I don't know what the hell it's worth to be honest with you, I'm not involved with it."

Later in the interview with CNBC, Cooperman expressed concern that the current conditions of the market are unsustainable in the long term. He said that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy is incentivizing investors to make higher risk bets with their money in search of better returns. As people move money out of traditionally safe places like savings accounts because interest rates are too low and put them into risky stocks to make more with their money, the stock market keeps rising and reinforces those investment patterns.

But someday interest rates will have to go up. And Cooperman predicted that taxes will have to be raised so that the federal government will be able to continue making payments on the national debt.

"Everybody is moving out on the risk curve, and one of these days — not today, not tomorrow — but one of these days people are going to come in on the risk curve, and I think we'll have lots of issues to deal with," Cooperman said.

It was at this point when Cooperman criticized rhetoric from Democrats about how the wealthy need to pay their "fair share" in taxes, even though he voted for President Joe Biden.

"I hate that expression with a passion," Cooperman said. He questioned how Democrats define "fair share."

"I'm willing to work six months a year for the government and six months for myself, which means a marginal tax rate of 50%," he said. "This fair share is a bulls**t concept. It's just a way of attacking wealthy people, and I think it's inappropriate.

"We've all got to work together and pull together."

So, his comments about "It's just a way of attacking wealthy people, and I think it's inappropriate," in context, were clearly not about the people who are trading on GameStop, but rather about the tax plans being put forth by Democrats. He clearly did not trash people for using stimulus checks to play the stock market or say that what they were doing was just trying to get back at rich people, as many have interpreted the deceptively edited clip.

Google deletes 100,000 negative reviews of Robinhood on app store



On Thursday, after the stock trading app Robinhood froze trades of GameStop and other "volatile" stocks, outraged customers flooded app stores to give furious one-star reviews proclaiming their displeasure. In response, Google intervened to delete the negative reviews on the Google Play Store and protect the Robinhood app's reputation.

Google confirmed that it acted to delete the negative reviews to The Verge, claiming that the dissatisfied Robinhood customers leaving negative reviews violated Google's policies by intentionally trying to drive down the app's rating. At one point Thursday, the Robinhood app had a one-star rating with 274,982 reviews. By the time The Verge published its report, approximately 100,000 reviews had been deleted and the app was back up to a four-star rating.

From The Verge:

It's not outside Google's purview to delete these posts. Google's policies explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app's rating, and the company says it has a system that "combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews." Google says it specifically took action on reviews that it felt confident violated those policies, the company tells The Verge. Google says companies do not have the ability to delete reviews themselves.

Angry Robinhood customers began leaving negative reviews of Robinhood's app after the company acted to halt trades of certain "volatile" stocks, including GameStop, popularized on the Reddit discussion board WallStreetBets. Users who already owned these stocks were permitted to close their positions (sell their stock) but were prohibited from buying more stock. In a statement released Thursday, Robinhood said it had made the decision to freeze the trades "in light of recent volatility."

Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev further explained Thursday that the trades were frozen "to protect the firm and protect our customers," denying accusations made on the internet that Robinhood was acting on the behest of Wall Street hedge funds. He said that the restrictions were imposed to comply with capital requirements mandated by the SEC for stock brokers.

"We absolutely did not do this at the direction of any market maker or hedge fund ... the reason we did it is because Robinhood as a brokerage firm, we have lots of financial requirements," Tenev said on CNBC.

"We have SEC net capital requirements and clearing house deposits. So that's money that we have to deposit at various clearing houses. Some of these requirements fluctuate quite a bit based on volatility in the market and they can be substantial in the current environment where there's a lot of volatility and a lot of concentrated activity in these names that have been going viral on social media," he explained.

"We just haven't see this level of concentrated interest market wide in a small number of names before," Tenev said. "We do believe that you should be able to buy and sell the stocks that you want to."

After the closing bell Thursday, Robinhood announced that it would resume limited trading of the restricted stocks.

"We have seen unprecedented interest due to the fact that finance has been culturally relevant in a way that hasn't been before," Tenev said. "Of course, Robinhood stands for everyday investors. From the very beginning, we have stood for investors opening up access. It pains us to have had to impose these restrictions and we're going to do what we can to enable trading in these stocks as soon as we can."

Fox Business host Charles Payne shreds Wall Street for 'whining' about GameStop losses



Fox Business host Charles Payne on Wednesday blasted Wall Street for "whining" about the retail investor squeeze of hedge funds that tried to short GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and BlackBerry.

Payne, the host of "Making Money," defended the rights of retail investors to make money by reading the market and outwitting hedge fund investors in a discussion on GameStop's incredible stock price surge. GameStop's stock price increased by more than 1,000% in about one week before falling slightly Thursday after independent small-time investors on the internet discussion board WallStreetBets campaigned to buy up the stock in response to hedge fund plans to short-sell it.

The retail investor campaign was wildly successful, causing those short-selling GameStop and other stocks popularized on the discussion board to lose over $70 billion on their bad bets. But it was not without critics who accused the users on WallStreetBets of manipulating the market and called for new regulations to mitigate their influence and protect hedge fund short-sellers.

Payne was having none of it.

"First of all, all of the nonsense, all of this noise, all of this whining by Wall Street – it's making me sick," Payne told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto on "Cavuto Coast to Coast," pointing out that hedge funds were able to short 140% of GameStop's stock.

"I didn't hear one person on TV complaining about Wall Street trying to crush GameStop," he said. "I told my subscribers: Buy this stock. And they made a fortune."

He added that he also told his audience to buy other stocks including Virgin Galactic Holdings, National Beverage and Tanger.

"You can't allow Wall Street to short 75% of a stock – and nobody says anything – crush these companies into the dirt, and then when the individual investor makes money, everyone's up in arms," Payne cried.

He dismissed hand wringing from Wall Street investors and financial analysts over the risk that some of GameStop's investors will lose money when the bubble bursts.

"People are ringing a register! I have a kid who bought a house, he made $50,000 and bought a house!" Payne said. "So yeah, some people are going to lose and some are going to win. But if they want to change the rules of the game now because the general public is making money after decades of the shorts crushing thousands of stocks into the dirt — I've watched stocks being crushed completely to zero and no one ever whispered anything because those stocks didn't have Wall Street sponsorship.

"The shorts have had their way with the market for decades," Payne continued. "So I am thrilled. If you're going to try to destroy a company by shorting 140% of its stock, you have to accept the fact that individual investors are playing the same game, and now you're losing."

Watch:

Class action lawsuit filed against Robinhood after GameStop trade freeze



A federal class action lawsuit was filed Thursday against the stock trading company Robinhood after it restricted its customers from buying shares of GameStop and other stocks popularized on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets.

BREAKING: Class action complaint against @RobinhoodApp filed in the southern district of NYhttps://t.co/DuGP3LIQDQ https://t.co/mw82RRoA2L
— Lydia Moynihan (@Lydia Moynihan)1611853246.0

Attorney Alex Cabeceiras filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on behalf of plaintiff Brendon Nelson, a Massachusetts resident. On Thursday, Nelson said he logged into his Robinhood account and discovered that GameStop's stock had disappeared from the app. Robinhood also prevented users from buying more shares of it.

The complaint filed by Cabeceiras argues "Robinhood purposefully, willfully, and knowingly removing the stock 'GME' from its trading platform in the midst of an unprecedented stock rise thereby deprived retail investors of the ability to invest in the open-market and manipulating the open-market."

This morning I filed a class action lawsuit against Robinhood for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, among ot… https://t.co/Fp5pbNLvYO
— Alex Cabeceiras (@Alex Cabeceiras)1611851641.0

The lawsuit demands that the court immediately issues an injunction forcing Robinhood to reinstate GameStop's stock on its platform. Additionally, it seeks a class action fee for all Robinhood users prevented from trading GameStop, an award for attorney's fees, and punitive damages.

The Daily Beast reported that another law firm, ChapmanAlbin, announced in a statement Thursday that it was "investigating claims on behalf of Robinhood users that were affected and suffered losses as a result of investing in Gamestop or AMC."

"Robinhood appears to be up to the same old tricks, recruiting social media influencers to encourage individuals to sign up and fund a Robinhood account and beginning purchasing shares of securities such as GameStop and AMC, with no consideration as to the suitability of the purchases," ChapmanAlbin attorney Philip Vujanov said.

Robinhood and other stock brokers' decision to ban trading of GameStop comes after retail investors on the popular forum WallStreetBets began a campaign to buy the stock amidst news that several hedge fund investors were attempting to short it for a profit. WallStreetBets boasts over two million users on its discussion board. The organic campaign to create artificial demand for GameStop stock successfully caused its price to rise more than 1,000% over one week, forcing short sellers to buy back into the stock to cover their potential losses.

This process, known as a short-squeeze, caused short sellers to lose an estimated $70.87 billion while the retail traders who bought into GameStop have seen the value of their shares increase dramatically.

The decision to ban trading of GameStop and other shorted stocks by Robinhood, WeBull, Interactive Brokers, and other stock trading companies was received by their customers as a statement that these services will prioritize the interests of Wall Street hedge funds over decentralized, individual traders. Lawmakers in both parties have now called for congressional investigations on the trade freeze, probing whether Robinhood and others acted unfairly by shutting retail traders out of the market while permitting credentialed Wall Street investors to trade as they please.

Outrage: Stock broker service Robinhood shuts down trading of GameStop



Popular stockbroker services were accused of manipulating the market by angry social media users Thursday after Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and others took steps to restrict trading of GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Nokia, and other "volatile" stocks.

The financial world was captivated this week by the sudden and tremendous rise of video game retailer GameStop's stock price after millions of individual, non-professional "retail" investors decided to buy the stock in an attempt to "squeeze" hedge fund investors planning to short it. These retail investors, who congregate to discuss their trades on the website Reddit in a forum called WallStreetBets, were successful in driving GameStop's stock up from about $17 last week to a high of $376 on Wednesday.

The hedge fund investors attempting to short GameStop stock lost more than $5 billion because of the WallStreetBets campaign. After the news of what was happening went mainstream and some financial analysts began accusing the retail investors of WallStreetBets of manipulating the market, popular stockbroker services used by retail traders began restricting trades of GameStop and other shorted stocks caught up in the buying frenzy. Customers awoke on Thursday morning to find that they could no longer buy GameStop, AMC Entertainment, BlackBerry, Nokia, and other stocks, and could only close their current positions.

Robinhood, a company that prides itself on "democratizing finance for all" by letting customers trade stocks on their smartphone app, issued the following statement:

"We continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. In light of recent volatility, we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD and $NOK. We also raised margin requirements for certain securities."

Margin requirements are the amount of money an investor using Robinhood must have in their account in order to buy a stock.

Interactive Brokers, another stock trading service, also made a statement explaining the trade restrictions to CNBC:

"As of midday yesterday, (1/27/2021) Interactive Brokers has put AMC, BB, EXPR, GME, and KOSS option trading into liquidation only due to the extraordinary volatility in the markets. In addition, long stock positions will require 100% margin and short stock positions will require 300% margin until further notice. We do not believe this situation will subside until the exchanges and regulators halt or put certain symbols into liquidation only. We will continue to monitor market conditions and may add or remove symbols as may be warranted."

Customers are furious. Users on the WallStreetBets forum immediately accused Robinhood and other brokers of preventing them from buying these stocks to protect the hedge funds and Wall Street "suits." Some have called for a class action lawsuit against Robinhood, writing "allowing people only to sell is the definition of market manipulation." Others are encouraging other investors to hold their positions, reasoning that Robinhood and other brokers are trying to incentivize users to sell their stocks to bring GameStop and other surging stock prices down.

Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy became one of the fiercest critics of Robinhood after he said on Wednesday that he put $1 million into AMC and Nokia stock.

Wait are people not being allowed to buy $amc and $nok?
— Dave Portnoy (@Dave Portnoy)1611840217.0
I will burn @RobinhoodApp to the ground if they shut down free market trading.
— Dave Portnoy (@Dave Portnoy)1611840441.0

Portnoy blasted Robinhood, accusing the company of siding with the Wall Street establishment over ordinary people who are just trying to get rich.

And it turns out @RobinhoodApp is the biggest frauds of them all. “Democratizing finance for all” except when we m… https://t.co/OsFR3LgMXc
— Dave Portnoy (@Dave Portnoy)1611840553.0
Somebody is going to have to explain to me in what world @RobinhoodApp and others literally trying to force a crash… https://t.co/2C8xktqPSU
— Dave Portnoy (@Dave Portnoy)1611840722.0

The controversy has made strange bedfellows. People on the right and the left are uniting to criticize Robinhood and defend the rights of retail traders to take on Wall Street.

It took less than a day for big tech, big government and the corporate media to spring into action and begin collud… https://t.co/58aXqa5Amv
— Donald Trump Jr. (@Donald Trump Jr.)1611842821.0
Straight up collusion to protect the suits in suites. @RobinhoodApp @stoolpresidente https://t.co/RAZ1iWCTqE
— Jason Johnson (@Jason Johnson)1611843058.0
Robinhood is restricting GameStop trading to help their Wall Street Buddies from going under. Yesterday Wall Street… https://t.co/kL1I3cR9vt
— Kyle Kashuv (@Kyle Kashuv)1611846056.0
So @RobinhoodApp, an app named after the guy who took from the rich and gave to the poor, is now blocking the littl… https://t.co/INABtHSBM7
— Erick Erickson (@Erick Erickson)1611845407.0
More like...Transfer any stock you have with Robinhood to another account...Withdraw your money from Robinhood'… https://t.co/qIylizJlLq
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@Yashar Ali 🐘)1611845790.0
Very disappointed in @RobinhoodApp! They said they allow free trading but are now blocking users from buying specif… https://t.co/lONZtnpG97
— Rosanna Pansino (@Rosanna Pansino)1611847479.0

Twitter mocks Jen Psaki for nonsensical gender identity answer to question about stock market chaos



Those who were seeking guidance from the White House on chaotic and dramatic developments in the stock market were befuddled by the nonsensical answer from the White House press secretary Wednesday.

Social media erupted after a scheme from users on a Reddit stock market thread threatened to damage Wall Street hedge funds by driving up the price of the stocks from GameStop, a company many had heavily bet against.

When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was questioned about the incident, she offered a bizarre response.

"Well, I'm also happy to repeat that we have the first female Treasury secretary and a team that's surrounding her," said Psaki.

"Often questions about market we'll send to them, but our team is of course, our economy team including Secretary Yellen and others are monitoring the situation," she continued.

"It's a good reminder though, that the stock market isn't the only measure of the health of our economy, it doesn't reflect how working and middle class families are doing," Psaki added.

The odd answer elicited mockery and jeers from many on social media.

"Pitch-perfect expression of the defining neo-liberal mentality here. We have an extraordinary political & cultural conflict involving inter-generational wealth, vast disparities of power, and a deeply corrupt financial system, and this is all the Biden WH has to say about it," responded Glen Greenwald.

"Dude. No f***ing way. She first begins to answer the question by bringing identity politics into it. Literally saying 'we have the first female treasury secretary', as if that has any bearing on anything being asked. Omfg," replied another user.

"Oh, the FIRST FEMALE treasury secretary. Well, in that case, why ask any questions? Let's all put on our COVID masks, circle up (six feet apart), and meditate together instead," replied independent journalist Kevin Gosztola.

"[J]en psaki reminded reporters that yellen is the first female treasury secretary like how you jingle keys in front of a baby. i can't. these people are just transparently manipulative lol," replied musician Soul Khan.

While some Wall Street firms signaled that they had given in by Wednesday and swallowed a significant loss in the debacle, others cautioned that retail investors will likely lose a lot of money trying to jump onboard of the bandwagon.

Here's the video of Psaki's bizarre response:

White House on GameStop ($GME), Wallstreebets Stock Activity: "We're monitoring the situation."www.youtube.com

GameStop stock surge: How internet day traders took on Wall Street and beat the experts



Share prices for video game retailer GameStop have shocked and awed over the past week after an online campaign to defy Wall Street expectations has sent the stock soaring.

Where Wall Street saw an opportunity to make money by shorting GameStop stock, an online community of small time do-it-yourself investors rallied to buy up shares in the company, rocketing its stock price to a dizzying 1,600% increase since the beginning of January and costing hedge fund short sellers billions of dollars.

What's happened has been characterized as a "David. vs. Goliath story" of how trolls and memers on the internet forum Reddit have, at least for now, beat the credentialed expert investors of Wall Street.

GameStop, like many retailers, has suffered during the coronavirus pandemic but for years now has also been confronted with a changing market landscape. Simply put, customers are moving to online retail, buying digital copies of their video games over the internet relying less on brick and mortar stores to buy physical copies of their games.

Last December, the retail chain, facing mounting debt, announced it would close more than 1,000 stores by the end of its fiscal year in March after already closing more than 783 stores in the past two years.

As reported by Business Insider, in 2018, the company had a net loss of $485 million. In 2019, GameStop rebounded slightly, losing $83 million and in 2020, it faced $19 million in net losses.

In a bid to revitalize GameStop, last September investor Ryan Cohen, the founder of the online pet food retailer Chewy, bought a 13% stake in the company and started campaigning for a change of business model. Cohen envisioned GameStop as a competitor to Amazon, pushing for it to transition to online retail and compete in that sphere.

On Jan. 11, GameStop announced it had added three new directors to its board, including Cohen, causing the stock price to surge. At the beginning of 2021, the company's stock was trading at around $17. CNN recounts that the company's stock price surged 13% after the announcement, since then has continued to increase by leaps and bounds.

Wall Street observed GameStop's decline and bet that it would not be able to compete against Amazon. Seeing an opportunity to make money, hedge funds Melvin Capital and Citron indicated they would short the stock, predicting that the increase in GameStop's stock price was temporary and that prices would soon fall.

Tomorrow am at 11:30 EST Citron will livestream the 5 reasons GameStop $GME buyers at these levels are the suckers… https://t.co/XutFMhiDR1
— Citron Research (@Citron Research)1611068289.0

As CNBC explains, short selling is an investment strategy where "investors borrow shares of a stock to sell them at a certain price in expectations that the market value will fall below that level when it's time to pay for the borrowed shares."

But last Wednesday, the reddit community WallStreetBets entered the equation. WallStreetBets is essentially a messaging board that discusses day trading with some 3 million users who refer to themselves as "degenerates." After the news broke that Wall Street hedge funds were going to short GameStop stock, members of the community started a campaign for this decentralized group of independent investors to buy up shares in an attempt to "squeeze" the short sellers, forcing them to buy more of the stock they were trying to short to cover losses as its price went up, not down. Many acted as their own stock brokers, using services like Robinhood to trade stocks at home using smartphone apps.

The campaign worked.

CNET reports GameStock blasted from $17.25 a share to a high of $159.18 on Monday. On Tuesday the stock price fell, before rising back up to $147.98. Then the market rally drew the attention of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who tweeted about it, causing more people to pay attention to what was happening, after which the stock price soared again. As of Wednesday morning, GameStop stock was trading at $315 per share.

Gamestonk!! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ
— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk)1611695282.0

The astounding success of the Redditors' campaign has some members of the WallStreetBets community attempting to replicate what they've done with AMC and BlackBerry. As for the short sellers, Melvin Capital was forced to close out is short position Tuesday afternoon after taking massive losses. CNBC could not report the amount Melvin Capital lost, but did note that "Citadel and Point72 have infused close to $3 billion" into the hedge fund to cover some of the losses.

For some of the Redditors, the whole episode was a joke. "It was a meme stock that really blew up," WallStreetBets moderator Bawse1 told Wired. "The massive short contributed more toward the meme stock."

In total, short sellers have lost more than $5 billion year to date in GameStop stock. Credentialed investors have expressed incredulity and anger at the Redditors' investments, with hedge fund manager Michael Burry saying in a now-deleted tweet that what they had done with GameStop was "unnatural, insane, and dangerous." Burry, who became famous for betting against the housing bubble and was the subject of Michael Lewis' book, "The Big Short," also said there should be "legal and regulatory repercussions."

But the "degenerates" argue what they're doing is no different from a hedge fund taking action to manipulate a stock's price. As Vox reported:

From more traditional investors (and those with a lot of money), there's been a lot of finger-wagging. But giant banks and hedge funds aren't exactly a bastion of responsibility — take a look at the role they played in the financial crisis.

The animosity flows both ways. In a post titled "An open letter to CNBC" this week, one WallStreetBets Redditor pointed out that much of the network's audience is composed of the retail traders who are now being criticized. "Your contempt for the retail investor (your audience) is palpable and if you don't get it together, you'll lose an entire new generation of investors," the Reddit user, RADIO02118, wrote.

The user pointed out that the hedge funds that take on big risks can get a bailout — as one of the ones shorting GameStop did — whereas everyday investors generally can't: "We don't have billionaires to bail us out when we mess up our portfolio risk and a position goes against us. We can't go on TV and make attempts to manipulate millions to take our side of the trade. If we mess up as bad as they did, we're wiped out."

Well, one difference may be how the little-guy investors are using their newfound wealth. Many users are posting about how they can afford medical bills, pay off student debt, or cover over major life expenses.

"I can now write my mom a check and put my sister through lymes treatment. This has been a very rough year, but I'm so thankful for every single one of you," wrote u/Stammbomb in one post.

Another user, u/MasterTheGame, posted about how after investing in GameStop when it was $97 per share he can now afford a $4,000 knee surgery for his dog. "This morning after market open I was able to sell enough to pay for his TPLO surgery! I am in tears and really grateful. Thank you everyone and good luck!" he said.

As user Stylux put it to Vox, "Some of the users can now pay off their car notes, student debts, feed their kids and pay their mortgages. Who can feel bad about that?"