“I don’t envy any of them,” WallStreetBets founder Jaime Rogozinski told Julia Chatterley on CNN on Thursday. “I’m enjoying it outside.”
He later added: “I predicted the trajectory where things were going, but in no way did I predict the moment or the magnitude.”
Rogozinski founded the Reddit group in 2012, but was removed by the platform for allegedly profiting from the WallStreetBets brand, a charge he denied in a previous interview with CNN Business.
The race at GameStop is unprecedented in part because of the way that fee-free trading apps like Robinhood have democratized investments – giving armchair investors far removed from traditional banks free access to sophisticated trading instruments like options.
The process is “completely gamified on people’s phones,” said Rogozinski.
Rogozinski, along with much of the financial world, is shocked by the rise. “I can’t imagine that I ever foresaw this to happen,” he said, adding that “there are many forces at play that have never been tested.”
The turning point, for him, came on Wednesday when White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the government was “monitoring the situation”.
“Nobody is prepared to deal with this on the regulatory side, on the government side or on the forum itself,” said Rogozinski.
GameStop’s wild run – up more than 600% since early January – showed no signs of slowing down on Thursday. The shares were extremely volatile, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading.
CNN’s Allison Morrow and Paul R. La Monica contributed to this story.