In Reddit jargon, Chalfant’s diamond-hard hands don’t fold, unlike salespeople’s “paper hands”. He still owns the shares he bought for $ 1,035 – about a month’s salary from his job at a pizzeria and his freelance photography business – when GameStop was trading at $ 290. On Friday, his investment was worth $ 220 .
“I accepted the fact that I already lost the money,” he said. “Realistically, the stock is not going to get where it was before.”
But losses are also an investment, said Chalfant. They earned “internet points” at WallStreetBets. “If you’re saying ‘I’m still holding on’, you have more influence than if you didn’t,” he said. (Many on the WallStreetBets forum insist that GameStop shares may rise again. On the other hand, another Reddit forum opened last week, where users share stories of losses in stock trading whose symbol is GME: GMEbagholdersclub.)
Chalfant said that he and other teenage investors like the gamification of investments, and many of his friends joined GameStop just because they thought it was funny, not making money.
“We are living in a system where there is no more justice and the whole world is falling apart,” said Chalfant. “Nothing really matters, so we can also try to have fun while we’re here.”
Collateral damage
Terrell Jones did not have to invest in GameStop to lose money on it.
Jones, a college student from Kenosha, Wisconsin, bought $ 300 worth of shares in AMC, the movie theater chain whose shares were also wiped out in the reaction against short sellers.
“I just picked up the social media hype and plunged right into it,” he said. “I fell for it.”
When the AMC started to fall and he lost $ 112, Mr. Jones panicked.