If you’ve been paying attention to the deliciously dramatic fantasy of manipulating Robin Hood’s market (the real one, not the app’s) that’s going on under the GME ticker last week or later, you’ve probably wondered: if a bunch of Redditors holders of GED and basement residents can disrupt the stock market trajectory and bring down hedge fund managers over the course of a few days of many tweets and positive votes, what else can they accomplish? Could they perhaps change the financial world in a way that matters much more than GameStop’s market capitalization? Let’s go back. If you I do not have Paying attention to Reddit’s occupation of Wall Street, here’s what happened in a nutshell: small subreddit traders r / wallstreetbets created a hobby of organizing themselves to buy shares in selected companies, creating a phenomenon now known as meme stocks . In the past few weeks, meme stocks have gone from being an internal Internet joke to making headlines around the world, as subreddit users have come together to buy shares in video game retailer GameStop, knowing that many hedge funds had sold to GME. The idea was inflate the value of the stock GameStop to such an extent that these hedge funds would suffer a major blow and would have to be sold at a higher price to mitigate the damage. And it worked to an impressive degree – for a while. GameStop’s stock price increased by an impressive 1,600% before falling again.
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But while the GameStop rally it didn’t last (although it was interrupted to some extent by a commercial freeze imposed by the popular amateur trading app Robinhood), the story continues to capture the public’s imagination. It has all the trappings of David’s kind of empowerment story against Goliath that you can’t help but love. And it raises all kinds of essential questions about the ephemeral and constructed nature of the stock market and financial instruments that have never been more opportune in an era when so many people are out of work and struggling to survive as the stock market continues to rise and rise and go up. In the United States alone, 8 million people are below the poverty line since the summer at the same time as the “the rising stock market created a club of centibilionários. “
So it’s no wonder that many who watch the r / wallstreetbets saga are eager to know what’s coming and whether the next target could be something a little more impactful than the bankruptcy of a video game store in a mall near you. The Redditors have already focused their attention on AMC and then on something a little more tangible, pushing up the silver value. The violent oscillations seen in the case of GameStop and, to a lesser extent, in AMC are decreasing. While renegade investors managed to raise the price of silver by 11.5% to reach its highest level in eight years, the increase lacked the staying power and the severity of previous meme-based adventures. Related: Canada’s oil and gas offerings up 468%
This is not to say, however, that something like GameStop could not happen again and happen any longer – and many people are hoping that is the case. This week, one of those people wrote to environmentalist Grist to ask whether meme stock activists could use their power for good to increase clean energy stocks. It’s a good question, especially when you consider that many Redditors are optimistic about clean energy stocks. The answer, as you can imagine, is a 1,300 word version of “it’s complicated”. On the one hand, unlike Gamestop or AMC, the vast majority of renewable energy companies are not short-circuited. In fact, they are doing very well on their own. And there is the fact that Wall Street is not real life – GameStop has proved this very well. Investing in climate initiatives and increasing the value of BlackRock’s clean energy ETF is not the same as promoting clean energy initiatives. “I’m not arguing that money doesn’t matter;” Clayton Aldern, of Grist, wrote to the Green Actions questioner: “On the contrary, Reddit is unlikely to save climate change day by staging a guerrilla takeover of the New York Stock Exchange. A New Green Deal (in whatever form it can take) probably comes at a higher price than, you know, Bed Bath & Beyond’s market capitalization. “
But, undoubtedly, users of r / wallstreetbets would do well to continue buying in renewable energy stocks. Even if your actions are not the catalysts to fight climate change, it is almost certain that make money for them. And the old saying is true that, to some extent, we vote with our dollar. Buying clean energy en masse and producing renewable energy, the new meme stocks, can send a strong and timely message to the general market.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
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