If you paid attention to the delicious dramatic fantasy that manipulates the Robin Hood market (the real one, not the app) that has been going on under the GME marker in the last week or so, you’ve probably wondered: if a lot of GED-owned Redditori , who live in the basement, can upset the trajectory of the stock market and can bring down hedge fund managers in a few days from a lot of tweets and rising votes, what else can they achieve? Could it probably change the financial world in a way that matters much more than GameStop’s market capability? Let’s make a backup. if you not paying attention to Reddit’s occupation of Wall Street, here’s a brief rundown: small traders on subreddit r / wallstreetbets have made it a hobby to organize to buy shares of certain selected companies, creating a phenomenon now known as the name of meme shares. In the past two weeks, meme stocks have gone from being a joke on the internet to reaching headlines around the world as subreddit users have come together to buy shares at struggling video game retailer GameStop , knowing that many hedge funds have shortened GME The idea was to inflate the stock value GameStop to such an extent that these hedge funds would have a big impact and would have to be sold at a higher price to mitigate the damage. And it worked to an amazing degree – for a while. The value of GameStop shares rose 1,600% before falling back.
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But while the GameStop rally it didn’t last (although it was interrupted to some extent by a transaction freeze imposed by the popular amateur trading app Robinhood), the story continues to capture the public imagination. It has all the pitfalls of the kind of David-versus-Goliath empowerment story you can’t help but love. And it raises all sorts of key questions about the ephemeral and constructed nature of the stock market and financial instruments that have never been more timely in an era where so many people are out of work and struggling to make ends meet. , while the stock market continues to rise and rise and rise. Only in the United States, 8 million people have fallen below the poverty line in the summer, at exactly the same time that “the growth of the stock market has created a club of billionaires. ”
So it’s no wonder that many of those watching the r / wallstreetbets saga unfold are eager to know what’s next and if the next target could be anything more impactful than the video game store that will go out of business at a mall near you. . Already, Redditors have refocused their attention on AMC and then on something more tangible, pushing up the value of silver. Already, the wild oscillations seen in the case of GameStop and, to a lesser extent, AMC are reduced. While renegade investors managed to raise the price of silver by 11.5 percent to reach the highest level in eight years, growth did not have the strength to stay and the severity of previous leaks of meme shares. Related to: Canada’s oil and gas supply increases 468%
This does not mean, however, that something like GameStop could not happen again and more will happen – and many people hope so. This week, one such person wrote in the Grist environmental news media to ask if meme stock activists can use their power forever to increase clean energy stocks. It’s a good question, especially when you consider that so many Redeemers are growing on clean energy stocks. The answer, as you can imagine, is a 1,300-word version of “it’s complicated.” First, unlike Gamestop or AMC, the vast majority of renewable energy companies are not shortened. In fact, he does pretty well on his own. And then there’s the fact that Wall Street isn’t real life – GameStop has proven this pretty well. Investing in climate initiatives and increasing the value of the BlackRock ETF for clean energy is not the same as promoting clean energy initiatives. “I’m not arguing that money doesn’t matter;” Grist’s Clayton Aldern wrote to the questioner about the green shares: “Rather, Reddit probably won’t save the day from climate change by organizing a guerrilla takeover of the New York Stock Exchange. A new green offer (in whatever form it could take) probably comes at a higher price than, you know, the market capitalization of Bed Bath & Beyond. “
But in all respects, users of r / wallstreetbets would do well to continue to buy renewable energy stocks. Even if their actions are not the catalysts to fight climate change, they will certainly do so make him money. And the old saying is true that we vote, to a certain extent, with our dollar. By massively buying clean energy and producing renewable sources, new meme stocks could send a strong and timely message to the market in general.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
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