Stocktake: Populist GameStop narrative is simplistic

Prior to last week’s crash, the popular narrative around GameStop centred on righteous and principled Redditors screwing dastardly Wall Street types, but there are two obvious problems with this simplistic narrative.

Firstly, volatility and heavy trading is good for Wall Street – high-frequency traders, market makers and fast-money types loved the recent action. So did private-equity giants such as Silver Lake, which bagged huge gains after shares in cinema chain AMC Entertainment Holdings, another favourite of Redditors, went ballistic.

Secondly, while some left-wingers raised a glass to the Redditors, so did Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer ("fantastic stuff") and anti-Semitic types complaining about Jews running Wall Street.

A critical article in The Irish Times was also noted on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum; commenters responded by making potato jokes (the “Potato Times”) and commenting that the author, being Irish, was probably drunk.