If you’ve been paying attention to the fantastic fantasy of Robin Hood (the real one, not the app) manipulating the market over the past week, you’ve probably wondered: a lot of GED owners living in the basement Redditors can alter the stock market trajectory and knocking down hedge fund managers over a few days of tweeting and positive votes, what more can they achieve? Could they, perhaps, change the financial world in a way that matters much more than GameStop’s market capitalization? We make a backup. If you no paying attention to Reddit’s Wall Street occupation, this is what happened in a nutshell: small subreddit traders r / wallstreetbets have become fond of organizing themselves to buy shares of certain selected companies, creating a phenomenon now known as meme stocks. Over the past few weeks, meme stocks have gone from being an Internet joke to reaching headlines around the world, as subreddit users have teamed up to buy shares in video game retailer GameStop, knowing that many funds coverage had achieved a GME. The idea was to do it inflate the value of the shares of GameStop to such an extent that these hedge funds would be very successful and would have to be sold at a higher price to mitigate the damage. And it worked to an impressive degree, for a while. The value of GameStop shares rose a whopping 1,600% before falling again.
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But while GameStop was being set up it did not last (although narrowed to some extent by a trade freeze imposed by the popular amateur trading app Robinhood), the story continues to capture the public imagination. It has all the pitfalls of David’s empowerment story against Goliath that you can’t help but love. And it raises all sorts of essential questions about the ephemeral and constructed nature of the stock market and the financial instruments that have never been more timely in a time when so many people are out of work and struggling to get on the weekends as the stock market continues. go up, go up, go up. Only in the United States, Eight million people have fallen below the poverty line from summer at the exact same time as the “the growing stock market has created a club of millionaires“.
So it’s no surprise that many of those watching the r / wallstreetbets saga are eager to know what’s to come and if the next goal may be something a little more shocking than the video game store that stops working in a mall. close . Already, Redditors has refocused its attention on AMC and then on something a little more tangible by pushing up value of silver. The wild changes seen in the case of GameStop and, to a lesser extent, AMC have already been reduced. Although renegade investors managed to raise the price of silver by 11.5% to reach its highest level in eight years, the rise had neither the staying power nor the severity of previous meme escapades. Related: 468% increase in Canada’s oil and gas offerings
That doesn’t mean, however, that something like GameStop couldn’t happen again and happen for longer, and a lot of people expect that to happen. This week, one of those people wrote to environmentalist Grist to ask if meme activists could definitely use their power to increase clean energy reserves. It’s a good question, especially considering that so 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. In fact, they are doing very well on their own. And besides, there’s the fact that Wall Street isn’t real life: GameStop has proven it pretty well. Investing in climate initiatives and increasing the value of BlackRock’s clean energy ETF is not the same as driving clean energy initiatives. “I don’t argue that money doesn’t matter;” Grist’s Clayton Aldern wrote in the green stock questionnaire: “Rather, Reddit probably won’t save on climate change day by organizing a war takeover by the New York Stock Exchange. A Green New Deal (in whatever form it may have) is likely to carry a higher price than, you know, the market capitalization of Bed Bath & Beyond.
But of course, r / wallstreetbets users would do well to keep buying renewable energy stocks. Although their actions are not the catalysts to combat climate change, they will almost certainly do so make them money. And the old adage is true that, to some extent, we vote with our dollar. Buying clean energy in bulk and manufacturing renewable energy with 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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