GameStop

Everyone has a take on the GameStop rally is about. Ben Evans calls it a Rorschach test, and he’s not wrong. It famously got AOC and Ted Cruz to agree, but they are both wrong. I wanted to believe the “populist uprising” narrative, and see this as a pivot from red vs. blue to a revolution against the neoliberal capitalist austerity system. But that just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Senator Warren’s unpopular first reaction hits close to the mark. There are a lot of activities converging, here, but none of them are investing. Most of it is best described as gambling. A sort of gambling is considered acceptable only for “sophisticated” investors, who have money already. As if the market is a casino with only high-stakes poker tables.

I guess Robinhood is “fixing” that, using surveillance of your activity to pay for trades and a bunch of hard-to-explain risky transactions. I don’t have to worry about this, though, because I’m “sophisticated” and have a no-fee brokerage account.

So I was able to read a few Matt Levine newsletters to get the gist of what was going on, and spent about 20 minutes of my time to make $4000. So I guess my take is: yay GME!