💭 Friday discussion: stonks and shares

We can hardly have missed the Gamestop / Reddit / hedge fund story. There are so many angles to pursue but I’ll put out a few interpretations for discussion:

• Is this really Wall Street playing Wall Street? The retail traders are just a distraction.

• This is a classic stock frenzy, driven by “Internet bulletin boards”, and the institutional brakes, while tested, will ultimately hold.

• This is a milestone in self-organised action, finally breaching one of our most protected institutions, the financial services system. We should view this less through the lens of a “run on the bank” and more the first time the individuals, coordinated via the Internet, were able to deliberately take down elite investors.

• If the ‘system’ is ‘broken’ and needs fixing, which ‘system’ are we talking about? What is ‘broken’? And what is the ‘fix’?

I’m also going to be discussing some of these ideas on Clubhouse at 2pm today (UK time). You can sign-up here.

A reminder that discussion in these fora is to be civil and a…