As we reminisce about the events of 2021, no year-end recap would be complete without discussion of (*drumroll*) GameStop, AMC, and the Rise of the Retail Trader. 🚀 🚀
In the last week of January 2021, we witnessed what one could arguably call a financial revolution. As a mass of online retail traders — normal people armed with the fury and might of social media — pumped funds into $GME, the stock rose over 500% in days to pummel several notable hedge funds. Other tickers also amassed astronomical gains that week, including AMC Entertainment and others. The army of traders who initiated the flood of capital into $GME, $AMC, etc. came from WallStreetBets, a Reddit community for retail investors interested in open conversations about investing.
One particular WallStreetBets investor who played a key role in the making of Memestocks was Keith Gill, better known as “DeepF-ingValue” on Reddit or “Roaring Kitty” on Youtube. Gill is an influencer who never expected his love for undervalued stocks to gain momentum. However, his livestreams about undervalued companies eventually contributed to a movement of online traders posting screenshots of their day’s impressive wins (or losses.) When Keith Gill was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal about his role in pumping $GME, he shared “This story is so much bigger than me. I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement.”
And that statement was certainly made. In just a week, $GME shot 500%, $AMC ascended ~300%… and the big guys took fat Ls. Well-known hedge funds like Melvin Capital, Maplelane Capital, Candlestick Capital Management, D1 Capital Partners, and even Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management all experienced major losses while WSB’s army of investors posted GameStop-related gains. As the Wall Street Journal later put it, GameStop’s epic run gave ‘playing the market’ an entirely new meaning.💡
So what did Stocktwits have to do with all of this? As we mentioned in yesterday’s Daily Rip, $GME was the #3 most viewed and most active asset on Stocktwits, as well as our #4 most added ticker in 2021. AMC Entertainment took home the gold as the most viewed, most added, and most active ticker in its asset class. 🏆 As a matter of fact, there’s still action on Stocktwits’ AMC cashtag (check out the stream here — $AMC message volume is up 90%, and bearish sentiment has a +41% boost at the time of this writing.) There’s no shortage of discussion about these companies on Stocktwits, even though we’re almost a year out from January’s market ‘revolution.’ 🤘
$GME moved +5.10% today, +707% YTD. $AMC increased 0.83% today, +1250% YTD.