Game Stop Market: The recent stock boom in GameStop has highlighted wealth injustices and powers, causing a political movement for change

It’s safe to say that no one ever thought GameStop would be the focus of current news stories considering no one has bought a physical video game in over five years — but the power of the average American and a social media movement has changed that notion because of one reason: stocks. 

The stock market is a complex ideology that many dedicate their lives to understanding. These past few weeks have upended the system as a whole, providing a sense of skepticism and conjecture involving not only Wall Street, but also the government itself and the varying national wealth distribution — oh, and we can’t forget about GameStop. 

The commercial frenzy began with a simple subreddit entitled WallStreetBets that formed in 2012. Instead of the home page filled with typical Reddit content, such as sharing pop culture rumors or opinions on the latest fan-favorite movie hit, it’s now flooded with stock market memes and discussions of taking down Wall Street. 

When sharing trading ideas and strategies in the WallStreetBets subreddit, someone noticed that one broker on Wall Street had short selled — meaning they sold the stock, planning to buy in at a lower price and profit — a sizeable amount of stocks for GameStop. The group banded their money together in GameStop holdings, causing the stock price of GameStop to increase from a mere $19 to $483 in the month of January, sending brokers into bankruptcy and causing an uproar in the financial sector. 

While this monetary value uprooted the financial trading system, the most important takeaway was highlighting the wealth inequality and overbearing power of Wall Street.

In short, the small investors’ goal was to punish Wall Street for betting their money against GameStop, while attempting to make a profit themselves — a smart and necessary approach in order to break up systematic wealth inequality.

This revolution led to the stock exponentially increasing, causing some small investors and day traders to be able to make more in a day than they had over years of trading — demonstrating the impact that average Americans were able to acquire even in a short period over big Wall Street banks.

While a majority of American billionaires’ wealth increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these lower and middle class average Americans faced unemployment concerns, rising debt and more financial uncertainty than ever according to Business Insider. 

Back in January 2020, already wealthy senators were briefed on the pandemic before the public — giving them time to sell stocks for Personal Protective Equipment before the public was aware of the virus’ gravity. When bigger businesses and powerful people are made aware of issues first, it gives them an advantage in the stocks, hurting the smaller businesses and individual traders’ chances of gaining large profits.

With this system, Wall Street methods have made it so that the rich get richer and the wealth gap only increases between them and the average lower to middle class American. Most of the small investors are young men, looking for the equal opportunity of fair investments, an idea almost impossible in today’s society, going up against the wealthier generation consisting of big banks and business executives. 

These tactics are used to lure in small investors at the peak of a high market and leads to a sneaky escape route for the Wall Street big banks. This makes it harder for everyday individuals to gain substantial market share with the structured inequalities and injustices of the market dominators — known to be present but hidden throughout the years. 

Through the past few weeks, however, tactics such as insider trading or shorting that Wall Street individuals have been using for years is finally being pitted against them. 

Although the recent events have presented major downfalls within the American financial sector as a whole, this issue was able to unite political parties for systematic change. Because let’s face it: when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz agree on an issue, you know it’s a big deal. 

Both the Republican and Democratic parties called for immediate action from the government, aligning with the initial Reddit community’s goal. Rightfully so, these political figures called for the Securities and Exchange Commission to intervene with the main stock trading platform, Robinhood, which recently blocked all trading from GameStop allowed on the app.

Although GameStop’s sudden traction will inevitably fade with time in the coming weeks, the repercussions must still be taken into account along with the outlined flaws of the corrupt and unjust system.