Who are the amateur investors fighting the whales of Wall Street?

Encouraged by his friends, Alex began following comments from participants in the “Wall Street Bets” forum on the social networking site Reddit, a 4 million-person forum who typically discuss topics related to stocks and investment opportunities. .

“I thought it was crazy,” he told the BBC. “A lot of people are losing a lot of money.”

“I didn’t think about it, until a friend told me I should keep track of what’s going on with GameStop actions, and I noticed that some people on Reddit are doing an awesome job studying these actions. . “

With fewer people selling most electronic games on the Internet, GameStop is not making a profit.

People who buy and sell stocks often bet on companies that they believe will not be successful in the future. They borrow the shares of the company (which they plan to decline) and sell them immediately, then buy them back and return them, which is called “short buying.”

GameStop was one of the companies that many hedge funds had bet on that they would see their stocks drop in value.

This time, however, a large number of Wall Street Betting Forum subscribers on Reddit bought GameStop stock on mutual advice.

And when the demand for the company’s shares increased, its prices rose sharply, which no one expected, and everyone who borrowed the company’s shares had to pay them back after buying them at high prices. .

Alex says hedge funds wagered billions of dollars on declining GameStop stock prices, and some research on Reddit indicated that short selling represented more than 100% of current Gamestop stock.

“Some people have done research that shows the precarious position of hedge funds. So we decided to take advantage of this. This is an opportunity.”

And with the buzz that followed, non-professional investors drove the share price up over 700%.

Alex did well, investing $ 1,000 in GameStope stocks and making an estimated profit of $ 2,000. But he was one of the lucky ones to sell stocks on time.

“The theory was that as the stock price continued to rise, people who didn’t buy would have to buy them at any price in order to repay the stocks they borrowed again,” says Alex. .

But with this activity that caught the attention of regulators this week, retail investors suddenly found they were suspended by their trading platforms and therefore unable to continue buying shares of GameStoop and other companies.

“They assumed that we, the individual investors, could not bear the loss, while the hedge funds that took great risks and incurred incredible losses were allowed to continue in business as usual,” says Alex.

While Alex was not hurt financially, he is still agonized over what he views unfairly.

“There is a huge gap between the mainstream middle class and the working class on the one hand and hedge funds with billions on the other. There are others who have been affected by far more than me,” he said.

Myron Sakas, who is 18 and studies at the University of Warwick in Britain, lost 30 pounds to the shares of Jim Stop, where he owned them for “two hours” and then sold them after following what had happened.

Sakas has created an account on the 212 trading platform since August of last year and hopes to get into investment banking services after graduating from college.

For now, however, he is disappointed in what he sees as “market manipulation” directed at people like him.

For him, there was a specific purpose in the Jim Stop stock wars, and these are “the people who were at the root of the 2008 financial crisis and who were not held to account at all”, as he said it.

“We understand that there are risks, but it was not a real blackout. On the contrary, it was caused by people protecting corporate interests, while ordinary people lose again.”

“This is what happens when ordinary people try to make money in a system in which only rich merchants make money,” he told the BBC.

“They support the free capitalist market when it is in their best interests. What we saw today was not a free market and it forced a lot of people to lose huge sums of money.”

Myron says he’s been banned from using his account on the trading platform until his identity is verified, but when he gets access, he plans to withdraw his $ 1,000 balance and suspend the account.

“Maybe I won’t negotiate for a while. I have other things to do,” he adds.

On social media, investors called on fellow brokers not to sell their stocks to avoid further losses and launched an attack on trading platforms to impose restrictions on purchases.

And Melissa Holdren, a nurse living in the state of Massachusetts, expressed her anger at the restrictions on trading platforms, which prompted her to buy shares in one of the companies involved.

Through his account with brokerage firm Fidelity known for its mutual funds, Holdren bought shares worth $ 500 in AMC Entertainment, whose shares were restricted – as happened with GameStop – by certain brokerage firms.

It was the first time for the 43-year-old nurse who had always relied on big business to manage her retirement investment.

“I think it is questionable for a private company to unilaterally stop stock trading. It doesn’t seem right. If you are concerned about the volatility of the market, why do you only ban one-sided trading?”

Melissa, whose grandfather made a living as an independent trader, said she knew she would lose money if AMC shares fell, but hoped her limited investment would help the film channel to survive, as well as his desire to take an oppose Wall Street practices.

“In general, we need to review our financial system,” she said. “After the 2008 financial crisis, it became clear that a large part of the financial market is separated from reality in ways that I don’t think are healthy.”

“I think it’s a mistake to only care about what’s going on on Reddit without paying the same attention to the big picture,” she added.