Robert Luther Bittick Jr., 77, of Gettysburg, died Monday morning, Feb. 22, 2021, at his home.
Born Jan. 28, 1944, in Eagle Pass, Texas, he was the son of the late Robert L. and Sarah (Cheatum) Bittick Sr. He was the life-long partner of William A. Bixler, of Gettysburg, whom he has been with for 53 years.
Robert, along with his family, moved to Forsyth, Ga., at a very young age, and accomplished many things, including earning his Order of the Arrow as an Eagle Scout.
He attended Johns Hopkins University where he started his studies in pre-med and later turned to creative writing. He was class president, and a member of the debate team. He attended Harvard for one year, but loved research writing and returned to Johns Hopkins Research in Baltimore.
USA TODAY
For one shining moment in January, it looked as if the stock trading app and retail brokerage Robinhood had lived up to its namesake – the rabble-rousing outlaw of English folklore.
In the hands of a merry band of Reddit traders, Robinhood helped to bring a group of short-selling hedge funds to their knees and many people cheered – delighted to see wealth stripped from a few members of the billionaire class after decades in which wealth has been increasingly consolidated in the hands of the very few. Our customers have shown the world that investing is for everyone, Robinhood said on its website, not just institutional investors and hedge funds.
Looking down their nose at you : GameStop frenzy showed a fresh contempt for hedge funds. Why do Americans hate them? Jessica Menton, USA TODAY
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In the middle of a pandemic and slow economic recovery, Americans think they’ve identified their Wall Street villain: hedge funds.
Their nemesis is summed up in a few searing images: a hedge fund manager who makes millions betting that the subprime mortgage market will collapse, without warning them. Or another relaxing on a yacht as the economy tanks.
Years of anger culminated late last month when a group of angry small-time investors on Reddit took on a few of those firms in the GameStop “short squeeze” frenzy. That spurred millions of others to join in, as their effort to drive up the price of a stock perceived as undervalued soon shifted to a campaign to “Stick it to Wall Street. They used the squeeze to rally the share price and make profits for themselves while forc