experiences of three amateurs in california who all buy and sell their shares using trading apps. gavin may, a 19 year old youtube star, parkour enthusiast and amateur online trading guru. do you sometimes wonder why people listen to a 19 year old who s been trading for, like, six months? yeah, no, totally. that s definitely a very valid question. john motter, who works for a homeless charity. he blames big finance for some of la s housing problems. have you ever bought any shares before? no. first time? first time. and casper and matt who run a social media marketing company. i m a gambling guy and i really believed in the power of memes and i put my money where my mouth is. a year ago, gamestop to many was a business slowly dying. it sells physical games at an actual shop, and many on wall street thought that
and as for gamestop, well, it s now looking to move its operations digitally. its share price is still incredibly variable. in february, it s been between $40 and $200. casper and matt believe what happened shows what the internet can do through collective action. i think from now on the hedge funds are going to have, in their risk models and prediction models, there s going to be a new line item in there, like, hey, watch out for this everyone ganging up on us and grouping together scenario. that s never happened before. without the internet, that would be impossible to accomplish that. john s investment was relatively small, but he lost most of it. i don t think any, like, change has come out of this. that s been pretty apparent. i hope people see that, i hope everyone who gets screwed over does see that no one s coming to bail them out and changes aren t being made to help the little guy. if nothing else happens, i hope people get educated
and it erodes the trust of the people. so i think you find a lot of people right now, they just. .. they know it s not right. by early february, the share price of gamestop was about a tenth of its market high, and on the way down people lost a lot of money. casper s shares were at one point worth around $100,000. he sold a few, but he hung on to most of them, he says out of principle. on the way down, his shares decreased in value by more than $60,000. i could have made a little bit of money, but i think the experience. i think some people are going to be mad that i m saying this, but i think the experience was worth it, you know? i don t really get too attached to the gains until i ve sold. john motter bought high. he says he only invested what he could afford to lose. but many others bought high thinking gamestop would go to the moon and lost big.
hung on to most of them, he says out of principle. 0n the way down, his shares decreased in value by more than $60,000. i could have made a little bit of money, but i think the experience. i think some people are going to be mad that i m saying this, but i think the experience was worth it, you know? i don t really get too attached to the gains until i ve sold. john motter bought high. he says he only invested what he could afford to lose. but many others bought high thinking gamestop would go to the moon and lost big. i do think that there were many who strongly believed that they could drive the price up, and it would just stay there, and it would stay up, forever. and the only thing i can think of that functions that way has been bitcoin. gamestop didn t behave like bitcoin, though, and many people holding onto their shares were being egged on by other reddit users, whilst others were selling.
hey, watch out for this everyone ganging up on us and grouping together scenario. that s never happened before. without the internet, that would be impossible to accomplish that. john s investment was relatively small, but he lost most of it. i don t think any, like, change has come out of this. that s been pretty apparent. i hope people see that, i hope everyone who gets screwed over does see that no one s coming to bail them out and changes aren t being made to help the little guy. if nothing else happens, i hope people get educated around that and just, like, learn a lesson. and gavin says he ended up making $40,000. there is this kind of assumption that a lot of people who are on wallstreetbets were just there to, like, make a political point about hedge funds, but actually there were lots of retail investors that were there to make money, like you. yeah, no, definitely. i would say, as much as people say that they wanted to make a point about hedge funds, at the end of the day,