Photograph by Gina LeVay
David Nathanson remembers the moment when the frenzied and risky world of day trading took hold of him. While working at home in late January during the pandemic, his phone lit up with a text from a friend: “Look what’s happening with GameStop!”
The 30-year-old software account exec from Brooklyn, N.Y., wasn’t totally new to investing when the troubled video game retailer became an overnight sensation earlier this year, going from a brick-and-mortar Wall Street laggard to a white-hot “meme” stock. In March 2020, to ward off lockdown boredom and stay connected to friends who were trading stocks on investing apps, he signed up with a discount broker.
Advertisement
Some wanted to be on the front lines of a revolution. Some wanted to be rich. And by the end of a wild two-week ride where fortunes were made and lost, some just hoped they would be able to pay their rent.
Winners and losers are made every day on Wall Street. And for a while, the unlikely trading boom around the stock of beleaguered video game retailer GameStop put the little guy on top. Breathtaking fortunes appeared overnight.
Shaun Daumer saw his enormous profit dwindle before he sold out.
Credit:Bryan Anselm/The New York Times
But they disappeared almost as quickly.
Jan 29, 2021
A day after shares of U.S. retailer GameStop rose 135% a wild upswing spurred by an online army of investors on a mission to challenge the dominance of Wall Street Robinhood, the stock-trading app at the center of it all, clamped down.
Almost immediately, GameStop’s shares plunged, falling 75% in 90 minutes.
The limits on trading by Robinhood and other online brokerages, put in place as fears of market instability grew more widespread, set off a furious outcry among small investors. They claimed that the very apps that had democratized trading Robinhood in particular were now doing the bidding of Wall Street.