Thread by @sinanaral

[#GameStop Thread] This week, social media coordination created a spike in the @GameStop stock that rose over 1700% as retail investors coordinated over information on @reddit and other social media to pump the stock. 1/8

Millions of small investors, egged on by social media, employed a classic Wall Street tactic to put the squeeze — on Wall Street, especially short sellers. 2/8

nytimes.com/2021/01/27/bus…

I covered this possibility in detail in my book The Hype Machine 👇. In Chapter 2 "The End of Reality" I discussed how social media memes could be used to inflate stock prices and cause bubbles. 3/8

sinanaral.io/books

For example, I described the Hack Crash of 2013 in which a viral false news tweet by Syrian hackers who had infiltrated the AP News twitter handle wiped out $140B in equity value in a matter of minutes. 👇 4/8

But, more relevant to the #GameStop story, I discussed, in detail, how coordinate news propagated over social media can support 'pump and dump' schemes that inflate the price of stock artificially. 👇 5/8

I also described the large scale statistical evidence for the impact of social media on financial markets.👇 6/8

I'm glad people are coming around to the threat of the "meme-stock bubble"... 👇 (But I can't say I didn't warn us). 7/8

marker.medium.com/gamestop-prove…

The next question is "what do we do?" *Stay tuned*... On the heals of "The Hype Machine" book, in which I tried to address solutions to our social media crisis in detail, we're preparing a big announcement at the @mitide to move this us further down the road toward solutions. 8/8

The GameStop effect is extending to AMC. The theater chain soared 300% at the open to the highest since 2018 trib.al/YJeie4b 9/

Note my coverage in the book of the way the Hype Machine is coupled to automated systems that analyze and amplify these types of stock movements. I predict an autopsy will reveal the same thing going on here with #GameStop and #amcstock 👇 10/

Robinhood blocks purchase of GameStop, AMC, and BlackBerry stock

theverge.com/2021/1/28/2225…

Not sure people understand all the perverse incentives here, either on the retail side or the institutional side.👇🏽It will be interesting to see what the inevitable SEC investigation turns up.
Robinhood raised $1 billion after halting GameStop purchases.
cnn.com/2021/01/29/inv…

Robinhood’s Customers Are Hedge Funds Like Citadel, Its Users Are the Product

vice.com/en/article/qjp…

The plot thickens: Google is salvaging Robinhood’s one-star rating by deleting nearly 100,000 negative reviews.
theverge.com/2021/1/28/2225…

A real life Robinhood story (one that might not end well)

bostonglobe.com/2021/01/29/bus…

Robinhood explains its decision to block buying on #gamestop @ChrisCuomo pushes back. HT/ @tomeckles

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1355173784764952581?s=09

Keith Gill Drove the GameStop Reddit Mania. The trader known as "DeepF—ingValue" on the WallStreetBets forum told the @WSJ “I didn’t expect this.” wsj.com/articles/keith…

His risky bet made him a millionaire on paper. It could've gone very differently.
cnn.com/videos/busines…

Untethering markets from economic reality is a recipe for economic instability 👇🏽
Opinion piece by @scmallaby in The Washington Post: The good guys in the GameStop story? It’s the hedge funds and short sellers..
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Now its spread to #silversqueeze:
finance.yahoo.com/news/silver-pr…

As exoected, #GameStop #AMC and Silver Tumble... wsj.com/livecoverage/g…

This was so predictable 👇🏽. And not yesterday or Friday, but early last week.

As GameStop stock crumbles, newbie traders reckon with heavy losses.
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

The Sharks arrive at the GameStop party...
finance.yahoo.com/news/hedge-fun…

My OPED in @wapo on this 👇🏽
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…