New book about GameStop
Jun 08, 2021 in GameStop
The new book “GameStonk! The wild rollercoaster ride of GameStop” is now available on Amazon.
About this book
This book details the wild ride of GameStop stock during 2021, when retail traders took on hedge funds to exploit an epic short squeeze in the stock. The story includes many colorful characters including Roaring Kitty, the genius deep value investor who found the trade and invested from the start; reddit’s wallstreetbets gamblers who like the stock and who wanted to diamond hand it to the moon; hedge fund captains; brokerage CEOs; market makers, US senators and more.
With the short interest in GameStop reaching an estimated 140% at one point, the extreme runup in the stock over the month of January and subsequent trading halt by Robinhood (and a handful of other brokerages) on January 28, 2021 led to cries of market manipulation, the filing of dozens of lawsuits and a series of congressional hearings which continue as of the writing of this book. Wall Street started to pay attention to reddit traders, with Steve Huffman, CEO and co-founder of reddit testifying that the WSB traders have “managed to raise important issues about fairness and opportunity in our financial system. I’m proud they used Reddit to do so.”
Many redditors grew up with and loved GameStop and found a community around the rally of the stock and the ability to fight back against the hedge funds, resulting in huge losses for many who had sold the stock short or purchased large put positions. Many were learning to trade for the first time with support from the community and using trading apps such as Robinhood, who gamified trading. Many of the reddit investors are also gamers, and think nothing of paper losses. Posting ‘loss porn’ is a widely accepted process on reddit and the hedge funds short selling GameStop had no idea of the power of retail traders.
Outsized wins posted by many redditors such as the user known as DeepF***ingValue inspired others, who went on to donate to many charities. Reddit’s WSB community raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to adopt and support gorillas. Following this, donations of $50,000 were made to the fund personally by Adam Aron (CEO of AMC) as well as AMC in recognition of reddit traders, who also support AMC. It is incredible that the customers and shareholders of these great companies can get public recognition and acknowledgement from their CEOs.
This book takes you inside my experience trading GameStop, covering video game history, the stock market, options trading, margin requirements, clearinghouses and call for reform along the way. This is not a book that will teach you to trade. If you want to learn more about trading, I recommend following Roaring Kitty’s YouTube channel.