Someone was always going to be left holding the bag. That’s the way it works. After weeks of magnificent highs, GameStop’s stock is plummeting. As of this writing it’s at $57, down from last week’s high of more than $400. As the stock falls, investors are selling off, which only increases the fall. The destitute players who held on to the stock too long are now gathering online to commiserate and return to the activity that started it all—posting.
Wallstreetbets is still going strong. Some people are looking for the next stock, others are posting their losses or gains, and still more are demanding that the posters remain “diamond hands,” meaning that they aren’t selling their shares of GME, regardless of what happens. Most of the top posts seem to suggest that, with enough determination, they can still force a squeeze, sending GME to the moon. There is also a sense that this is not about the money, that it never was about the money, that it’s about sticking it to Melvin, Citron, and other hedge funds that shorted GME.
“GME is not over,” one Wallstreetbets post said, its headline trailed by rockets going nowhere. “They want us scared and it is working…I don’t see rockets no more. We achieved so much that we forget about the real reason we invested in GME. Yes tendies matter but we achieved more than that. You guys made more than a million…friends. All I hear at my job is gamestop people doing good things.”
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The issue, of course, is that for many people it was about the money, and needed to be about the money, considering that many large hedge funds can sustain billions in losses while the average person sinking tons of their own money into a stock cannot necessarily do the same. People’s life circumstances are different, and, objectively speaking with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been a good thing for many of the people who bought GameStop stock to have sold last week, when the stock was high. Many were left waiting for a second spike that never came (or, in the eyes of those who still believe, a spike that simply hasn’t come yet and will come at some later date for those who are still holding).
Whether that spike will come, who can say, but it doesn’t look likely at the moment. Meanwhile, lots of the holders are left … holding the bag. The Wallstreetbets spinoff /r/GMEbagholdersclub is more clear-eyed. It’s a group of people posting about how they bought into the stock late or waited too long to sell. They’re the people who know they’re idiots, and that they are, to some degree, screwed. They’re ready to admit that and make fun of themselves. “This is pretty painful, I have to admit,” one poster said on Reddit. “My father told me 100x to sell but me, in all my arrogance, decided that the squeeze has not been squoze and that gme still had momentum. Luckily, I sold before I lost money but it still feels like I lost money…what possessed me to not sell when it dipped back down to 15k? I feel stupid and like a gambler of sorts. Am I just damned to be a bad trader?”
The subreddit is full of memes of GME investors lighting their money on fire, lots of sarcasm, and folks who now realize that while everyone was HODLING and diamond hands-ing and WE LIKE THE STOCK-ing their way to the top of the WallStreetBets subreddit last week, a nonzero portion of folks simply took their money and ran. What’s happening to GameStop’s stock right now is a bloodbath, and the bag holders know it. “WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW IS NOT A SELL-OFF,” a post said, parodying the style of Wallstreetbets diamond hand die-hards.
“Melvin Capital is going to throw a lot of tricks at us that will make it look like the stock is dropping. Don’t fall for it,” the sarcastic post notes. “Do not sell if you see any of these things happen: “GME drops below $1 a share. The Gamestop locations near you start closing. GME files for bankruptcy. Your bank forecloses on your home for late payment. These are classic hedge fund tricks.”
“You guys all called me paperhands for selling in the 270s,” another post said. “Now I call myself paperhands because I am stacking all this paper. Thinking about going on vacation to either Thailand or Maldives. Which would you choose?”
There is also a sense that the dream of a populist uprising taking on Wall Street fat cats was an illusion. “How the fuck was this whole idiotic saga ever supposed to stick it to Wall Street?” A post said. “Where the fuck in this process are retail investors siphoning money from Wall Street? Melvin’s losses just shift over to one of the other big players. Meanwhile, brokerages and investment banks are raking in fees and commissions on a shitload of new trades while ALSO profiting off the stock rise because they don’t insist on this ‘diamond hands’ bullshit.”
Not all of it is jokes, however. There are people who say that they have truly ruined their lives, or missed out on a potential life-changing opportunity, or who have tons of regret. It has become in some sense a support board for people who are really struggling.
“How do I forgive myself?,” one poster wrote, noting that his shares were at one point worth $400,000. “I know I come from a position of privilege in they most people lost their money, but seeing what could have been and letting myself get carried by the diamond handed hype is killing me. Wish I could go back in time but I can’t. That money would have been life changing.”
Another posted, simply: “I fucked up.”
For others, it’s less serious (perhaps because they lost less, or still came out slightly ahead). Sometimes, when you’re left holding the bag, the best thing you can do is take the L, laugh it off, and move on. That’s what this sub is about. “It was a good learning experience,” one post said. “WIll keep holding the bag because it will serve as a good reminder…hope everyone takes care. Don’t beat yourselves up.”
