Authors: Marika Thwin & Madison Wilson
This week on Wall Street has been a whirlwind for everyone. The biggest headline? r/wallstreetbets rode GameStop stock #tothemoon by taking down hedge funds. The conversation started on January 11, 2021 when GameStop welcomed three new directors to their board. People believed that this leadership would help the company recover from difficult times by moving towards a more digital strategy. On that same day, some independent investors from r/wallstreetbets noticed that a hedge fund had taken many short trades against GameStop (GME). This investor rallied other independent investors to buy GME stocks to inflate the price. The hedge fund with the short trades was forced to declare bankruptcy after GME’s price increased over 100%. Wall Street executives claimed that this was illegal, Robinhood restricted trade on GME and similar stocks, and Discord banned the r/wallstreetbets server, which has caused public outrage that the economy gives the rich power over the poor.
Between January 26-30, 2021, there was a total of 15.2 million mentions across all platforms and just over 5 million Twitter users talking about the whole ordeal. The conversation hit a peak on January 28, with 6.7 million mentionsacross all platforms and over 3 million Twitter users contributing to the conversation. The overall sentiment this week was pretty evenly split – roughly 48.9% positive and 51.1% negative. Both positive and negative tweets supported the independent investors instead of Robinhood or the hedge funds.
The most retweeted tweet came from @ashwsbreal, an active r/WallStreetBets member.
robinhood decided this morning to suspend buying of AMC and GME stock because regular people were making too much money, proving once again that any time the poors find a way to get any sort of financial foothold in this world the billionaire class will move swiftly to crush them
— Ash Crypto (@Ashcryptoreal) January 28, 2021
Politicians from both parties spoke out against Robinhood, including AOC, Ted Cruz, Rashida Tlaib, and Donald Trump Jr.
This is unacceptable.
We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.
As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary. https://t.co/4Qyrolgzyt
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 28, 2021
It took less than a day for big tech, big government and the corporate media to spring into action and begin colluding to protect their hedge fund buddies on Wall Street. This is what a rigged system looks like, folks! #RobinHood #RedditArmy #GME #GMEtothemoon https://t.co/UhrwGHCjng
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 28, 2021
Elon Musk also expressed his support for the independent investors and tweeted a link to their subreddit. Musk has a history of influencing the stock market through Twitter. In December 2020, he tweeted about the Dogecoin cryptocurrency (DOGE-USD), which caused the stock price to rise about 20%. Dogecoin started trending again after his “Gamestonk!!” tweet. As a play on Musk’s career, the phrase, “to the moon,” started circulating to describe the situation. #tothemoon became a trending hashtag around increasing stocks, especially Dogecoin and AMC.
Gamestonk!! https://t.co/RZtkDzAewJ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 26, 2021
Mood after seeing #dogecoin hit a 600% increase today!#ToTheMoon 🚀📈🚀📈🚀📈 pic.twitter.com/G1Ha4sJhmG
— Doge Coin Investor 🚀📈 (@TheDogeInvestor) January 29, 2021
Financial influencers on Instagram produced some of the top engaging content as they used the platform to educate audiences on why Robinhood is not an ideal investing platform in the first place. Top posts have received over 12k likes and hundreds of comments in agreement.
Redditors used the platform to criticize Robinhood for their restrictions, shame the company for contributing to political turmoil, and motive people to keep buying GME shares. Top posts have over 150k upvotes and top comments have over 25k upvotes. Thousands of comments including the search terms, “Robinhood” and “GameStop” expressed concern about economic inequality and the power associated with it. “Market manipulation” was a commonly used term to describe the situation, and Reddit users were the most proactive audience discussing about what the general public can do to avoid this manipulation.
Full Analysis:
Purpose:
Analyze social media users’ thoughts and sentiments when r/WallStreetBets independent users caused an increase in the GameStop (GME) stock price and Robinhood restricted GME trading on their platform.
Analysis Time Frame:
January 26-30, 2021
Overall Trends:
- January 28, 2021 had the highest conversation volume across all platforms, with 6.71 million total mentions and over 3 million Twitter users contributing to the conversation.
- The night before, GME shares increased to an all-time high closing price of $350.
- On this day, Robinhood also announced their restrictions for buying GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, Nokia, and others.
- The top posts on every platform were against Robinhood’s restrictions.
- After Robinhood restricted GME trading, politicians on both sides called the action “unacceptable” and sided with independent investors.
- Social media users used the phrase and hashtag #tothemoon to describe the price trend for GME and similar stocks (e.g., Nokia, Blackberry, AMC, American Airlines, etc.).
- In general, conversation suggests that underlying, decades-long economic inequality is the real problem.
Sentiment:
48.9% positive
51.1% negative
All sentiments generally reflected support for the independent investors.
Keyword Groups:
“Reddit” and “GameStop“
“Reddit” and “GME“
“Reddit” and “Robinhood“
“Robinhood” and “GameStop“
“Robinhood” and “GME“
“Robinhood,” “GameStop,” and “GME“
Popular Words:
“Robinhood” and “GameStop” were the most commonly used words in online conversations, but there was also a lot of discussion about Elon Musk and dogecoin.
