Dumb Money and what actually happened with GameStop, explained

This is the type of simple story I’d love to be able to tell about GameStop: In early 2021, a ragtag group of everyday traders, led by a Massachusetts dad going by — depending on your social media platform — Roaring Kitty or DeepFuckingValue, took on Wall Street titans and won. The underdogs came out on top, the big bad rich guys wound up on the bottom, and in the process our heroes exposed many of the ways the financial system is rigged. Congress held a high-profile hearing about the incident in which the major players in the saga were involved, and something was likely to come of it. As for GameStop, well, there was still a lot to like about the stock. The whole thing was a virtuous endeavor.

It’s the kind of story I could have maybe told pretty soon after the phenomenon began, though it was never that clear-cut — plenty of normie retail investors were just out to make money, just like the people betting on sports and crypto. The sticking-it-to-the-man narrative has never been a clean one. And two and a half years later, the overall GameStop story has become a whole lot messier. GameStop is still struggling. Wall Street is still winning. Nobody really knows what happened to Roaring Kitty.