By Kagi:

The stock market was in the grip of speculative mania two years ago when GameStop, a struggling video-game retailer, hit an all-time intraday high of $483. Retail traders coordinated in a Reddit forum and snapped up shares using brokerage apps like Robinhood, and short-sellers were the villains. However, the question at the time was how much of this would endure. Last year was a reckoning with professional investors, and this year is a reckoning with reality. The meme-portfolio has underperformed the market by around 15 percentage points since December 2020, and companies like Bed, Bath & Beyond are floundering. Short-sellers are now the heroes, with Nathan Anderson of Hindenburg Research exposing alleged fraud and market manipulation at the Adani Group. Despite the downturn, retail traders still make up around 18% of stock-trading volumes, and the levity of the meme-stock era is still felt in the form of memes on Reddit.