As the GameStop stock market story continues developing, one investor has used his earnings to donate six Nintendo Switches, along with games and accessories, to a children’s hospital in Minnesota. While GameStop’s stock prices have begun to dwindle over the past few days, the Reddit users at r/WallStreetBets are now demonstrating that their goals were never to become rich, but rather to send a message to large hedge funds and short sellers. This donation is not the first altruistic use of funds acquired through the ongoing stock market situation and it will likely not be the last.
To quickly summarize the events of the past week, r/WallStreetBets is an online community where users discuss stocks and trading. Several days ago, members of this subreddit began purchasing GameStop stock in tremendous numbers in order to cause GameStop’s “short sellers” to lose money. These short sellers are (generally) large hedge funds and investors who rely on a company’s stock to go down in order to turn significant profits. Once hedge funds such as Melvin Capital Management began losing billions of dollars, Robinhood–a financial services company through which people can trade stocks–began restricting trading on GameStop’s stocks, citing the stock’s recent “volatility.” As a result, Robinhood has come under fire for appearing to side with large corporations rather than their working-class users simply because the former was losing money.
Luckily, according to Nintendo Life, Reddit user Lunar033 is a more accurate representation of what the character of Robin Hood actually stands for. Yesterday, he posted an image on Reddit of himself at Children’s Minnesota Hospital alongside six Nintendo Switches, several games, accessories, and GameStop bags. He has now joined the ranks of another anonymous investor who recently donated ten Switches to a children’s hospital in Texas and others who have used their newly acquired funds to help cover people’s medical debts. In this case, there truly is no better way to phrase it than “taking from the rich and giving to the needy.”
The most fascinating aspects of this story are the principles and generosity displayed by these modern-day Robin Hoods. According to their posts on r/WallStreetBets, many of them are refusing to sell their stocks even though some could walk away with as much as $10 million if they cashed out now. In fact, Lunar033 himself still holds 50 shares, which at the time of this writing could net him over $11,000. However, the consensus among these Reddit users is that their crusade is not at all about the money, but rather showing the financial elite that it is unacceptable to prey upon the “weak” for personal gain; in this case, the weak being struggling companies such as GameStop.
Although GameStop’s stock is no longer seeing the tremendous surge that it did last week, this story is far from over. Unless stock prices return to their original state of approximately $20 per share, many who now own stock in it could become millionaires virtually overnight. Because of this, along with the massive losses seen by some hedge funds, the White House is now monitoring the situation as well. Fortunately, acts of charity such as this one and the overall tone of r/WallStreetBets make clear that even if everyone were to cash out their GameStop stock today, that money would be in the hands of citizens who value the well-being of others more than their own.
Source: Nintendo Life
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