GameStop Changer

It was a David v Goliath story that made headlines when a bunch of extremely online investors took on Wall Street in the GameStop short squeeze that had far reaching (and infuriating) consequences. Director Craig Gillespie and stars Paul Dano and Shailene Woodley tell Total Film about turning this unlikely subject matter into a propulsive talking-point movie

- JACK SHEPHERD

Need to know what ‘dumb money’ means? It’s a term used by institutional investors to describe so-called ‘retail traders’ who purchase shares of a company. Alternatively, it’s pejorative used by financial bigwigs to describe regular people who invest in the stock market. Now, if the idea of multimillionaires calling you ‘dumb money’ already has your blood ready to boil, just wait until you hear about what happened in January 2021.

Back in those dark COVID-19-stricken days, a group of Reddit users noticed that various institutions were betting against the American retailer GameStop. Without going into too much detail – and without the benefit of having Margot Robbie here to explain shorting (à la The Big Short) – you primarily need to know that the Redditors believed that, if enough people bought GameStop shares, the hedge funds would lose money and everyone who invested in the stock would see their bank balances shoot to the moon.

And that’s almost what happened. Users on the subreddit r/WallStreetBets banded together to buy shares in GameStop, preventing the company from going under, and as a result, the share price increased dramatically (it ‘squeezed’). Except, the reality wasn’t quite as sweet. Owing to a broken financial system and some corrupt individuals, the Reddit victory was cut short, exposing huge holes in the market and making a lot of people very, very angry.