纽约（美国有线电视新闻网）大约一年前，一群来自互联网边缘的日间交易员想出了如何在自己的游戏中击败华尔街。或者他们是这么想的。
在 1 月中旬左右，在 Reddit 上的 WallStreetBets 论坛的大量日间交易员的推动下，大多数分析师预计会走上百视达之路的实体零售商 GameStop (GME) 的股价开始飙升。他们每天将自己的头寸增加一倍、三倍，高呼“钻石之手”和“登月”，集会呼喊着要持有他们的股票而不是兑现。 “meme stock”一词逐渐成为主流。
更妙的是，这些业余交易员眨眼称自己为“猿类”，却对华尔街上大量做空 GameStop 的肥猫们持保留态度。越多的人试图解雇 Reddit 人群——Citron Research 称他们为“这场扑克游戏中的傻瓜”——他们越推高股票，挤压卖空者。
最后，GameStop 的反弹使该股在回落之前上涨了 1,600%。与此同时，Citron 在事件发生后关闭了卖空业务。华尔街精英对冲基金之一的梅尔文资本（Melvin Capital）财务状况不佳，不得不由另外两家公司救助。猿人高兴极了。现在谁是傻瓜？
这一刻，看起来就像大卫已经打败了歌利亚。但巨人只是措手不及。
GameStop 传奇虽然很短暂，但标志着华尔街的一个转折点。猿是否推翻了机构？不，远非如此。但起义的壮观场面与结果一样重要。一旦 GameStop 引起了公众的想象，华尔街就再也无法忽视社交媒体或聚集在它上面的投资者了。
“大多数人认为这是一场革命，”华尔街日报专栏作家、即将出版的一本关于 GameStop 集会的书的作者斯宾塞·雅卡布说。 “而且很多年轻人仍然相信他们正在与邪恶的对冲基金进行某种良性斗争……但是，基本上，故事是一样的：如果你认为你已经找到了击败华尔街的方法，你可能没有。”
2 月初，当 GameStop 暴跌至 45 美元左右时，Reddit 军队的时刻失败了。那些迟到并在 480 美元左右的高点买入该股的人蒙受了巨大损失。如今，GME 的交易价格约为 145 美元——今年上涨了近 700%，但距离 1 月份的高点还很远。
WallStreetBets 的创始人 Jaime Rogozinski 承认，GameStop 发生的事情本身并不是一场革命，但这并不意味着社区或引导它的精神——嗅出市场低效率并利用它们谋取利润——已经死了。
Rogozinski 告诉 CNN Business：“他们的账户很小，但他们现在已经想出了如何推高股价，即使他们的规模微不足道。” “他们不会停止寻找这些东西。”
自 GME 集会以来，最初的 WallStreetBets 页面的大小增加了一倍多，从 1 月底的约 500 万增加到现在的超过 1100 万——人气的爆炸式增长推迟了一些早期的追随者，他们脱离了新的，更多Reddit 和其他地方的专业投资小组。
那么谁赢了，大卫还是歌利亚？也许两者都有。
一月的紧缩力量强大到足以让华尔街最顽固的精英们坐起来注意。美国监管机构也在密切关注。
“你现在很难找到一家空头流通量超过 100% 的公司，对吧？”罗戈津斯基说。换句话说，没有任何华尔街公司愿意像 Melvin 那样结束，这个巨头被 GameStop 激增所挤压，在不到一个月的时间里损失了 53% 的基金。如果你大量做空一只股票并增加你的敞口，你就是在背上一个目标。
WallStreetBets 以其粗俗的行话和大男子主义，成为对可能变得过于舒适的机构投资者的检查。不想犯两次错误，公司聘请了社交媒体经理并订阅了监控社交聊天的服务。据彭博社本月早些时候报道，摩根大通目前正在测试一种新工具，旨在保护客户免受与 meme 股票相关的损失。
摩根大通现金股票交易全球联席主管克里斯·贝尔特 (Chris Berthe) 告诉彭博社：“如果你对零售业的发展没有清晰的认识，感觉就像你在开车一样部分失明。”
Jakab 说，无论好坏，所有这些都让华尔街更擅长赚钱。
“我认为改变的是华尔街完全了解正在发生的事情，”Jakab 说。 “而且他们不会再以同样的方式被抓到。他们监控社交媒体，他们会更加明智地处理曝光。”
Jakab 认为，对于所有所谓的 Apes 来说，最终在 GameStop 传奇中被灌输的是小家伙。在他的书《不是的革命：GameStop、Reddit 和小投资者的掠夺》一书中，Jakab 提出了这样的理由，尽管人们都在谈论坚持这个人，但这次集会只会使华尔街更有利.
“华尔街喜欢这个，”他告诉 CNN Business。 “华尔街喜欢数百万讨厌华尔街把钱投向华尔街的年轻人——他们不在乎自己是否被讨厌。”
也许 WallStreetBets 和 GME 传奇更重要的遗产是文化。在网站上花半分钟时间，您很快就会明白这不是穿西装的婴儿潮一代的惯例，而是一群年轻的千禧一代和 Z 世代（仍然主要是男性）通过模因和表情符号谈论复杂的期权交易。
“我能想到的最好的比喻是，这些经验丰富的职业扑克玩家已经玩这个游戏几十年了，现在他们都不得不匆匆忙忙地为这个不使用游戏的新玩家腾出空间。同样的规则，”罗戈津斯基说。 “你有一个鲁莽的人，有不同的风险概念和不同的目标。所以这些玩家现在必须调整他们的策略。”
The year Reddit changed Wall Street forever
New York (CNN Business)Nearly a year ago, a bunch of day traders from the fringes of the internet figured out how to beat Wall Street at its own game. Or so they thought.
Around mid-January, shares of GameStop (GME) — a brick-and-mortar retailer that most analysts expected to go the way of Blockbuster — began surging, fueled by a pile-on of day traders from the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit. They were doubling, tripling, their positions by the day, chanting "diamond hands," and "to the moon," rally cries to hold onto their shares rather than cash out. The term "meme stock" sauntered into the mainstream.
Better still, these amateur traders, who winkingly referred to themselves as "Apes," were sticking it to the fat cats on Wall Street who'd heavily shorted GameStop. The more people tried to dismiss the Reddit crowd — Citron Research called them "the suckers at this poker game" — the more they drove up the stock, squeezing the short sellers.
In the end, the GameStop rally sent the stock up 1,600% before coming back down to Earth. Citron, meanwhile, shut down its short-selling business after the episode. Melvin Capital, one of Wall Street's elite hedge funds, was so financially gutted it had to be bailed out by two other firms. The Apes rejoiced. Who's the sucker now?
It looked, in the moment, like David had taken down Goliath. But the giant was merely caught off guard.
The GameStop saga, brief though it was, marked a turning point for Wall Street. Did the Apes overthrow the establishment? No, far from it. But the spectacle of the uprising was every bit as important as the result. Once GameStop caught the public's imagination, Wall Street could no longer afford to dismiss social media or the investors who congregate on it.
"Most people saw it as this revolution," says Spencer Jakab, a Wall Street Journal columnist and author of a forthcoming book about the GameStop rally. "And a lot of young people are still convinced that they're fighting some kind of virtuous fight against evil hedge funds... but, basically, the story is the same: If you think you've figured something out to beat Wall Street, you probably haven't."
The Reddit army's moment fizzled in early February when GameStop cratered to around $45. Those who joined late, buying the stock at its peak of around $480, were left with huge losses. These days, GME trades around $145 — up nearly 700% for the year, but far from January's highs.
Jaime Rogozinski, the founder of WallStreetBets, acknowledges that what happened with GameStop wasn't a revolution per se, but that doesn't mean the community or the ethos that guided it — sniffing out market inefficiencies and exploiting them for profit — is dead.
"They're little accounts, but they've now figured out how to push a stock price, even with their insignificant size," Rogozinski told CNN Business. "They're not going to stop looking for these things."
The original WallStreetBets page has more than doubled in size since the GME rally, going from about 5 million at the end of January to over 11 million now -- an explosion of popularity that's put off some early adherents who broke off to form new, more specialized investing groups on Reddit and elsewhere.
So who won, David or Goliath? Maybe both.
The force of the January squeeze was powerful enough to make even the stodgiest of Wall Street elite sit up and take notice. US regulators are paying close attention, too.
"You'll be hard-pressed to find a company that has over 100% short float now, right?" Rogozinski says. In other words, no Wall Street firm with any sense wants to end up like Melvin, a titan that was squeezed so hard by the GameStop surge it lost 53% of its fund in under a month. If you massively short a stock and run up your exposure, you're putting a target on your back.
WallStreetBets, with all its crude jargon and machismo, became a check on institutional investors who had perhaps gotten too cozy. Not wanting to be wrong twice, firms have hired social media managers and subscribed to services that monitor social chatter. JPMorgan, for one, is currently testing a new tool aimed at protecting clients from losses tied to meme stocks, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.
"If you don't have a clear view of what retail is up to, it feels like you're driving partially blind," Chris Berthe, JPMorgan's global co-head of cash equities trading, told Bloomberg.
For better or worse, Jakab says, all of this has made Wall Street even better at making money.
"I think what's changed is that Wall Street is totally aware of what's going on," says Jakab. "And they are not going to get caught out in the same way again. They monitor social media, they're going to be more judicious about getting exposed."
For all the so-called Apes accomplished, Jakab argues, in the end it was the little guy that got hosed in the GameStop saga. His book, "The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors," Jakab makes the case that despite all the talk of sticking it to the Man, the rally only tipped the odds further in Wall Street's favor.
"Wall Street likes this," he told CNN Business. "Wall Street likes millions of young people who hate Wall Street putting their money on Wall Street — they don't care if they're hated."
Perhaps the more significant legacy of WallStreetBets and the GME saga is cultural. Spend half a minute on the site and you quickly understand this isn't a convention of Boomers in suits but rather a bunch of young Millennials and Gen Zers (still mostly male) talking about complicated options trades via memes and emoji.
"The best analogy that I can come up with is, you've had these seasoned professional poker players playing this game for decades, and now they've all had to scoot over to make room for this new player that doesn't use the same rules," Rogozinski says. "You have somewhat of a reckless individual that has a different concept of risk and a different objective. And so these players now have to adjust their strategy."
