WallStreetBets exploded into the mainstream, moving from the front page of Reddit to the front page of the New York Times and nearly every other major news site. This past week has been a banner one for Reddit’s island of misfit investors. Stock market meets internet fringe culture This January, with WallStreetBets now an inescapable presence, Omar was back on the board. “I would not have traded options,” Omar admitted, “if I had not found WallStreetBets.” Omar, who spoke on the condition that he be referred to using a pseudonym out of concern over the legality of trading with money from his student loans, said that he blames himself for his losses but regrets ever stumbling upon one of Reddit’s most active communities. “All I wanted to do was just make my initial money back and pay it off.”īy the end of the week, he had lost it all again. “I was really scared,” Omar told CNN Business in an interview in August. Then he opened up WallStreetBets.īetween a Reddit and a hard place: As GameStop stock saga shows, populism is rising Within two days Omar had lost not only his gains but his entire initial investment.ĭesperate to earn it back, Omar, 23 years old and the child of working-class immigrant parents, took the rest of the money he could scrounge up - cash from his tutoring gig, his stimulus check, a chunk of his freshly-deposited student loans that was supposed to pay for his living expenses (which were basically non-existent after he had moved home during the Covid-19 outbreak) - and poured all of it, $22,000, into his Robinhood account. “It was diamond hands,” said Omar, using the site’s term for holding an option even after incurring extreme losses or gains. But he followed the mantra of the place where he’d first learned about options trading, the subreddit r/wallstreetbets, and held on. Omar knew he should probably sell the options before they became worthless. By lunchtime, the stock options Omar had bought were down around $7,000 from their peak.

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