US Representative Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, wants to know more about the exploding GameStop bubble that has occupied much of our attention for the past two weeks. To make that happen, she has invited some of the central characters from the real-life drama, including Robinhood founder and CEO Vladimir Tenev and prominent Reddit investor Keith “DeepFuckingValue” Gill, to testify before him. Congress.
“This audience will be educational. It will be a learning experience for everyone,” Waters said in an interview with Cheddar. “We are going to have all the players, we are going to have Robinhood [CEO] Vladimir Tenev, I think that’s his name, we are going to have him there. We are going to have a young man from Reddit, his name is Keith Gill, who basically started this mania.”
WallStreetBets Subreddit
It looks like the testimonial will focus, at least in part, on the role Robinhood, a trading app for individual investors, played in the whole thing. The app is popular with users of the WallStreetBets subreddit which helped push GameStop’s price to a high of $ 483 last week (after starting the year at less than $ 20), but sparked a furor on January 28 when it imposed caps. to the purchase of GameStop shares. Some users speculated that it was trying to force GameStop’s price down at the urging of its hedge fund investors, though it said in a later blog post that the restrictions were necessary to comply with SEC regulations.
“We understand what’s being said about Robinhood and why it did what it did in terms of limiting purchases,” Waters continued. “We understand that hedge funds have lost a lot of money. Understand that shorting is a big problem and a great conversation. But what a lot of people didn’t know about is shorting, so we’re going to learn a lot.”
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
However, from a Reddit perspective, Gill is the big pony on this show. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst, formerly employed by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, who posts on WallStreetBets and his own subreddit as DeepFuckingValue and also has a YouTube channel dedicated to stock tracking and investment research called Roaring Kitty.
He’s also widely credited with sparking the race at GameStop: A Reuters report from January that revealed his true identity said that he “helped draw an avalanche of retail cash to GameStop, burning hedge funds that had wagered against the company and stirring up the market in general “.
Later in Cheddar’s interview, Waters said that Gill has not actually promised to appear before Congress at this time. “I have it on my list to be present. I have it on my list,” he said. “They haven’t confirmed my entire list yet, but I want it.”
GameStop quote February 3, 2021
He also wants someone from GameStop to show up, even though the company at the center of the whole thing was largely a bystander: “It’s interesting to know and understand, when you have companies that are now at a disadvantage because of the digital age, what what to do and how they are trying to change that, and I understand that they are working to change that, and that there is a real chance that they will be successful in this.
Some users of the WallStreetBets mass effect reddit are still holding on to their GameStop shares, but the exciting journey now seems to be over: After hitting a high of $ 483 last week, the stock closed today at $ 53.50.
