/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>29840794
Because they're right.

>>29676432
It could have been any stock, it just happened to be GME. The truth is that the market has been losing resilience for decades (especially after the global financial crisis) and wealth is ultra consolidated such that markets don't have enough participant heterogeneity. When this happens you get all sorts of unique and unpredictable vulnerabilities based on the strategies deployed by participants in those environments.

In this case, the "whales" adopted a strategy of extreme price manipulation to the downside which exposed them ENORMOUSLY to short squeezes. They also have huge egos and a propensity to double down on their short positions which only exacerbates their exposure. I would wager almost every single stock on the U.S. market with any significant volume is manipulated and thus vulnerable to these sorts of squeezes, it's just that GME happened to have all the right traits going for it to trigger the coordinated effort to detonate it.

Take a look at some sector ETFs though like XLF or look at stocks like PFE. I would guarantee you could do the exact same thing on those that was done on GME if only the buying power of those attempting to cause the detonation was great enough. PFE is probably a $40 stock, but it's being artificially held down in the low $30s by market make manipulation. If you detonated their manipulation, it would be a $100 stock and it shouldn't be a $100 stock either. The market mechanism is currently broken on a structural level.