The GameStop Reckoning Was a Long Time Coming

散户抱团向华尔街发动互联网“金融起义”

This week, the biggest story in the financial markets is the absurdist, pretty-sure-I-hallucinated-it drama involving GameStop, a struggling video-game retailer that became the rope in a high-stakes tug of war between Wall Street suits and a crusading internet mob.

本周，金融市场最大的新闻是一桩荒诞的、让人疑似幻觉的戏剧性事件，当事方为苦苦挣扎的电子游戏零售商游戏驿站（GameStop），它成了华尔街西装革履的专业人士与网络暴民之间进行的一场豪赌的拔河比赛的绳索。

The simplest explanation for what happened is that a bunch of hyper-online mischief-makers in Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum – a clan of self-described degenerates with user names like “dumbledoreRothIRA” and “Coldcutcombo69” – decided it would be funny and righteous (and maybe even profitable, though that part was less important) to execute a “short squeeze” by pushing up the price of GameStop’s stock, entrapping the big-money hedge funds that had bet against it.

关于发生了什么，最简单的解释是，Reddit网站r/WallStreetBets版块的一群超级在线恶作剧制造者（他们自称堕落者），使用“dumbledoreRothIRA”和“Coldcutcombo69”之类的网名，推高游戏驿站的股票价格来“轧空”，诱使那些下注的大型对冲基金落入圈套——他们认为这有趣又正义（或许还能赚上一笔，尽管这并非那么重要）。

The strategy worked. Within two days, GameStop was the most heavily traded stock in the world, Elon Musk and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got behind the revolt, and r/WallStreetBets users were posting screenshots of their suddenly inflated account balances. The scheme’s originator, whose Reddit user name is unprintable in a family paper, claims to have turned an initial investment of $50,000 into a windfall of more than $40 million. One of the hedge funds that had shorted GameStop’s stock, Melvin Capital, had to get a $2.75 billion bailout from two other investors after it was hammered with huge losses.

这个策略见效了。两天内，游戏驿站成了世界上交易量最大的股票，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）和众议员亚历山德里亚·奥卡西奥–科尔特斯（Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez）支持这一反抗行为，r/WallStreetBets用户纷纷贴出他们突然膨胀的账户余额截图。该计划发起人声称，他最初的5万美元投资变成了逾4000万美元的意外之财。他在Reddit网站上的用户名无法出现在一份老少咸宜的报纸上。其中一家做空游戏驿站股票的对冲基金梅尔文资本（Melvin Capital）在遭遇巨额亏损后，不得不从另外两家投资机构那里获得27.5亿美元的救助资金。

In any reading, the most unusual thing about Wall Street’s being challenged by a rowdy band of Redditors is that it took so long to happen. This kind of populist revolt – internet-based insurgents gleefully pulling down the pants of the unsuspecting establishment – has been happening for years, to many powerful institutions.

不管如何解读，华尔街被一群喧闹的Reddit用户挑战的最不寻常之处在于，居然花了这么长时间才发生这样的事情。这种民粹主义的反抗——以互联网为根据地的叛乱分子兴高采烈地拉下毫无戒心的建制派的裤子——在许多强大的体系当中已经发生多年了。

Wall Street was among the last powerful institutions to be overrun by online populists, in part because it had a higher barrier to entry. Anyone with an internet connection and a Twitter account can start a hashtag campaign, but because trading stocks costs money – and required some level of expertise and time commitment – it was mostly left to professionals.

华尔街是最后一批被网络民粹主义者占领的强大机构之一，部分原因是它的准入门槛更高。任何有网络连接和Twitter账户的人都可以发起一个标签活动，但因为交易股票需要花钱——而且需要一定程度的专业知识和时间投入，所以这主要是由专业人士来做。

Smartphone-based trading apps like Robinhood changed that, by introducing commission-free trades and an interface that made executing a gamma squeeze as straightforward as ordering a burrito from Uber Eats. Suddenly, millions of amateurs could organize themselves, generate their own market research and investment theses, drum up excitement in Reddit threads and TikTok videos, and enter the casino with the big boys. (Whether storming the high-roller tables has helped them financially is another question entirely.)

诸如罗宾汉（Robinhood）等在智能手机上使用的交易应用程序改变了这一现状，它们引入无佣金交易，以及让“伽玛挤压”变得像从Uber Eats上叫墨西哥卷饼一样简单的操作界面。突然之间，成千上万的业余爱好者可以组织起来，做出自己的市场研究和投资论文，在Reddit帖子和TikTok视频中激发热情，然后与大佬们一起进入赌场。（冲上赌桌对他们的财务状况是否有帮助则完全是一个无关的问题。）

But for the Reddit day traders, the important victory was always the symbolic one. They might lose their shirts, but they’ve sent the message that with enough passion and rocket-ship emojis, a crowd of profane, irreverent degenerates – again, their words, not mine – can turn the stock market on its head.

但是对于Reddit日间交易者而言，重要的胜利总是象征性的。他们可能会输得精光，但他们已经传达出这样的信息，即只要有足够的热情和火箭飞船表情符号，一群我行我素的不惧权威的颓废者（还是他们的原话，不是我说的）就能使股市逆转。

The hordes are here, and Wall Street will never be the same.

散户出手了，华尔街将不复从前。

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