GameStop: Rise of the Players

In January 2021, the brick-and-mortar video game retailer GameStop had been the top story on every news network in the country. Its stock had risen over 2500% amidst a wild flurry of volatility, despite no new news coming out of the company. The run was fueled by an epic "short squeeze" on a handful of billion-dollar hedge fund behemoths, netting online investors millions and costing the hedge funds tens-of-billions of dollars in the process. But this wasn't just a run on a stock. This was a battle that has been brewing for years. It's a David and Goliath story of a band of contrarians who bucked conventional wisdom to bet on themselves, their own research, and a business that Wall Street had given up on.