r/WallStreetBets Founder Jaime Rogozinski Calls GameStop Stock Frenzy a ‘Symbolic Movement’

Stock market betting group Reddit WallStreetBets has been responsible for the recent frenzy on the stock market. Recent activities on the group caused the stock prices of GameStop and AMC, among other underpriced stocks, to surge. Prices of silver also hit a new high in the last five months, due to activities on the r/WallStreetBets group.

Founder and former moderator of the WallStreetBets group, Jamie Rogozinski said the recent activities of the group is “fascinating to watch” and it is a “great conversation that the whole world is having right now.”

Rogozinski commended the move of the group to fuel a short squeeze on GameStop, causing huge losses for hedge funds. He calls this move a “symbolic movement” in the market.

“It’s the democratization of financial markets. It’s giving a voice to the people that didn’t previously have one,” Rogozinski said.

The 39-year-old Rogozinski founded the Reddit WallStreetBets community in 2012 while working as an IT consultant in Washington D.C. At the time, he had a “decent disposable income” to bet with in the stock market. In his words, he was “looking for a place where we could discuss high-risk, high-return trades with the market.” In the absence of finding such online communities, he decided to create one.

Reddit WallStreetBets community has since grown from a group of hundreds to an online community of over 4 million people.

Shortly after the online community for stock market amateurs and experts was created, online brokerage Robinhood transformed the online brokerage community. Such that, with zero trading fees and an easy-to-navigate interface, amateur investors can easily access the stock market. This move gained Robinhood millions of new users, and by 2019, other online brokerages like Charles Schwab, E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, amongst others dropped their commissions.

Rogozonski said there are still “absurdities” in the stock market and “a lot of systemic weaknesses,” as Wall Street and regulators have refused to keep up with the times. He added that until now, “nobody’s done anything to address it, that’s been symbolic. And my way of protesting is to try and push it to the extreme.”

While Rogozonski is determined to see a radical change on Wall Street and among regulators, he said he would rather the scenarios didn’t happen on his watch.

“It’s a bit of bittersweet because if I were still a moderato, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Rogozonski about his removal as a moderator in April 2020. He added that he has seen WallStreetBets members try to game the stock market en masse before. However, he deemed it a legal risk and took drastic steps to end it when questionable behaviors surfaced.

“I had lawyers, I consulted with them, I said, ‘I don’t know this is legal, is it not legal.’ I’m not quite sure. They said, ‘Look, you could turn it illegal if you say certain things or do certain things, but it’s kind of a gray area, no precedent,” Rogozonski said.

While the group’s recent activities and impact on the stock market has been quite fascinating to those watching, many stock market experts believe that all of what’s happening will be short-lived.