GameStop Saga

The historic short squeeze of January 2021, when retail traders on Reddit's WallStreetBets forum piled into GameStop (GME), driving the stock from roughly $20 to nearly $500 in days and inflicting billions in losses on short-selling hedge funds like Melvin Capital. The episode sparked congressional hearings, a documentary, and a cultural reckoning about the power of coordinated retail trading, payment for order flow, and the relationship between Wall Street and Main Street.