THE ROARING KITTY
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Every story needs a first chapter. This is ours.
A mall video game retailer in structural decline, written off by almost everyone with a Bloomberg terminal. By 2020 short interest in the stock had climbed past the size of its actual float, an extraordinary position that assumed the company was going to zero.
Retail traders on the WallStreetBets forum noticed something the professionals had waved away: you cannot short more than 100% of a company forever without eventually needing to buy those shares back. Ryan Cohen, who co-founded Chewy, had also built a stake and later joined the board, giving the turnaround story a real face.
In January 2021 the stock went from under $20 to an intraday high of $483. Short sellers were forced to buy to cover, which pushed the price higher, which forced more buying. Melvin Capital, Citron Research and others were reported to have lost billions between them.
On 28 January 2021, with the squeeze at full tilt, several brokerages restricted buying while leaving selling open. That single decision did more to radicalise a generation of retail traders than any Reddit post ever could.
Not that the little guy always wins. That the little guy could not be assumed to be absent from the table. The position had been built on the belief that nobody was watching. Somebody was.
GameStop is still trading, still community-followed, and still the reference point for every retail movement that came after it. When it moves, the whole meme complex moves with it.