When Diego Flores â23 saw people on Reddit buying stock in GameStop, the struggling video game retail outlet chain, he didnât take them seriously at first.
âI initially thought it was a joke,â he said. âI didn t really think much of it. And then it starts hitting the news, and GameStop stock skyrockets by like, 100%. I was like, âDamn it â I could have gotten in there earlier.ââ He immediately bought $4,000 of stock, which he later sold for more than $800 in profit.
Flores was one of several Harvard students who jumped on the market trend and bought stock in struggling companies early this month. Several of them said in interviews that they had varying prior experience in investing, and held mixed motivations for making the risky investment â from an attempt to earn extra money, to a desire to punish the hedge funds that had bet on the stock prices going down.