After some detailed research, the Federal Reserve said on Monday thatit is beginning to worrythat the recent and unprecedented volatility in meme stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment are creating pockets of risk inside markets that could create real problems for the entire U.S. financial system.
On Tuesday, many of the self-professed “Apes” who created that volatility reacted to the Fed’s concern about meme stocks in a way best represented by, well, a meme:
Based on actual textfrom the Fed’s most recent financial stability report, zero-commission trading apps and investors using social media to coordinate their trades have created a weaponized “echo chamber in which retail investors find themselves communicating most frequently with others with similar interests and views.”
In turn, the report found, those like-minded investors create huge waves of volatility and risk that could create real issues for the markets and the financial system in a downturn, especially with so many of these mostly younger retail investors exposing themselves to massive losses using leverage and options to execute their trades.
But that risk also can be felt elsewhere. Fed Gov. Lael Brainard wrote in a statement accompanying the report that it has already been seen inthe Archegos Capital Management meltdownsaga and could spread.
“It highlights the potential for nonbank financial institutions such as hedge funds and other leveraged investors to generate large losses in the financial system,” Brainard wrote on Monday.
But while that warning — whichwasn’t Brainard’s first timeringing the alarm on the topic — might have been of concern for Wall Street, retail investors were unshaken.
Instead, many retail investors on social media spent Tuesday telling the Fed that using stocks to upend the existing structure of the financial system, by making hedge funds bleed, has been one of their goals all along, using the volatility to reveal what they see as widespread corruption.
After all, it’s been no secret that Reddit’s Apes would like nothing more than to see hedge funds crippled by their own actions. Many individuals also expect the end result of that destruction to be a fairer system in which the little guy can thrive.
“How is it that the ultra rich can basically GAMBLE in the stock market with over-leveraged positions, Dark Pools, insider information, etc. for YEARS and there is nothing to worry about,” read one very popular post on subreddit r/Superstonk.
“Yeah, these are pretty big words coming from an entity that printed 33% of money into existence in a year and then claimed that it wouldn’t lead to long term inflation,” opined user doned_mest_up. “They don’t quite yield the power over the economy that Reddit does, I suppose.”
But regardless of how Redditors or other retail investors feel, it is worth noting that Brainard’s involvement in the report should not be taken lightly. It has been recently reported thatshe has interviewed for the top job at the Fedand her chairmanship could include a much closer look at retail trading than Chairman Jerome Powell’s has so far.