Paul Dano in “Dumb Money”.Photo:Courtesy Everett Collection
Courtesy Everett Collection
The GameStop stockbroking scandal that rocked Wall Street gets the Hollywood treatment in the new filmDumb Money.
Dano plays the real-life Keith Gill, a financial analyst and amateur investor known as video creator “Roaring Kitty” on Twitter and YouTube. Starting in 2019 on a Subreddit dedicated to day trading stocks, Gill urged followers to invest in video games store GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), driving up its price up 1,700 percent and forcing short sellers — including hedge fund billionaires — into what’s known as a stock short squeeze.
“A lot of people feel the system is broken,” Dano as Gill says in the film’strailer, which offers glimpses of the shocking fallouts from the internet-fueled campaign. “The whole idea of the stock market is if you are smart and maybe with a little luck you can make your fortune — certainly not anymore. There’s no hope for the little guy… Maybe now there is.”
The events ofThe Antisocial NetworkandDumb Moneyare rooted in the concept of short selling, “a practice where you borrow shares for a fee and sell them for (ideally) a high price, then buy them back at (ideally) a lower price to return them,” per Elizabeth Lopatto ofThe Verge.
It’s a risky investment strategy because a short seller is speculating that a company’s share prices will drop; if they go up instead, they’ll not only lose money but be forced to cover, or buy the shares themselves, which further drives up the price. “Losses are unlimited,” writesThe Guardian’s Rob Davies, “because there is no defined ceiling on how far a share can rise.”
Pete Davidson and Paul Dano in ‘Dumb Money’.Claire Folger
Claire Folger
Championing GameStop as a company worth investing in since 2019 was Gill, whose videos offering financial analysis garnered enough of a following to begin dramatically driving up the company’s stock prices in January 2021 — totaling a 1,700 percent increase, perThe New York Times.
The online “chat-room usurpers” that rallied around the idea began seeing it as a righteous cause, a way to hold short sellers like hedge fund managers accountable and expose the flaws in Wall Street’s system, asBloomberg’s Brandon Kochkodin reported at the time.
While Gill himself later toldThe Wall Street Journalhe “wasn’t a rabble-rouser out to take on the establishment, just someone who believes investors can find value in unloved stocks,” he was nevertheless called upon totestifyin front of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee due to his role in the GameStop short squeeze.
America Ferrera in ‘Dumb Money’.Claire Folger
Nick Offerman and Seth Rogan in ‘Dumb Money’.Lacey Terrell
Lacey Terrell
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The controversy caught mainstream media attention, includingfrom billionaire Elon Musk. Only two years later, Gillespie has brought the story to celluloid with an all-star cast.The director told PEOPLEhe was inspired to take onDumb Moneybecause his son was one of GameStop’s investors at the short squeeze’s peak.
“Robinhood froze the buy option, the stock got created and then [came] the outrage and the anger and the frustration at feeling like a system that is inherently rigged against them,” he said. “I got to feel all of that and see that and the memes, all through him, and just that incredible frustration. So it was this amazingly emotional journey.”
Dumb Moneyis now playing in theaters.
source: people.com
