The Hopes That Rose and Fell With GameStop

“Nora, don’t be greedy,” her mother warned. “You need to take it out.”

But Ms. Samir, 24, a child-health researcher at the University of New South Wales and a stock market neophyte,

didn’t sell — she bought.

After investing about $800 more, she owned just over nine shares of GameStop. She later plowed $1,800 into BlackBerry, the cellphone maker that once dominated mobile email and had been swept up in the frenzy.

“I was on a high,” she admitted. “When the stock is going up, you don’t think of how low it can go.”

The high didn’t last long — and the fall was made worse when her trading app crashed, leaving her with little choice but to hold on while GameStop shares plunged.

She managed to sell one share on the way down, for $134. The shares she still owned on Friday were worth $528. She’s lost more than half what she put into GameStop.

The lesson, Ms. Samir said: “Don’t be greedy.”

You Only Live Once

Jacob Chalfant, a high school senior from Westfield, N.J., enjoyed how his “diamond hands” were putting the squeeze on the hedge funds.

A poster on WallStreetBets since he was 15, Mr. Chalfant, now 18, relished the GameStop rally for the pressure it put on hedge funds like Melvin Capital, which had bet that GameStop’s shares would fall.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/business/gamestop-stock-losses.html