What changed in the end? Nothing, I guess....
Here is the state of the game before [and possibly after] the REDDIT revolution. The Hedge Funds short-sell stocks and then profit when they reverse their positions. That is business as usual for Wall Street. The public lose because the Hedge Funds and their clients control the game of stock trades.
The change we saw for a few amazing days is that GameStop was being short-sold by the Hedge Fund cartel. They were driving the price down towards Zero. But REDDIT working through a proxy call ROBINHOOD used a new version of crowd sourcing to get the public to push the price of GameStop up and up and up. Of course the Hedge Funds were on the opposite side of that bet so they were losing big time.
For the first time ever, perhaps, the market was working. It was no longer a rigged market that favoured "the house" [read Wall Street in general and Hedge Funds in particular].
But... The Hedge Funds fought back. They changed the rules [is what they did legal? probably not] and so they are able to exit their short selling positions and have the REDDIT bunnies [the public including plumber Joe] lose and ultimately pay the bill.
Richard.
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