The Dumb Money
The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees (Previously Published as The Antisocial Network)
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Post!
From the author of the book that became the iconic The Social Network movie, here is the definitive take on one of the wildest stories ever--the David-vs.-Goliath GameStop short squeeze, a tale of fortunes won and lost overnight, marking an unforgettable event in financial history.
Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account of how a loosely affiliate group of private investors and internet trolls on a subreddit called WallStreetBets took down one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, firing the first shot in a revolution that threatens to upend the establishment.
It’s the story of financial titans like Gabe Plotkin of hedge fund Melvin Capital, one of the most respected and staid funds on the Street, billionaires like Elon Musk, Steve Cohen, Mark Cuban, Robinhood co-CEOs Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, and Ken Griffin of Citadel Securities. Over the course of four incredible days, each in their own way must reckon with a formidable force they barely understand, let alone saw coming: everyday men and women on WallStreetBets like nurse Kim Campbell, college student Jeremy Poe, and the enigmatic Keith “RoaringKitty” Gill, whose unfiltered livestream videos captivated a new generation of stock market enthusiasts.
The unlikely focus of the battle: GameStop, a flailing brick-and-mortar dinosaur catering to teenagers and outsiders that had somehow held on as the world rapidly moved online. At first, WallStreetBets was a joke—a meme-filled, freewheeling place to share shoot-the-moon investment tips, laugh about big losses, and post diamond hand emojis. Until some members noticed an opportunity in GameStop—and rode a rocket ship to tens of millions of dollars in earnings overnight.
In thrilling, pulse-pounding prose, THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK offers a fascinating, never-before-seen glimpse at the outsize personalities, dizzying swings, corporate drama, and underestimated American heroes and heroines who captivated the nation during one of the most volatile weeks in financial history. It’s the amazing story of what just happened—and where we go from here.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Financial writer Ben Mezrich, whose past books were adapted into the movies The Social Network and 21, was born to write about the bizarre story of the GameStop stock short. In early 2021, this ageing video game store became an unlikely online obsession, fuelled by a Reddit board for amateur investors using apps to make stock purchases. Interest in the stock went viral as the collective action allowed the investors to create a short squeeze, potentially resulting in the kind of payout that was normally reserved for only the market’s biggest players. Mezrich is clearly on the side of these folks, profiling how a socially anxious college student, a middle-aged psychiatric nurse, and a pandemic-bored pregnant housewife got swept up in this wild ride. Settle in for Mezrich’s retelling of one of the strangest—and funniest—financial stories of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In early 2021, the stock price of a mostly-forgotten video game mall chain was going through the roof, and at first glance, no one could figure out why. Mezrich (Bitcoin Billionaires) brings his characteristic cinematic flair to this breathless account of the "amateur investors, gamers, and Internet trolls" behind the skyrocketing GameStop shares. Mezrich tells the full story, covering the rise of the subreddit WallStreetBets (the titular antisocial network), the Robinhood investing app that enabled the unprecedented short squeeze and turned stocks into "a highly playable video game," the infusion of cash from the financial firm Citadel, and the ensuing congressional hearings. A number of characters come to life, including Wall Street powerhouse Gabe Plotkin, who was "bested by some unseen force," as well as the ordinary people who changed the game—livestreamer Keith Gill, for example, started the focus on GameStop with a post on WallStreetBets. It's this angle, of new investors willing to lose their investments so long as they brought down the wealthy and powerful with them, that formulates the most page-turning part of the tale. Mezrich's is a lively, thrilling, and comprehensive account.
Customer Reviews
GameStonk: The Plotkin Thickens
Reading a Ben Mezrich book is like watching an action movie. You have to leave your brains at the door and enjoy the action. In The Antisocial Network he pumps out a book about the GameStop short squeeze in a short amount of time. I skipped a few paragraphs because clearly some of the characters like Jeremy Poe, Kim Campbell, Sara Morales are made up but I enjoyed reading the chapters with real-life characters like Melvin Capital’s Gabe Plotkin, Keith Gill aka Roaring Kitty, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Robinhood’s Jim Swartwout and Vlad Tenev, Barstool Sports’ David Portnoy, Chamath Palihapitiya and Citadel Securities’ Ken Griffin.
If you’re unfamiliar with the story it’s a fleeting story of David vs Goliath as Melvin Capital was one of the hedge funds caught up in the GameStop short squeeze. They shorted the company’s stock believing that its future was bleak only to have amateur traders band together on Reddit to drive the share price up resulting in huge losses to Melvin. The men in suits had been defeated by a guy wearing a bandanna with a cat T-shirt. If only it were that simple. Some hedge funds like Richard Mashaal’s Senvest Management also won by going long GME.
Being a fiction writer as well you can see how Mezrich sometimes lets his imagination get the best of him. Mezrich is no financial journalist so if you’re looking for an authoritative take on the GameStop saga you’ll have to wait but for now this book does a fine job filling the gaps. And lo and behold Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street editor and former Financial Times columnist Spencer Jakab’s take on the GameStop short squeeze, The Revolution That Wasn’t, will be out in January 2022.