What is WallStreetBets | Reddit’s Craziest And Largest Investing Community

At the end of 2012, r/WallStreetBets had just 1747 subscribers. Now, it is the most prominent investing community on Reddit (25th overall on the site), with 13.3 million subscribers.

WSB is widely known for aggressive trading strategies in options and stocks. Over the last few years, it has greatly influenced some events in these markets. But how did it get here? And what is the point of WallStreetBets?

What is WallStreetBets?

This post perfectly sums up the community in true WallStreetBets lingo. But let’s answer the ‘What is WallStreetBets’ question in plain English. WallStreetBets is a subreddit that facilitates tongue-in-cheek discussions and memes about stocks and options trading.

The community is known for highly speculative strategies in stocks and options trading. Additionally, it contains profane language (which can also be often homophobic and ableist).

Members refer to themselves as ‘autists,’ ‘apes,’ ‘degenerates,’ and ‘retards.’ Much of WSB consists of a young demographic of day traders with an irreverent ‘YOLO’ approach to investing.

So, who started WallStreetBets? Jaime Rogozinski (pictured above), under the username r/jartek, created the subreddit on the 31st of January, 2012. Before WSB, the entrepreneur found work at a bank after he lost his job in the 2008 financial crisis.

During this re-employment time, he became interested in stocks and options, but of the ‘high risk, high return type of trading style.’ And so led to the community’s creation which took some likeness from 4chan’s /biz/ board.

The imageboard website certainly inspired the group’s use of humour and slang terms, which explains the subreddit’s tagline of “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.”

Of course, WallStreetBets was a niche subreddit for many years but grew its subscriber base steadily each year. It didn’t have many notable events, aside from two that happened in 2015:

The ‘modpocalypse,’ where tons of random users were selected as moderators for months.

Martin Shkreli, a co-founder of several pharmaceutical firms, made million-dollar bets on biotech corporations. He posted his work on the subreddit, where he eventually became a mod.

Speaking of mods, Rogozinski, the original WallStreetBets founder, has been absent from the moderator team for years due to disagreements in the club.

2015 was also a pivotal year as tons of new traders came thanks to non-commission brokers like Robinhood, which were relatively new and novel then. This was the start of the WallStreetBets Robinhood ‘relationship.’

From the start of 2015 to the end, the subscriber count went from 8780 to almost 100 000. Things trickled along as expected for the next three years.

By the end of 2018, the subreddit had 446 000 members. From 2019 onwards, WSB’s popularity became more prominent than ever.

Most infamous WSB-influenced events

Let’s look at the most notable events which have garnered the subreddit mainstream following and infamy in the investing world.

‘Infinite leverage’ glitch (November 2019)

On the 31st of October 2019, u/ControlTheNarrative discovered a bug on Robinhood’s trading platform that lasted for several days. The glitch allowed users to artificially magnify their leverage to virtually infinite levels.

u/ControlTheNarrative posted about his discovery on WSB when he took his original deposit from $2000 to $50 000. Sadly, the user decided to go all in with put options on Apple right before the company’s earnings report.

This event severely went against his position and took his account to a massive loss relative to his original deposit. u/ControlTheNarrative recorded his shock in a live video, making the ‘guh!’ sound towards the end, inspiring countless parodies in the community.

Many other users exploited the glitch, with one user even claiming they opened a $1 million position with only $4000. Thankfully, Robinhood soon fixed the bug.

GameStop short squeeze (January 2021)

This event is considered by experts the precursor to the “meme stock phenomenon.” Essentially, the subreddit went ‘Apes Together Strong’ here on GameStop’s stock, which hadn’t performed well in several years.

Of course, there were a lot of sellers (many of which were hedge funds) as a result, although WSB believed the brand was undervalued. This analysis and charge were led by Keith Gill, known as u/DeepFuckingValue in the subreddit. His initial investment of $53 000 in 2019 turned into almost $50 million on 28 January 2021, the peak of the short squeeze.

By this day, the stock reached an all-time high of $483, a value that was 1500% higher than its previous price two weeks prior. Users had bought the stock in droves that month, causing significant investment funds billions of dollars in losses.

What’s more, trading of GameStop and other markets was halted on brokerages like Robinhood on the 28th, a decision that was met with harsh criticism.

Some WallStreetBets lingo

If you do decide to join this subreddit, here is some WallStreetBets lingo to help you get acquainted. There are other general investing terms like ‘bagholder,’ ‘buy the dip,’ ‘bears,’ and ‘HODL’, which, while not originating from the community, are used frequently here.

• DD: abbreviation for ‘due diligence.’

• FD: slang for out-of-the-money options that expire in a week. The term is actually short for ‘Faggot’s Delight’ (strange indeed).

• Stonks: intentional misspelling of ‘stocks.’

• Gay bears: An insult that describes members expecting a stock to decline.

• Apes Together Strong: this term came from a meme based on the Rise of Planet of the Apes sci-fi film. The idea is that the ‘apes’ or bullish investors can unite and have enough buying power to drive a heavily-shorted stock’s price upwards. ATS is sometimes represented with a gorilla emoji.

• YOLO: an abbreviation for ‘you only live once.’ This term is generally used when someone is going to make a very risky yet laughable trading decision, like risking most of their capital on one trade.

• Tendies: refers to profit. You’ve gained ‘tendies’ when a stock has risen, and you’ve lost ‘tendies’ when it has declined. The term is short for ‘chicken tenders.’ It has a strange origin story from 4chan regarding grown men who lived with their mothers and were rewarded with their favorite food for good behaviour.

• Diamond hands/paper hands: both of these are opposite terms. Diamond hands refer to persistently holding a stock despite losses, with confidence that its value will get better. This is typically shown with an emoji consisting of a diamond and a hand. Paper hands are the opposite, meaning a trader sells a share at the first sign of losses or bad news.

• MOASS: an abbreviation for the ‘mother of all short squeezes.’