Our Best Stuff From the Week We Learned About Short Stocks

Happy Saturday, everyone! How’s your GameStop stock doing? 

This week, Joe Biden issued some more executive orders, and the Senate confirmed Antony Blinken to be secretary of state. Our vaccination distribution continued to improve, albeit modestly, with an average of 1.3 million jabs a day. Some states began easing pandemic restrictions, seeming to acknowledge the reality that, if the virus is spreading in homes, maybe it’s not the best idea to incentivize people to socialize “underground” in private gatherings. And yet, with all of that going on, the nation watched riveted as a bunch of Reddit users took on hedge funds by pumping up the stock of a video-game chain that operates like Blockbuster Video in a Netflix world. It’s safe to say that 2021 is really enjoying this game of “Hold my beer.” 

Don’t worry. I’m not here to give you stock advice or launch into a deep dive on the inner workings of hedge funds (or even Reddit). But there’s one thing I noticed about coverage of the GameStop story that encouraged me. As the story unfolded, plenty of people asked questions like, “What the heck is a short sale?” 

The internet has put an immeasurable amount of information at our fingertips. But it’s still tricky to sort for quality. A common refrain among vaccine skeptics, for example, is that, “I have done my research.” And a common retort is, “Congratulations on your degree from Google University.”