After reading a little more:
Blackrock owns like 13% of GME shares, Citadel securities manage trades for robinhood so they can offer zero-fee trading, in exchange for getting to see every single trade that goes to them before it completes, allowing them to know when to get in to drive stock prices up and when to get out before it collapses.
It gets worse--Blackrock doesn't even hold the most shares. Much of GameStop's shares are owned by
investment firms who hold millions of $GME stock. From this non-exhaustive list, there's about 53.1 million shares owned by large institutions alone. I think there's about 70 million shares issued, with about 47 million shares floating on the market. I don't really know how to square 53.1 million publicly owned vs. 47 million floating, but I think this sufficiently reinforces the point that this may have nothing to do with "the people" as much as it's being done by large corporations.
It may be that large Wall Street institutions have successfully learned how to use the power of social media to drive markets. A dramatic proof of concept for the Citadel/RobinHood partnership (which lets Citadel make money by subtly front-running calls from retail investors). Over time this will be institutionalized, with retail people used as pawns for battles between competing institutions.
The biggest players using the smaller players to squeeze the middle players
yes, in the end blackrock, fidelity, etc are still winning, but at the very least, it's a transfer of wealth to the little man...A rare win for 'us' that also illuminates the hypocrisy of financial institutions
Ownership Summary | Gamestop Corp.
