Tuesday, Jaime Rogozinski, the founder of the WallStreetBets subreddit forum on Reddit, commented on the WallStreetBets and GameStop saga that has caused financial elites to question the retail investor’s role in financial markets.
Rogozinski told Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” that “the pandora’s box is open” now for the “little guys” to have access to Wall Street. He said that “for too long,” it was “too hard and too expensive” for everyone to participate in Wall Street.
“The pandora’s box is open. There’s no going back at this point,” he advised. “You know … I believe this has kind of been a catalyst that has shined a spotlight on this, but this has been a long time in the making. There’s been, over the past 10 years access to Wall Street and financial markets through first discount brokers, now free brokers — these app-based brokers that give the little guys access to the system and in Wall Street. For too long, it’s been too hard and too expensive, too inaccessible. And now that … retail investors or retail participants have access to this, it’s really difficult to turn the clocks back.”
Rogozinski went on to push back against the notion that this was done solely for capital.
“Obviously, if the little guys had a lot of capital, then I believe that they would have been paying attention to it all along, all right?” he emphasized. “They were really clever in understanding that they didn’t have as much money as the big guys did. They figured out a way using stock options.”
“They forced the big guys to buy those stocks. They had to use their money for it. So, the little guys figured out a strategic way to push back. They knew that their disadvantage was money, and they overcame it,” Rogozinski concluded.
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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