November 17, 2021 • 21 mins
For years, Wall Street giants considered themselves masters of the universe. They pretended to hold the keys to financial success, shutting normal people out through a veil of sophistication. But no longer. For this podcast, Anna speaks to Jaime Rogozinski, the man leading the movement to level the playing field and give all of us access to the stock market — a system that for too long has been manipulated to work against countless hardworking Americans. Jamie is the founder of WallStreetBets, the Reddit group that earlier this year ran up the price of GameStop as a bunch of big-shot hedge funds were trying to short the stock. Jamie relives what happened with GameStop and how he and others are leading a revolution in finance to turn Wall Street on its head.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
For years, Wall Street giants considered themselves masters of the universe.
They pretended to hold the keys to financial success, shutting
normal people out through a veil of sophistication. But no longer.
Today we hear from the man leading the movement to
level the playing field and give us all access to
the market. This is Luna Talks with On a Paulina.
(00:27):
Welcome back to today's episode of Luna Talks with Me,
your host on a Paulina Luna. You know, over the
weekend we had some pretty comical stuff happened. But wow,
in those last seventy two hours, did you guys hear
about Heather curtain Bach. Yeah, that's right me neither. We're
gonna get into that in a second, followed by one
of the main highlights about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and
(00:48):
then moving forward on to covering stock wars. If you
don't know what they are, maybe you'll remember a term
Wall Street Bets, which was a Reddit group that basically
turned Wall Street on its head. But before we really
dive into that conversation with Jamie, I want to address
who Heather curtain Boch is. So this is a pretty
comical I guess accident that happened in the last seventy
(01:11):
two hours at the White House while Kamala Harris was
actually getting ready to give an address. Of course, and
this is to be expected out of this administration because
it seems like everything that they do is completely disorganized
and backwards. But as she's literally at the podium, okay,
like you would figure that there are people who know
who she is, especially being at the White House, they
(01:33):
introduced her as Heather current Boch. I don't even know
who that is. Check this out and check out the
awkward laugh. I mean, it's so embarrassing in a moment,
please have a scene, And I mean it's kind of funny, right,
Like you would never expect that to happen, especially at
(01:55):
the White House. But I think that, you know, at
a more serious concerning reasoning, I mean, what is going
on it there? It just seems like everything that they're doing,
from legislation to the statements that they're making, to how
literally absent they've been at the border. I mean, it's
it's really alarming. I just saw actually headline today from
Newsweek saying that now again, of course, that migrant caravan
(02:15):
that's on its way up here is expecting ten thousand
people and they're heading to the Arizona border, basically at
the US Mexico border. So that's something that of course
we've been following. But the point is is that you
have this type of stuff happening at the White House,
it doesn't leave a lot of confidence for the American people,
hence the polling and approval rating of this administration. So
to kind of segue off of that and really how
(02:37):
the media I think has been complicit and covering for
this administration and then also too at the same time,
really working to completely smear conservatives, especially younger conservatives, or
people that are simply just you know, standing up for
their belief system. We saw this exact same thing happen
with Nick Sandman, that Covington's kid from the Catholic high school,
(02:58):
that basically was completely he just smeared by the media.
In fact, I do believe he actually was given a
private settlement that they did not disclose for not just
his lawsuit against CNN, but also to with the Washington Post.
This is probably the youngest multi millionaire that we have
in the country after these settlements. But they did the
same thing to Kyle Rittenhouse and I say that because
(03:20):
obviously you might have seen some of that viral footage
about how he's breaking down testifying in court. Clearly, this guy,
like you look at what he did. I think he was,
you know, going to school for nursing. He obviously had
a medikit on him. I mean, I don't believe that
this is a bloodthirsty killer. And ultimately you had members
of the view going after him. You had multi multiple
(03:42):
media outlets actually saying that he was guilty of murder
before the trial was even over. Then they of course
retracted those statements. And then you had Joe Biden calling
him a white supremacist, which is completely wrong. He's weighing
in on this, calling him a white supremacist for what reasoning, Joe.
I think that's something that we're all asking. So you
(04:02):
see this trial, you see a lot of the defense,
you see a lot of the prosecution. I mean, these
people were nasty, nasty, nasty to be expected, especially when
it's such a politicized trial. But the prosecutor, the guy
that's literally trying to convince people to put away this
kid for life because he was defending himself, he literally
takes up an air fifteen and he's holding it and
(04:26):
flagging the entire core room with his booker hook on
the trigger, meaning his finger was on the trigger. I mean,
this is a guy that's supposed to be lecturing the
jury and the judge basically on why this guy deserves
life in prison and he doesn't know the first thing
about weapons safety. I mean, I would argue, and that
would be my defense, is that this guy is intimidating
(04:46):
the jury when he's pointing a firearm at people in
court shoulders rifle literally and then points the firearm at people.
If that doesn't explain the irony about this entire situation,
I don't know what. Well. Anyways, I tried to actually
for work do a posting on the It's literally just
posting a picture and a headline of the prosecutor how
he was shoulding the shouldering the rifle and literally flagging
(05:07):
the entire courtroom and of course TikTok, which is an
app that a lot of younger generation younger kids are
on that my work cousin accounts on. They try to
post it and it gets like literally taken down and
censored because they don't want the American people to see that,
which is just of course, the point that I'm making
is that the media is complicit and everything from not
(05:27):
only pushing and protecting people to literally peddling wise and
suppressing the truth when people try to come out with it.
Hence why I have this podcast. But does that not
just really tick you off? Right? It should take you
off because everything that's happening to this kid has happened
to multiple people before. If you're in politics, if you're
a threat, they try to ruin you. They don't care
what it does to you. They don't care if it
means life in prison. They literally don't care. These are
(05:49):
evil people. And with that, folks, I want to get
into what happened earlier this year with stock wars, because
I do believe that why should we allow them to
stipulate to us things like what we're able to read
on the internet, things like the way that we are
able to make money or choose to make money. So
I want to talk about Wall Street. You know, people
(06:11):
look at Wall Street. It's obviously very very heavily regulated currently,
but I don't think that those regulations are in place
to really help the lower tier percentages of people that
are trying to break into day trading or whatever is
they might want to be doing in Wall Street. You know,
it's heavily regulated in favor of these top one per
cent that's basically controlling a majority of the stocks, and
(06:32):
when you have the little guy get in and actually
try to make a difference, they ultimately try to crush them. So,
you know, earlier this past year, you may have heard
about something called stonk wars s t o n k wars.
Stonk wars was something that started by well, it was
actually started by Wall Street Bets, which was a Reddit threat.
(06:53):
So Reddit is a app similar to basically a chat
board or chat forum, and basically this account Wall Street Bets,
which has been around for I think upboards of nine years.
But they basically got all these people together and said,
you know what, we don't agree with what's happening with
how these hedge funds are basically shorting these stocks to
make money. They're basically hoping that these accounts that these
businesses like game Stop and bed Bath and Beyond and
(07:15):
MC we're they're hoping and they're betting that these companies
will fail. So they basically decided to buy the stock,
which essentially drove up the price of the stock and
then the hedge funds in turn had to buy those
stocks back. So robin Hood, which was the app that
these people had traded on and is an app. You
can download it on your iPhone and basically it makes
(07:38):
it a lot easier than you know, signing online and
going to Charles Schwab and doing it that way. So
robin Hood halted the trading, which meant that these people
could not buy which means that they're actually losing money,
which is basic corruption because we find out later on
that robin Hood, the app is actually owned by Citadel,
(07:58):
which is a hedge fund on slash Wall Street corporation
that was betting against Game Stop in an effort to
basically hope that it would fail. Right Like, is that
something that doesn't sound corrupt? Right Like? We know that
when people go into Wall Street when they're playing the
stock market, you're basically gambling. That's I don't know how
to say it. Ultimately, my side, my viewpoint on this
(08:19):
is that if you were an adult, if you are
a man or a woman, and you decide to spend
your money how you want in Wall Street, you can't
complain about the rules When people use the same rules
that Wall Street has been using against the American people
against them. You can't complain about that, and you can't
use your power to try to crush their ability to
make the same money the way that you've been doing
it for so long, right, Like? Is that not hypocritical?
(08:42):
Is that not corruption at its finest? So I wanted
to bring on Jamie to really break down what stock
wars was, what Wall Street Bets is, and how he
basically got involved, and I would say taking on Wall Street.
We'll be right back with his interview after this quick break. Jamie,
(09:09):
Welcome to Luna Talks. I'm very glad to have you
on today. Thank you very much for having me so
real quickly, Wall Street Bets obviously took Reddit and the
world by storm. I know, just on some research about
you that you've been at it for a minute. But
if you can just explain to the audience that might
not not necessarily be plugged in with Wall Street bets,
(09:29):
what is Wall Street bets? What is stocks so wall
Street bets? I guess it's most commonly referred to a
group on Reddit, although now it's become this kind of
an omnipresent philosophy where young people get together and they
share trading ideas, investment ideas, gambling ideas with the stock market,
or financial tools. Uh. And they're known for liking risk
(09:52):
and liking exploiting their inefficiencies, and they try to find
their own competitive edge. The most their most famou aole
known for this year. Earlier this year, they ran up
the price of Game Stop against a bunch of hedge
funds that were shorting the stock, and the price balloon
from like forty dollars a share to like five dollars
a share. I mean, what's amazing about this is you
(10:15):
really are I think it's like a David versus Goliath
kind of personality because you really are giving normal people
access to the market in a way that I believe
was previously manipulated. Um, how did you get the idea
to start Wall Street Bets? So? I started Wall Street
Bets in my own situation. At the time, I was single,
(10:35):
meaning I could afford to take risk. I didn't have
any kids and night, and I was in my early thirties.
I had a well paying job, and I decided to
try and put my extra money towards a more aggressive
I don't want to call it investing, but like certainly
trading approach where I could try and make that you know,
turn that money and multiply it. Uh. And when it
(10:56):
comes to you know, the types of people that come
to Wall Street Bets, to the different social media platforms,
they're looking to do basically the same thing, right, have
some fun, make some money, and it is more accessible
in the sense that there's been this veil of sophistication
that's been lifted behind what traditional finance hides, behind these
fancy words and terminology and just obscure LINGO. Well, the
(11:20):
one thing that I noticed, and this is actually why
I took a particular interest and why I wanted you
to come on the show, is that I noticed that
you guys were censored on Twitter. I guess kicked off
of Twitter. The Wall Street Bets account on Twitter was banned.
Oh boy, Pandora's box. Yeah, there's a so so, yes
and no. So there's a lot of competing Wall Street
(11:41):
Bets related uh, social media platforms. I own the trademark
to Wall Street Bets, but I choose not to enforce
it and let everybody use it wherever it is that
they want to use it, because it is not you know,
I would be uh, really pompous of me to assume
that it's because of me. It's the people in the
community itself that really makes this uh this really especial
place and so on Twitter, as far as I've concerned,
(12:03):
it hasn't been censored, like my my wall at Wall
Street Bets account with the verified checkmark has not been censored. However,
there's probably been a lot of copycasts that may have
used the name allst Bets and then said things they
probably shouldn't have been seeing and they got suspended off
of it. I think it might have been one of
those accounts. Um. The one thing I did think was
interesting though, is like you were talking about earlier this
year with game Stop, that the trading app robin Hood
(12:26):
actually prevented people from being able to buy. I mean,
I did my deep dive into that, and I realized
that robin Hood was actually tied to a hedge fund
that was betting on game Stop failing, which is completely wrong.
Right they're trying to accuse you guys of market manipulation,
they're actually the ones that are doing it. But I mean,
what is your message to people that are saying, look,
(12:47):
we want to get involved. We obviously, you know, like
you said, read it kind of enabled many people to
communicate typically that wouldn't be able to do that before
I think in the past. So it is kind of
this movement. But what is your message to them, because
I feel like in a sense that you have started
this movement that is really kind of leveling the playing
field for your average Americans to actually have a shot
at the American dream and have access that I think
(13:08):
beating the system that's worked so hard against them. Yeah. Look,
I mean you have a lot of things that come
together and make this happen, right, this democratization of finance,
the successibility. You have brokers that have become discount or
free such as robin Hood, and there's a pretty much
all the other ones that followed suit now allow free
or commission free trading. And you have access to instant
(13:30):
information right, you have the social media sources, traditional news sources,
print TV, whatever it might be. So then all of
a sudden people have all the tools, right, and also
they've reduced minimum funding requirements. They have these things called
fractional shares, which means you can just buy little bits
and pieces of a share, so you don't really need
a lot to get started. And then this this social media,
(13:52):
this collaborative kind of uh generation that we live and
where people come together and they share ideas and they
learn from them from each other. That's that's really empowered individuals,
you know, in the US and around the world to
try and get their get get ahold of their own finances.
I think that there was this you mentioned David and Goliath.
There's this feeling of pent up resentment from the two
(14:15):
thousand eight financial crisis where people occupied Wall Street, they
complain and they set out there with their camping pence
or whatever it might have been, and it didn't really
get much resolution. World, you know, things moved on and
the economy recovered, and I think that a lot of
that is resurface for saying I don't need you guys
for me to be able to invest or trade or
(14:36):
gamble or whatever it might be. And that's what people
have realized. I mean, you nailed it on the head.
There's a ton of people actually have watched countless interviews
that kind of give commentary on the Stone Corps is
what they call, Like I found one that actually had
a Star Wars intro, and so they're going through and
their talk. I mean, I'm gonna read post with this
as it's hilarious, but I mean, you're right, people do
feel like that, and I think that you know, the
(14:57):
fact is is that you, I think, really just put
Wall Street on its head and a lot of people
didn't anticipate for that to happen. But you know, kudus
to you. We are in the United States of America.
You're able to do whatever you want, and honestly, you're
doing it legally. So what's the problem is what I say? Um,
what do you have to say the legislators that say, oh, well,
we need to regulate or we need to make this
(15:19):
so that these guys can't do this because they're dangerous
to the market, because that's what they're saying. Now, I
you know, I look at what you're doing. I don't
think what you're doing is illegal. I don't think that
it's a problem. But what is your message to them?
It's not. Look, the legislators are going to have a
really hard time coming up with a lot. It just
targets these individuals because guess what we're doing, right, We're behaving.
(15:41):
Let's go ahead and just side with their nomenclasion and
say we're behaving irresponsibly, you're being reckless, or whatever it
might be. Those adjectives are the same ones that have
been used for the banks for the financial system previously.
They just use longer words with more syllables. Right when
explaining their mortgage backed securities, we just say, oh, it's
means the stock is going to go up. Whatever it is. There,
(16:01):
they will be really hard pressed to say, you only
the big banks can do this, but not the smaller ones. Right,
Like we had, for example, a situation prior to Game
Stop where these people on Wall Street Bids figured out
how to take their um robin hood account and get
basically infinite buying power from it by a series of clicks,
and they posted it and they laughed about it, and
(16:21):
whatever it might have been, that maneuver existed previously by
other banks that they used it with. Like I said,
you know, they called it these reverse repo whatever, really
sophisticated collateralized whatever, and they did the same thing. So
I don't know if they're gonna be able to succeed
with that. And at the end of the day, look,
a free market involves people coming in agreeing on prices,
and that is what's the productive Uh, this price discovery
(16:43):
process is what it is a productive process to society. Absolutely.
And so you actually wrote a book on this, right,
what's the name of the book. It's called Wall Street Bets.
How Boomers made the world's biggest castino for millennials see,
So that itself is literally the best title I think
a lot of people. Again, I was on internet. I
saw this meme you had like the Wolf of Wall Street.
He's showing out cash and it was like boomers trying
(17:04):
to figure out how the Strong Wars is going? You know.
So you have really created a movement and it is amazing.
Where can people find that book? Is it on Amazon,
Barnes and Noble? Where that can they buy it? Yeah,
they can buy and most of the stores. Amazon is
the publisher, so that's the quickest way to get it.
They can get on Kindle and then get it on paperback. Perfect.
And so my last question for you is obviously you're
(17:26):
doing amazing. You're basically the leader of the Strong Wars.
What is next for Wall Street Bets. I saw an
interview recently Idea that you talked about Digital World's acquisition
dwalk Um I mean, what is next on Wall Street bets?
And where can people go to run it? I obviously
know the name of it both. Should they go to
Reddit to follow your guys movement? I mean at this point,
(17:47):
at this point, they can go to Reddit, they can
go to Twitter, they can go to Instagram, Discord Telegraph.
There's so many places, and there's different kind of niches, right,
so some will focus more on crypto and some of
the folkus more on stocks. Uh. And you know, with
regards to what the next stock is, it's impossible to
really tell. It's you know, it's community driven it. There's
no individual that really decides on behalf of everybody else. Um.
(18:08):
But I really believe that the worlds of cryptocurrencies and
our crypto in general, and the world of finance are
going to collide or they're going to blend into each
other in a way that they're going to be even
more powerful. I'm so glad that you're bringing that up
because a lot of people when you talk about crypto,
I think more people are waking up to what it is.
But I think that you're absolutely right. I think it's
(18:30):
heading in that direction. I don't think you know, there
are some in power that don't want that to happen,
I think for certain reasons, but I think it's going
that way as well. So I know that you're probably
gonna be talking about that more and more. I saw
a couple of interviews where you're addressing it, um, So
we look forward to covering that. And thank you so
much for joining us to kind of introduce us to
the stock Corps and we pray for your success. Thank
(18:51):
you so much. I have a good time. Absolutely, Thank you.
That was such an incredible interview with Jamie. Obviously, I've
been following what they've been doing for a really long time,
(19:13):
and it's kind of funny you actually can see on
different you know, chat boards and also too. If you
want to research this further, I would suggest heading over
to a video streaming platform, whether it's Rumble or YouTube,
and even doing your own homework on social media and
on the internet on what stok wars really was, because
he explained it in a way that I think most
people can digest. I know, at first, when I first
(19:34):
heard about it, I was looking at the memes and
I saw everything on Reddit, but you know, to actually
fully understand what he's talking about, I mean it's good
kind of to do your own research and obviously to
verify what I'm saying, but you know, to see them
be able to do that and to realize that, you know,
these big hedge funds that do control this massive amount
of wealth. I think that what he explained about the
(19:55):
whole democratization and access to the financial system, I think
that that's really important because what we've seen in the
past is that there was so much, so many layers
to try to access that and to really have that
open communication. Kudos to the Internet, kudos to places like
read It. It really has opened up a whole new
world of opportunity for a lot of people that typically
(20:15):
just wouldn't have that access. And so, you know, I
you might not agree with it, you might not agree
with what he's doing, but I think that it's important.
It's important for our democracy. I think it's important mainly
because I don't agree with anyone class having certain rules
that other people cannot play by because of the fact
that they have more or less money. I don't agree
(20:36):
with that. I think that that's everything that our country
stands against. So kudos to the Stock Wars, kudos to
the stock leader. I think They've called him Stonkwalker, which
is kind of a Star Wars reference. I hope you've
enjoyed today's episode and I look forward to chatting with
you guys soon again on Linda Talks. Before we go,
(20:56):
I want to thank Jamie Rogozinski again for such a
great interview, and I want to thank you guys so
much for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, please give
us a review and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast.
To her more of my episodes and get my weekly newsletter,
go to Gingridge six dot com slash on a. You
can also find me on Twitter, Parlor, Facebook, Getter, and
Instagram at real Anna Paulina and especial thank you to
(21:17):
our producers Robert Browsky, writer Aaron Kleigman, and executive producers
Debbie Myers and Speaker New Gingridge part of the Gingridge
The sixty Network part of the Gingwich Network
For years, Wall Street giants considered themselves masters of the universe.
They pretended to hold the keys to financial success, shutting
normal people out through a veil of sophistication. But no longer.
Today we hear from the man leading the movement to
level the playing field and give us all access to
the market. This is Luna Talks with On a Paulina.
(00:27):
Welcome back to today's episode of Luna Talks with Me,
your host on a Paulina Luna. You know, over the
weekend we had some pretty comical stuff happened. But wow,
in those last seventy two hours, did you guys hear
about Heather curtain Bach. Yeah, that's right me neither. We're
gonna get into that in a second, followed by one
of the main highlights about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and
(00:48):
then moving forward on to covering stock wars. If you
don't know what they are, maybe you'll remember a term
Wall Street Bets, which was a Reddit group that basically
turned Wall Street on its head. But before we really
dive into that conversation with Jamie, I want to address
who Heather curtain Boch is. So this is a pretty
comical I guess accident that happened in the last seventy
(01:11):
two hours at the White House while Kamala Harris was
actually getting ready to give an address. Of course, and
this is to be expected out of this administration because
it seems like everything that they do is completely disorganized
and backwards. But as she's literally at the podium, okay,
like you would figure that there are people who know
who she is, especially being at the White House, they
(01:33):
introduced her as Heather current Boch. I don't even know
who that is. Check this out and check out the
awkward laugh. I mean, it's so embarrassing in a moment,
please have a scene, And I mean it's kind of funny, right,
Like you would never expect that to happen, especially at
(01:55):
the White House. But I think that, you know, at
a more serious concerning reasoning, I mean, what is going
on it there? It just seems like everything that they're doing,
from legislation to the statements that they're making, to how
literally absent they've been at the border. I mean, it's
it's really alarming. I just saw actually headline today from
Newsweek saying that now again, of course, that migrant caravan
(02:15):
that's on its way up here is expecting ten thousand
people and they're heading to the Arizona border, basically at
the US Mexico border. So that's something that of course
we've been following. But the point is is that you
have this type of stuff happening at the White House,
it doesn't leave a lot of confidence for the American people,
hence the polling and approval rating of this administration. So
to kind of segue off of that and really how
(02:37):
the media I think has been complicit and covering for
this administration and then also too at the same time,
really working to completely smear conservatives, especially younger conservatives, or
people that are simply just you know, standing up for
their belief system. We saw this exact same thing happen
with Nick Sandman, that Covington's kid from the Catholic high school,
(02:58):
that basically was completely he just smeared by the media.
In fact, I do believe he actually was given a
private settlement that they did not disclose for not just
his lawsuit against CNN, but also to with the Washington Post.
This is probably the youngest multi millionaire that we have
in the country after these settlements. But they did the
same thing to Kyle Rittenhouse and I say that because
(03:20):
obviously you might have seen some of that viral footage
about how he's breaking down testifying in court. Clearly, this guy,
like you look at what he did. I think he was,
you know, going to school for nursing. He obviously had
a medikit on him. I mean, I don't believe that
this is a bloodthirsty killer. And ultimately you had members
of the view going after him. You had multi multiple
(03:42):
media outlets actually saying that he was guilty of murder
before the trial was even over. Then they of course
retracted those statements. And then you had Joe Biden calling
him a white supremacist, which is completely wrong. He's weighing
in on this, calling him a white supremacist for what reasoning, Joe.
I think that's something that we're all asking. So you
(04:02):
see this trial, you see a lot of the defense,
you see a lot of the prosecution. I mean, these
people were nasty, nasty, nasty to be expected, especially when
it's such a politicized trial. But the prosecutor, the guy
that's literally trying to convince people to put away this
kid for life because he was defending himself, he literally
takes up an air fifteen and he's holding it and
(04:26):
flagging the entire core room with his booker hook on
the trigger, meaning his finger was on the trigger. I mean,
this is a guy that's supposed to be lecturing the
jury and the judge basically on why this guy deserves
life in prison and he doesn't know the first thing
about weapons safety. I mean, I would argue, and that
would be my defense, is that this guy is intimidating
(04:46):
the jury when he's pointing a firearm at people in
court shoulders rifle literally and then points the firearm at people.
If that doesn't explain the irony about this entire situation,
I don't know what. Well. Anyways, I tried to actually
for work do a posting on the It's literally just
posting a picture and a headline of the prosecutor how
he was shoulding the shouldering the rifle and literally flagging
(05:07):
the entire courtroom and of course TikTok, which is an
app that a lot of younger generation younger kids are
on that my work cousin accounts on. They try to
post it and it gets like literally taken down and
censored because they don't want the American people to see that,
which is just of course, the point that I'm making
is that the media is complicit and everything from not
(05:27):
only pushing and protecting people to literally peddling wise and
suppressing the truth when people try to come out with it.
Hence why I have this podcast. But does that not
just really tick you off? Right? It should take you
off because everything that's happening to this kid has happened
to multiple people before. If you're in politics, if you're
a threat, they try to ruin you. They don't care
what it does to you. They don't care if it
means life in prison. They literally don't care. These are
(05:49):
evil people. And with that, folks, I want to get
into what happened earlier this year with stock wars, because
I do believe that why should we allow them to
stipulate to us things like what we're able to read
on the internet, things like the way that we are
able to make money or choose to make money. So
I want to talk about Wall Street. You know, people
(06:11):
look at Wall Street. It's obviously very very heavily regulated currently,
but I don't think that those regulations are in place
to really help the lower tier percentages of people that
are trying to break into day trading or whatever is
they might want to be doing in Wall Street. You know,
it's heavily regulated in favor of these top one per
cent that's basically controlling a majority of the stocks, and
(06:32):
when you have the little guy get in and actually
try to make a difference, they ultimately try to crush them. So,
you know, earlier this past year, you may have heard
about something called stonk wars s t o n k wars.
Stonk wars was something that started by well, it was
actually started by Wall Street Bets, which was a Reddit threat.
(06:53):
So Reddit is a app similar to basically a chat
board or chat forum, and basically this account Wall Street Bets,
which has been around for I think upboards of nine years.
But they basically got all these people together and said,
you know what, we don't agree with what's happening with
how these hedge funds are basically shorting these stocks to
make money. They're basically hoping that these accounts that these
businesses like game Stop and bed Bath and Beyond and
(07:15):
MC we're they're hoping and they're betting that these companies
will fail. So they basically decided to buy the stock,
which essentially drove up the price of the stock and
then the hedge funds in turn had to buy those
stocks back. So robin Hood, which was the app that
these people had traded on and is an app. You
can download it on your iPhone and basically it makes
(07:38):
it a lot easier than you know, signing online and
going to Charles Schwab and doing it that way. So
robin Hood halted the trading, which meant that these people
could not buy which means that they're actually losing money,
which is basic corruption because we find out later on
that robin Hood, the app is actually owned by Citadel,
(07:58):
which is a hedge fund on slash Wall Street corporation
that was betting against Game Stop in an effort to
basically hope that it would fail. Right Like, is that
something that doesn't sound corrupt? Right Like? We know that
when people go into Wall Street when they're playing the
stock market, you're basically gambling. That's I don't know how
to say it. Ultimately, my side, my viewpoint on this
(08:19):
is that if you were an adult, if you are
a man or a woman, and you decide to spend
your money how you want in Wall Street, you can't
complain about the rules When people use the same rules
that Wall Street has been using against the American people
against them. You can't complain about that, and you can't
use your power to try to crush their ability to
make the same money the way that you've been doing
it for so long, right, Like? Is that not hypocritical?
(08:42):
Is that not corruption at its finest? So I wanted
to bring on Jamie to really break down what stock
wars was, what Wall Street Bets is, and how he
basically got involved, and I would say taking on Wall Street.
We'll be right back with his interview after this quick break. Jamie,
(09:09):
Welcome to Luna Talks. I'm very glad to have you
on today. Thank you very much for having me so
real quickly, Wall Street Bets obviously took Reddit and the
world by storm. I know, just on some research about
you that you've been at it for a minute. But
if you can just explain to the audience that might
not not necessarily be plugged in with Wall Street bets,
(09:29):
what is Wall Street bets? What is stocks so wall
Street bets? I guess it's most commonly referred to a
group on Reddit, although now it's become this kind of
an omnipresent philosophy where young people get together and they
share trading ideas, investment ideas, gambling ideas with the stock market,
or financial tools. Uh. And they're known for liking risk
(09:52):
and liking exploiting their inefficiencies, and they try to find
their own competitive edge. The most their most famou aole
known for this year. Earlier this year, they ran up
the price of Game Stop against a bunch of hedge
funds that were shorting the stock, and the price balloon
from like forty dollars a share to like five dollars
a share. I mean, what's amazing about this is you
(10:15):
really are I think it's like a David versus Goliath
kind of personality because you really are giving normal people
access to the market in a way that I believe
was previously manipulated. Um, how did you get the idea
to start Wall Street Bets? So? I started Wall Street
Bets in my own situation. At the time, I was single,
(10:35):
meaning I could afford to take risk. I didn't have
any kids and night, and I was in my early thirties.
I had a well paying job, and I decided to
try and put my extra money towards a more aggressive
I don't want to call it investing, but like certainly
trading approach where I could try and make that you know,
turn that money and multiply it. Uh. And when it
(10:56):
comes to you know, the types of people that come
to Wall Street Bets, to the different social media platforms,
they're looking to do basically the same thing, right, have
some fun, make some money, and it is more accessible
in the sense that there's been this veil of sophistication
that's been lifted behind what traditional finance hides, behind these
fancy words and terminology and just obscure LINGO. Well, the
(11:20):
one thing that I noticed, and this is actually why
I took a particular interest and why I wanted you
to come on the show, is that I noticed that
you guys were censored on Twitter. I guess kicked off
of Twitter. The Wall Street Bets account on Twitter was banned.
Oh boy, Pandora's box. Yeah, there's a so so, yes
and no. So there's a lot of competing Wall Street
(11:41):
Bets related uh, social media platforms. I own the trademark
to Wall Street Bets, but I choose not to enforce
it and let everybody use it wherever it is that
they want to use it, because it is not you know,
I would be uh, really pompous of me to assume
that it's because of me. It's the people in the
community itself that really makes this uh this really especial
place and so on Twitter, as far as I've concerned,
(12:03):
it hasn't been censored, like my my wall at Wall
Street Bets account with the verified checkmark has not been censored. However,
there's probably been a lot of copycasts that may have
used the name allst Bets and then said things they
probably shouldn't have been seeing and they got suspended off
of it. I think it might have been one of
those accounts. Um. The one thing I did think was
interesting though, is like you were talking about earlier this
year with game Stop, that the trading app robin Hood
(12:26):
actually prevented people from being able to buy. I mean,
I did my deep dive into that, and I realized
that robin Hood was actually tied to a hedge fund
that was betting on game Stop failing, which is completely wrong.
Right they're trying to accuse you guys of market manipulation,
they're actually the ones that are doing it. But I mean,
what is your message to people that are saying, look,
(12:47):
we want to get involved. We obviously, you know, like
you said, read it kind of enabled many people to
communicate typically that wouldn't be able to do that before
I think in the past. So it is kind of
this movement. But what is your message to them, because
I feel like in a sense that you have started
this movement that is really kind of leveling the playing
field for your average Americans to actually have a shot
at the American dream and have access that I think
(13:08):
beating the system that's worked so hard against them. Yeah. Look,
I mean you have a lot of things that come
together and make this happen, right, this democratization of finance,
the successibility. You have brokers that have become discount or
free such as robin Hood, and there's a pretty much
all the other ones that followed suit now allow free
or commission free trading. And you have access to instant
(13:30):
information right, you have the social media sources, traditional news sources,
print TV, whatever it might be. So then all of
a sudden people have all the tools, right, and also
they've reduced minimum funding requirements. They have these things called
fractional shares, which means you can just buy little bits
and pieces of a share, so you don't really need
a lot to get started. And then this this social media,
(13:52):
this collaborative kind of uh generation that we live and
where people come together and they share ideas and they
learn from them from each other. That's that's really empowered individuals,
you know, in the US and around the world to
try and get their get get ahold of their own finances.
I think that there was this you mentioned David and Goliath.
There's this feeling of pent up resentment from the two
(14:15):
thousand eight financial crisis where people occupied Wall Street, they
complain and they set out there with their camping pence
or whatever it might have been, and it didn't really
get much resolution. World, you know, things moved on and
the economy recovered, and I think that a lot of
that is resurface for saying I don't need you guys
for me to be able to invest or trade or
(14:36):
gamble or whatever it might be. And that's what people
have realized. I mean, you nailed it on the head.
There's a ton of people actually have watched countless interviews
that kind of give commentary on the Stone Corps is
what they call, Like I found one that actually had
a Star Wars intro, and so they're going through and
their talk. I mean, I'm gonna read post with this
as it's hilarious, but I mean, you're right, people do
feel like that, and I think that you know, the
(14:57):
fact is is that you, I think, really just put
Wall Street on its head and a lot of people
didn't anticipate for that to happen. But you know, kudus
to you. We are in the United States of America.
You're able to do whatever you want, and honestly, you're
doing it legally. So what's the problem is what I say? Um,
what do you have to say the legislators that say, oh, well,
we need to regulate or we need to make this
(15:19):
so that these guys can't do this because they're dangerous
to the market, because that's what they're saying. Now, I
you know, I look at what you're doing. I don't
think what you're doing is illegal. I don't think that
it's a problem. But what is your message to them?
It's not. Look, the legislators are going to have a
really hard time coming up with a lot. It just
targets these individuals because guess what we're doing, right, We're behaving.
(15:41):
Let's go ahead and just side with their nomenclasion and
say we're behaving irresponsibly, you're being reckless, or whatever it
might be. Those adjectives are the same ones that have
been used for the banks for the financial system previously.
They just use longer words with more syllables. Right when
explaining their mortgage backed securities, we just say, oh, it's
means the stock is going to go up. Whatever it is. There,
(16:01):
they will be really hard pressed to say, you only
the big banks can do this, but not the smaller ones. Right,
Like we had, for example, a situation prior to Game
Stop where these people on Wall Street Bids figured out
how to take their um robin hood account and get
basically infinite buying power from it by a series of clicks,
and they posted it and they laughed about it, and
(16:21):
whatever it might have been, that maneuver existed previously by
other banks that they used it with. Like I said,
you know, they called it these reverse repo whatever, really
sophisticated collateralized whatever, and they did the same thing. So
I don't know if they're gonna be able to succeed
with that. And at the end of the day, look,
a free market involves people coming in agreeing on prices,
and that is what's the productive Uh, this price discovery
(16:43):
process is what it is a productive process to society. Absolutely.
And so you actually wrote a book on this, right,
what's the name of the book. It's called Wall Street Bets.
How Boomers made the world's biggest castino for millennials see,
So that itself is literally the best title I think
a lot of people. Again, I was on internet. I
saw this meme you had like the Wolf of Wall Street.
He's showing out cash and it was like boomers trying
(17:04):
to figure out how the Strong Wars is going? You know.
So you have really created a movement and it is amazing.
Where can people find that book? Is it on Amazon,
Barnes and Noble? Where that can they buy it? Yeah,
they can buy and most of the stores. Amazon is
the publisher, so that's the quickest way to get it.
They can get on Kindle and then get it on paperback. Perfect.
And so my last question for you is obviously you're
(17:26):
doing amazing. You're basically the leader of the Strong Wars.
What is next for Wall Street Bets. I saw an
interview recently Idea that you talked about Digital World's acquisition
dwalk Um I mean, what is next on Wall Street bets?
And where can people go to run it? I obviously
know the name of it both. Should they go to
Reddit to follow your guys movement? I mean at this point,
(17:47):
at this point, they can go to Reddit, they can
go to Twitter, they can go to Instagram, Discord Telegraph.
There's so many places, and there's different kind of niches, right,
so some will focus more on crypto and some of
the folkus more on stocks. Uh. And you know, with
regards to what the next stock is, it's impossible to
really tell. It's you know, it's community driven it. There's
no individual that really decides on behalf of everybody else. Um.
(18:08):
But I really believe that the worlds of cryptocurrencies and
our crypto in general, and the world of finance are
going to collide or they're going to blend into each
other in a way that they're going to be even
more powerful. I'm so glad that you're bringing that up
because a lot of people when you talk about crypto,
I think more people are waking up to what it is.
But I think that you're absolutely right. I think it's
(18:30):
heading in that direction. I don't think you know, there
are some in power that don't want that to happen,
I think for certain reasons, but I think it's going
that way as well. So I know that you're probably
gonna be talking about that more and more. I saw
a couple of interviews where you're addressing it, um, So
we look forward to covering that. And thank you so
much for joining us to kind of introduce us to
the stock Corps and we pray for your success. Thank
(18:51):
you so much. I have a good time. Absolutely, Thank you.
That was such an incredible interview with Jamie. Obviously, I've
been following what they've been doing for a really long time,
(19:13):
and it's kind of funny you actually can see on
different you know, chat boards and also too. If you
want to research this further, I would suggest heading over
to a video streaming platform, whether it's Rumble or YouTube,
and even doing your own homework on social media and
on the internet on what stok wars really was, because
he explained it in a way that I think most
people can digest. I know, at first, when I first
(19:34):
heard about it, I was looking at the memes and
I saw everything on Reddit, but you know, to actually
fully understand what he's talking about, I mean it's good
kind of to do your own research and obviously to
verify what I'm saying, but you know, to see them
be able to do that and to realize that, you know,
these big hedge funds that do control this massive amount
of wealth. I think that what he explained about the
(19:55):
whole democratization and access to the financial system, I think
that that's really important because what we've seen in the
past is that there was so much, so many layers
to try to access that and to really have that
open communication. Kudos to the Internet, kudos to places like
read It. It really has opened up a whole new
world of opportunity for a lot of people that typically
(20:15):
just wouldn't have that access. And so, you know, I
you might not agree with it, you might not agree
with what he's doing, but I think that it's important.
It's important for our democracy. I think it's important mainly
because I don't agree with anyone class having certain rules
that other people cannot play by because of the fact
that they have more or less money. I don't agree
(20:36):
with that. I think that that's everything that our country
stands against. So kudos to the Stock Wars, kudos to
the stock leader. I think They've called him Stonkwalker, which
is kind of a Star Wars reference. I hope you've
enjoyed today's episode and I look forward to chatting with
you guys soon again on Linda Talks. Before we go,
(20:56):
I want to thank Jamie Rogozinski again for such a
great interview, and I want to thank you guys so
much for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, please give
us a review and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast.
To her more of my episodes and get my weekly newsletter,
go to Gingridge six dot com slash on a. You
can also find me on Twitter, Parlor, Facebook, Getter, and
Instagram at real Anna Paulina and especial thank you to
(21:17):
our producers Robert Browsky, writer Aaron Kleigman, and executive producers
Debbie Myers and Speaker New Gingridge part of the Gingridge
The sixty Network part of the Gingwich Network
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