That´s not the normal behavior of an adult investor. It smells like a small segment of rich kids throwing around their parents money,
I think you wildly underestimate the number of people in their late 20's and early 30's making 250k+. with the pandemic everyone has been hoarding cash - not travelling, not spending 'just in case'. there's been a couple of reports about how much money is being accumulated by huge sections of the US.
Also, it is in fact the behavior that huge hedge funds have been doing for decades. it's perfectly legal for a hedge fund to take out a huge short position, then host press releases, webinars, buy ads etc all saying why they think the price is going to go down - in an effort to push it down.This is not technically stock manipulation somehow. i imagine it's a delicate line to walk, but many large funds have figured it out.
A coordinated group of people on the internet pooling their bets from 5k - 50k, when applied to a stock that is heavily over shorted do actually have the power to buy up all the shares and coordinate a short squeeze. It's less of an edgelord bet and more of a rebelling against institutions that have got greedy over the last few decades. They've been manipulating the market for so long people are enjoying being a part of fucking them over.
This kind of thing happens all the time - it's usually one institution going short and another hedge fund single handedly squeezing them out (and very often based on personal vendettas). The only difference this time is the squeeze is being done by a crowdsourced web forum instead of a billion dollar fund managed by a single person.
www.resetera.com
