Dumb Money Movie

The movie Dumb Money is about the mass short selling of the GameStop stock. Keith Gill was a youtuber and social media personality who followed the stock market. He created a series of videos and livestreams that encouraged people to purchase the GameStop stock and stock options and if enough people were on board, it would influence the stock price. Gill was selling people on the idea that they could get rich by buying the stock which would drive it up and then sell the stock for a profit. He publicly shared his position on the stock and gained a lot of traction and support. The GameStop stock price more than doubled which caused a problem for the stock trading app RobinHood. There were so many shares of GameStop being purchased and the price increased so much that they would not be able to pay the people buying and selling the stock. Because of this issue, RobinHood froze the ability to buy and sell the GameStop stock on the app and later had to pay $70 million in restitution fines (much less than they would have paid had the stock not been frozen. Gill eventually “dropped out of public life” in 2021 after appearing in front of congress and costing people large sums of money. Gill had a great ability to relate to people that were like him, a normal everyday person who had a dream to get rich. He was able to convince a large group of people to buy a stock in order to drive the price up. He did not talk to these people one on one but rather uploaded posts and videos with his plan of how everyone could be rich if they worked together. Gill was selling people on a dream, an alternative where they could be very wealthy as long as enough people did what he said. This relates to the pen example, Gill was relatable to his viewers and followers, people trusted his pursuit of GameStop because he was just like them.