28 January 2021: Robinhood stops the GameStop rally
At the height of the meme-stock frenzy, Robinhood and several other brokers restricted buying of GameStop, AMC and other heavily traded stocks, citing clearinghouse collateral demands. GameStop fell sharply that day, and retail traders were furious, suspecting the rules had been changed to protect hedge funds. Congress held hearings. The episode taught a generation that the plumbing of markets matters as much as the price.
The lesson: Your broker's balance sheet and risk limits can matter as much as your own investment thesis.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in GameStop at the start of 2020 → $16,667 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the latest year on the wheel. That is 16.7 times the money, and $14,574 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What GameStop teaches: Crowded short positions can produce explosive squeezes, but price spikes driven by flows rather than fundamentals rarely persist for late buyers.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $8.50 | $2,941 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $4.50 | $5,556 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $1.50 | $16,667 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought GameStop? Every starting year and the full story →
More GameStop history
- 26 January 2021: Elon Musk tweets one word: Gamestonk
- 18 February 2021: Congress grills the GameStop crowd
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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