So retail investors in GME are unable to buy using Robinhood and other platforms. Thus, triggering a(nother) round of "the man is keeping us down" at least on the Reddit boards. What happens next on a macro level?
Do many of these investors stop trading stocks and go into something seen as more fair like betting on professional wresting? (I saw that retail investors had 20% of trades in 2020 as compared to ~10% in 2019). Does the market then drop significantly because this money is flowing out?
Does another round of Occupy Wall Street begin?
Do politicians seen as establishment get pressured/primaried/voted out? Or, does Congress do another of those "hearings" with CEOs of Robinhood and other platforms like they did with Facebook and Twitter?
Other?
1) A generation of young investors decide "the stock market is rigged". This tilts public opinion toward an expanded social security / government pension system, higher taxes on the rich, and financial regulation.
2) Meanwhile, the new business model for the less-cynical holdouts is the combination brokerage / social media app with marketing slogans about "the little guy", "sticking it to the man", etc. Millenial / GenZ investors will think it is not a wall street business out to get their money, because all things social media are GENUINE and TRUTH, and the legacy brokerages are "boomer". These apps will feature humorous meme-ified user content to pump and dump stocks.
3) Q-Anon-esque internet religions will spring up around paranoid memes. They'll talk about a cabal of rich people controlling the stock market and watching their every move so that their day trades lose money, etc.
4) Interest in cryptocurrency will increase as the perceived legitimacy of the financial markets decreases. At least until that ends in tears too. Excuses will be needed for why everything fails.
5) Day traders facing calls on their margined GME longs will have some of their index funds and tech stocks liquidated too. At today's high valuations and twitchiness about the economy, this could be enough to set off a correction.
6) Those who made money on the great short bubble of '21 will be the ones who sold out their peers and exited early. If history is any guide, they will rationalize their gains as being due to hard work and capitalistic risk-taking and they'll resist talk about taxes and social safety nets. They will become the new conservatives, and so conservativism will become tilted toward their mentality. That mentality is to think independently and look for arbitrage opportunities / opportunities to rip people off in a zero-sum world, and then to resist calls to solidarity like we see on wsb every day. Those who lost money will have the mentality of jumping onto social media bandwagons and placing a high value on solidarity. They won't question these values - they'll accuse the earlier sellouts of ruining their wealth redistribution plan. These will become the new liberals, and they will be very skeptical of the idea that capitalism efficiently allocates resources. This wealth and experience difference will echo throughout the next 20 years, and merge with existing political memes / tropes. Both AOC and Ted Cruz are jumping in on behalf of the little guy for a reason - to claim the deep frustration that is coming for the majority of meme stock investors.
7) More index investors will see the great short squeeze of '21 as a chapter close to the end of the bubble. The more insane it gets, the more salient our stories about pets.com, 22 year old VC execs, and eyeball metrics. If Biden's push for more stimulus is rebutted by Senate Republicans plus at least one Democrat, there will be a selloff. Failure of stimulus will be the go-to-cash signal for a lot of people, and arguably the market is already bleeding off optimism as time drags on.
