As of early 2021, an unprecedented surge in the volume of trades of one particular stock was enough to create a large-scale discussion on economic greed and environmental distress.
If you’ve been on the Internet, watched the news or checked your investments in the past 3 months, you may have noticed an abnormal event occurring on the New York Stock Exchange. To put it simply, two very large hedge funds (think of hedge funds as a limited partnership between an investor and a manager, geared towards using a variety of strategies to get a return on investment) bet that GameStop would go out of business.
For any casual investor, this bet would not deeply affect the investments or their portfolio. However, the difference between a regular investor and a Hedge fund is that Hedge funds use more than one strategy to be able to provide protection to investors against falling prices.
The point is, Hedge Funds are at a clear economic advantage with respect to investing in stocks. An effort from the online community to fight back against these big companies, led to the birth of the Game Stop insanity of 2021.
Online discussion board Reddit (specifically the Wall Street Bets forum) was the primary birthplace of all the amateur investors who banned together to counteract the hedge funds betting that GameStop prices will drop. Without getting too technical, the Game Stop stock soared; in early 2020, GameStop cost about $4, reaching a high of $483 in early 2021, all thanks to the passionate collaborative efforts of the Reddit trading community.
image source: https://www.saltwire.com
However, this story doesn’t stop here. As many Redditors had found themselves in a position of sporadic financial prosperity, a new environmental initiative came into light. When a user posted an adoption certificate for a gorilla that was purchased in the name of GameStop, the Wall Street Bets forum quickly became engulfed in numerous posts all exemplifying eco-friendly team work.
Unbeknownst to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, an outrageous amount of donations and applications for adoption began to pour in. As of March 16, 2021, over $300,000 has been donated in support of restoring and rehabilitating gorillas, all thanks to the Wall Street Bets forum.
image source: https://gorillafund.org
For over 50 years, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund has been dedicated to successful conservation work of protecting the gorillas and safeguarding their habitats from destruction. With a focus on the daily protection, scientific research, education of conservationists and helping communities, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund has engaged in incredibly praiseworthy work to help save the gorillas in Africa.
Why gorillas in particular? Most on-lookers speculate this was done as a late homage to Harambe, the gorilla who was euthanized in 2016 at Cincinnati Zoo when a small child fell into the enclosure. While no one argues that the safety of any child is of utmost importance, it was incredibly heartbreaking for the internet when footage was released showing Harambe shielding the baby from harm's way and protecting him.
image source: https://stedmood.ru
Harambe was a member of the Western Lowland Gorilla species which are indigenous to Africa. Due to poaching and disease, the gorilla’s numbers have declined by more than 60% over the last 20 to 25 years. Thus, the legacy of Harambe inspired many Internet-goers who were fortunate to reap the financial benefits of the GameStop stock to donate their money forward to a worthy cause. This was a very inspiring story for all the staff at Eco Four Twenty, as seldom do people reinvest their fortunes into saving our planet and the animals we share it with.
While we don’t necessarily recommend buying GameStop in the hopes of making a quick buck, we highly encourage you to check out the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and make a contribution, no matter how small, we should all do our part to protect the species that cohabitate in this world with us.