Your Weekend Reading: The Democratization of Investing Arrives Messily

Main Street versus Wall Street; daytraders versus hedge funders; the democratization of investing. Call it what you will, but this week really was like no other in the U.S. stock market. What started with a stunning rally in GameStop shares, propelled by retail investors huddled on Reddit and eager to squeeze shorts, now has the Securities and Exchange Commission trying to identify potential market misconduct. The Reddit trading army’s campaign—years in the making—faintly echoes the Occupy Wall Street of a decade ago, with an anti-establishment tone aimed at the one percent. But as John Authers writes in Bloomberg Opinion, this isn’t a history lesson, but a syllabus on libertarianism, shareholder capitalism and inter-generational conflict.

Elon Musk gave the Bitcoin crowd more reason to celebrate, while the world’s largest crypto exchange said its systems are under stress. Bloomberg Wealth reviewed other Reddit picks that made a splash this week, including AMC Entertainment and Dogecoin.