What does WallStreetBets really look like? I tried posting to the Reddit forum.
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Same stocks probably wouldn’t exist if traders weren’t able to come together on sites like Reddit and Twitter to talk about their latest picks and share their wins and losses.
And while there have always been gathering places for traders, such as stalls, clubs, and message boards, social media coupled with the ability to unlock much of the portable mobile device market has gave new power to an army of retail traders.
We have already discussed how companies have used their sudden fame and rising stock prices to raise new capital to pay down debt, strengthen their balance sheets, and seek new areas of investment. But companies have even more reason to listen to their new generation of shareholders.
At the Milken Institute Global Conference in October,
AMC Entertainment
(AMC) Adam Aron, Managing Director of AMC, explained how its investor base grew from 80% institutional investors to 80% individual investors. This change, he said, motivated him to be more active on social media. He became an asset
Twitter
(TWTR), with its tweets that often get millions of impressions and thousands of responses.
“I tend to read all the communications I receive and have learned so much about what is going on [investors’] disturbs[s]”Aron told me at the conference.” I’m looking at some suggestions, some great some not so good, but it’s very helpful for me to lead an organization. “
While I already maintain a fairly active Twitter account, my use of Reddit has been limited to scrolling – or hiding, as some might say. I wanted to try posting on Reddit’s WallStreetBets discussion board, which has been around for almost a decade and currently has over 11 million users. The forum, or subreddit, has at times been ridiculed for the crass nature of some of its posts.
But by going through the posts and knocking out some of the noise, it’s clear that the subreddit is really all about cultivating a community of traders. I was curious to interact with the traders and hear their thoughts on some of my recent trades. (Disclaimer: All profits from these transactions will be donated to the non-profit Dow Jones News Fund).
But if I thought Trading options in the last episode of Unboxed was tough, posting on WallStreetBets maybe even more difficult. Granted, I’m a millennial with baby boomer tendencies, but the Reddit crowd doesn’t make it easy.
Want to see me try my first Reddit post? Watch the video above to see how it went. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel, as I continue to explore all things memes stocks.
Write to Carleton English at carleton.english@dowjones.com