When the stock of Roku, a streaming-service provider whose shares tend to fluctuate, cratered 19 per cent on Sept. “When I see these people making a lot and losing a lot of money, it caught my attention.”
“I’m naturally a risk-loving person,” Choi said in an interview. Choi became a rock star on the forum last month after sharing details of his own big short - playing Roku Inc. Choi said WallStreetBets taught him how to trade options - contracts that offer the right to buy or sell a security by a specific date. The forum’s 600,000 members dub satirical options-trade commentary over scenes from TV shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and rant about a loss that caused a member to get their “face ripped off.” Toss in a smidge of casual racism and a whiff of locker-room misogyny, and WallStreetBets is a window into the back rooms of a seedy stock-market casino with no Burry to be found. The sub-Reddit WallStreetBets, with the tagline “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal,” is rarely any of those things. Burry’s posts were thoughtful, well-reasoned and showed deep research. Before he became famous for the big short in the 2000s, Michael Burry discussed stock trades on online message boards.
