A Risky Game(stop)

You may have noticed that some crazy stuff has been going on over in the USA recently – something to do with Robin Hood, Gamestop and Elon Musk, shorting, squeezing and freezing?

Chances are you may have scrolled on by, since getting more than one sentence deep in any of the reporting probably had your head spinning with all the investing jargon.

But what might have caught your eye is the reports of some small-time investors cashing in big and paying off mortgages or student loans with their profits…

In a nutshell….. a group of small-time investors (started on Reddit) have taken it upon themselves to stick it to the man, by going head-to-head with some big investors (hedge funds). They used their collective power to push the value of a company in one direction, which was the opposite way to how the bigwigs had hoped it would go. But then, the man started to stick it right back, as the software companies who enabled the little guys to buy stocks started freezing their activities….!

Suffice to say, this type of very short-term buying (and selling) is an extremely high-stakes game. Yes, a few individuals have probably done well, and quickly, but for many it could well be a different story before too long, as the whole situation starts to unravel in a wildly unpredictable way.

At SpringGen we don’t take these sorts of short-term bets, directly comparable to gambling in a casino. Investing sensibly is not an overnight process – we want to help you build up your lifetime’s wealth to give you long term options, not risk it all on following the crowd.

(Please note any views expressed in this article are those of the author, are written for information purposes only and do not constitute advice).