The get rich quick crowd gathered on Reddit and was having quite the party.  There was no stopping the game that they were playing with stock in GameStop.

But, like at the stroke of midnight, if you don’t pay the band the music stops.  And, yesterday it got quiet.  Quiet like the inside of GameStop stores during this pandemic.

Just last Thursday shares in GameStop were bought for as high as they were sold-it always takes two to dance.  And the price to get on the floor was $483.  The stock was a much cheaper date in mid-summer at $4.  That’s no typo.  And, yesterday the stock retreated to $84 just four trading days after the $483.  That’s again no typo.

If you’re a retail investor and you wanted to show old school Wall St. that there was a new kid in town, you did.  Briefly.  The short-selling hedge funds got squeezed a bit.

If you wanted to get rich quick, hopefully you bought low and sold high.  Because as it was quickly learned again, value never goes out of style. Stock is always only worth what someone will pay for it.

However, if you bought high and sold low maybe it’s time to get off of Reddit.  If you did so with margin money you might need to see a bankruptcy attorney.  If you did so with your stay at home stimulus money, as many on Reddit bragged, maybe you should go get a job.

But, if you live in Long Beach, CA, and want to get into the grocery business you’re looking in the wrong place.  Yesterday, Kroger announced that it was closing its two stores at the end of this month in response to the mayor’s mandated “hero” pay of minimally $15 an hour for those “workers on the front lines.”

And, we are reminded again, value never goes out of style.  People are always only worth what someone will pay for them.  And jobs are valued for what people will accept them for unless you are the government and want to cause some market disruption.

Government has its eye on this stock market disruption.  They’ll start hearings next week on what we can learn from it.   That should be good for a few laughs.  Do you notice how the government always reacts, it never acts?

Political opposites Rep Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz were in full agreement that the bad guys in this were the old Wall Streeters who were trying to blame the up and comers for making the market rattle.

In other words, “let the free market decide what a stock is worth.”  Hmm.  That seems like the polar opposite of what the government is trying to do with wages.

Reddit user benaffleks (really) says “This is a big moment.  Hedge fund managers live in the past.  They believe that average retail investors don’t know anything about the market(which may be true) and we’re just gambling our money away.  This was the past.”

One never really knows when the game stops.

But, when it does fair market value is always the winner.

Always.