14 Time February 15/February 22, 2021
AMERICAN HERO Capitol Police officers pay tribute to fallen fellow officer Brian Sicknick, who
received the rare distinction of lying in honor in the U.S. Capitol’s Rotunda on Feb. 2. Sicknick, 42, died
on Jan. 7 from injuries sustained a day earlier while he attempted to hold back rioters storming the
Capitol. President Joe Biden and lawmakers also paid their respects before the late officer was laid to
rest at Arlington National Cemetery on Feb. 3.TheBrief News
For years, proFessional money manag-
ers and hedge funds have looked down on in-
dividual traders. They have dismissed them
as “dumb money” and cautioned that so-
called retail investors lack the necessary acu-
men and experience. That has often been the
case, but then came the GameStop phenome-
non: a tsunami of that so-called dumb money
flooding parts of the stock market, leaving
Wall Street professionals not just scratching
their heads but badly wounded.
In just over two weeks, shares of the com-
pany GameStop rose more than seventeen-
fold after its prospects were touted on a
Reddit forum that has several million sub-
scribers. GameStop, a retail chain that has
struggled mightily in an era of streaming, was
heavily bet against by Wall Street pros.
What happened on Wall Street is akin
to what happened in the U.K. when voters
chose Brexit and in the U.S. when Donald
Trump was elected: a mass of people, leftfeeling that the system was rigged to reward
the elite and screw everyone else, coalesced
into a potent phalanx that upended a sta-
tus quo. And in similar fashion, the elites
being challenged were caught off guard by
the suddenness and intensity, and responded
by denouncing those forces as misguided,
misled and destructive.
These masses have revealed some uncom-
fortable truths about the investing world:
anyone can play—and yes, retail investors
have made money, as have pension funds
and foundations. Even so, the most excessive
profits have largely gone to a few thousand
hedge funds, private- equity executives and
professional investors.
It’s right to be a tad worried when new
forces are unleashed: splitting the atom can
electrify a city or destroy it. But what we’ve
seen on Wall Street is a surge unlike any other
before it: the volatile emergence of individual
investors—not rich, not privileged, not pro-
fessional, but with the keen wisdom of the
crowds able to spot an opportunity and ride
it. It’s vital to respect it, to be humble in the
face of it, and to start adjusting to the democ-
ratization of the markets.
—Zachary KarabellBUSINESS
Will the GameStop
masses change Wall
Street for good?NEWS
TICKER
Biden aims
to reunify
migrant
familiesIn one of three
immigration Executive
Orders signed Feb. 2,
President Biden
directed a task force
to find the parents of
roughly 611 migrant
children who remain
separated from their
families because of the
Trump Administration’s
“zero tolerance” policy.China and U.K.
in Hong Kong
passport spatChina will no longer
recognize British
National Overseas
passports held by
millions of Hong
Kongers as valid travel
documents or ID, the
Foreign Ministry said
Jan. 29. The snub
came after Britain, the
former colonial ruler
of Hong Kong, said it
would begin accepting
the passports as
the basis for U.K.
residency applications.Pakistan
acquits Pearl’s
accused killerPakistan’s supreme
court cleared a man
of the 2002 murder
of journalist Daniel
Pearl. Ahmed Omar
Saeed Sheikh was
convicted before 9/
mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed
boasted of killing Pearl.
U.S. prosecutors have
indicted Sheikh for
kidnapping him.