The Revolution That Wasn't

GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors

By: Spencer Jakab

Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins

"The saga of GameStop and other meme stocks is revealed with the skill of a thrilling whodunit. Jakab writes with an anti-Midas touch. If he touched gold, he would bring it to life." --Burton G. Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street

From Wall Street Journal columnist Spencer Jakab, the real story of the GameStop squeeze—and the surprising winners of a rigged game.

During one crazy week in January 2021, a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets forum had seemingly done the impossible—they had brought some of the biggest, richest players on Wall Street to their knees. Their weapon was GameStop, a failing retailer whose shares briefly became the most-traded security on the planet and the subject of intense media coverage.

The Revolution That Wasn’t is the riveting story of how the meme stock squeeze unfolded, and of the real architects (and winners) of the GameStop rally. Drawing on his years as a stock analyst at a major bank, Jakab exposes technological and financial innovations such as Robinhood’s habit-forming smartphone app as ploys to get our dollars within the larger story of evolving social and economic pressures. The surprising truth? What appeared to be a watershed moment—a revolution that stripped the ultra-powerful hedge funds of their market influence, placing power back in the hands of everyday investors—only tilted the odds further in the house’s favor.

Online brokerages love to talk about empowerment and “democratizing finance” while profiting from the mistakes and volatility created by novice investors. In this nuanced analysis, Jakab shines a light on the often-misunderstood profit motives and financial mechanisms to show how this so-called revolution is, on balance, a bonanza for Wall Street. But, Jakab argues, there really is a way for ordinary investors to beat the pros: by refusing to play their game.

©2022 Spencer Jakab (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“A thrumming narrative… Anybody who buys and sells stocks, and anyone who “invests” in anything old or new, should read this book.”
--The LA Times

“Spencer Jakab, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, unknots the threads of this complex financial tale. His is a pacey and comprehensive account that takes in the structural changes in finance and the media that made the turmoil possible … the story is deftly told. If the first draft of history was not quite on the money, as Mr Jakab contends, his second go has set the record straight.”
--The Economist

“An unputdownable post-mortem of the freakiest tale of pandemic-age finance – and of how investing became gamified. Jakab speaks with the key characters and highlights the structural issues, deploys the nihilistic “degen” jargon and recounts priceless anecdotes, cutting through the narrative to tell us what really happened during the GameStop short squeeze.”
--Gian M. Volpicelli, Senior Writer, Wired

far too long

an interesting story that ought to be better understood by regulators, and the public. but the story could have been delivered in about 1/6 the prose.

Extremely enlightening and comprehensive.

Very entertaining and comprehensive. Worth listening to more than once to get a handle on arcane trading actions.

Apes must read

Super insightful, well written book. Should be a required read in High School. Must read.

Approachable even for a non-trader

A compelling narrative on the meme stock (stonk) phenomenon during the pandemic. I really enjoyed it.

Meme Stock Heaven

This a fun and easy read of early 2021 with the mania around stocks such as

- GME
- AMC
- Hertz
- Silver

detailing the interested parties

- Robinhood
- Citadel
- Melvin Capital
- Wall Street Bets & the Reddit Crowd

The book describes what happened, why it happened and how, along with the winners and losers.

Great book

Excellent discussion, particularly about the psychology of investing and the odds against all aggressive investors.
The saga of GameStop was fascinating and objective.

Good But A Bit Flawed

Overall this was a good book that did a decent job going over all the aspects of the GME short squeeze and everything around it. It does a good job of laying bare that this really wasn't some revolutionary movement so much as a group of people trying to make money that others later came in and tacked a social agenda and cult like behavior onto afterwards. While maybe this is part of my preloaded expectations, I had hoped for this to be a bit more in depth of a book. That isn't to say that the author didn't go out and get interviews and talk with people around the events, but there just seems something cursory about the depiction of events.

The author does a good job also of calling into question politicians handling of the situation and more trying to score political points than solve any of the real issues that lead up to this event, some of them structural with how risk is handled in the system. That being said, the author has a clear political bias that, while he doesn't explicitly drive at, seeps through in the writing in question. The tone of coming off a bit like a preachy father having a talk with his son on issues of investment, even as someone who isn't part of the apes or such groups, comes off as a bit eye rolling. Then again that could also be the delivery of the narrator. It feels like a book meant for a general audience but also trying to talk directly to those that participated in the events in the book and continue to. This jarring split in tone and objective makes for a book that flips its tone back and forth.

The book I think would have faired a lot better if it had laid out the facts of what happened first and then gone back when making its conclusions. It probably then would have also been more favorable towards certain audiences it is trying to convince who might see this. If you insert your conclusions in the middle of the story not only does it break the flow, but people are going to feel like they are being lectured to rather than absorbing facts that when you do get to the conclusion will allow them to be more open to that conclusion. Judging from some of the other reviews this seems like part of the dismissal by some. It came of a bit preachy and it turned some people off.

That being said it is still a good book and worth picking up if you have the time. At 9 hours it is fairly easy to breeze though and the book never feels overly drawn out beyond its welcome.

Great listen, sound advice

Great rehashing of what has happened so recently, followed the last chapter by some age-old sound advice on how to more soundly invest over the long term.

Not a book but a journalist diary

It looked like chronological events of GME and other Meme stock trading events than a book .

A not so good recount of the meme stock mania

I think most would go into this story expecting an unbiased recounting of the events that lead up to the beginnings of the meme stock craze that hit in early 2021. Unfortunate this book is not that. Instead the author's main purpose seems to be to push his own style of investing (index fund investing) and to call all of the young whipper snappers that drove the craze foolish and naive for thinking they could participate in the stock market on their own terms. He walks right up to the line of suggesting they shouldn't even be allowed in the market at all. This book reads like your parents who haven't job hunted in decades telling you to print out your resume and go pound the pavement with a firm handshake if you want to get another job. Essentially it's a relic from a bygone Era. Just skip this book