Wallstreetbets
 Icon and channel banner of its news outlet | |
Type of site | News outlet, forum website |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founded | January 31, 2012 |
| Country of origin | United States |
| URL | www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets |
| Registration | Mandatory |
| Current status | As active as Joe Biden |
Wallstreetbets, also known as r/wallstreetbets (r/wsb or WSB for short) is a high end news source for sophisticated investors who seek advice for long term strategic financial plans and tips on safe low-risk investment. While it is aimed at American investors they do have some foreign contributors on the condition that they are well versed in the lingo common in their pontent. Founded in 2012 and having grown significantly since, it branched out from a simple online forum into an economic journalist mecca for the most high brow investors. Their articles comment sections, which are generally strictly moderated to avoid a litany of abusive or racist language, have attracted over seven million users who take turns commenting on the wise articles written by wallstreetbets authors. Disagreements are cordial and calling one another "cock-sucking faggots" is considered uncouth and are taken down quickly by moderators hopefully within the same decade it is posted. Authors are highly connected to important investors and can predict modest growth stocks weeks ahead of the competition. Some people have unfairly claimed the authors participate in foul play with accusations of insider trading. Nohing could be further from the truth, it is simply a mega-conglomerate news empire that disseminates useful information in various forms for investors weary of taking risk and hoping to make a modest 1% gain each year.
Wallstreetbets is owned by WSB News Corp., a publicly traded corporation which is a shell corporation of an offshore ghost company of a subsidiary of a trust fund owned by Elon Musk.
History[edit | edit source]
Wallstreetbets was founded in 2012 by two anonymous 4chan moderators, seeking to create a forum specifically concerning stock trading; none have existed at the time. In its years of genesis, the forum was only lightly moderated, owing to how so few people were present; rarely did posts get removed. This part of Wallstreetbet's history has been censored and hidden from the public eye since 2018, out of fear of being ostracized from the Internet. The forum gained minor amounts of traction during that time, owing mostly to how it became a place to boast about both gains and losses.
After gaining the attention of young investment firm Dewey, Cheetum & Howe (not to be confused with the similarly named law firm), they acquired the forum for an undisclosed sum in 2014, and shut it down. A new forum, one which required a personal income of at least $50,000 to register, was established, and the name "Wallstreetbets" was used to create a new all-online news publication, with the intent of competing against Bloomberg and other traditional investment newspapers.
News division[edit | edit source]
Wallstreetbets' news division, founded in 2014 after the forum was shuttered, was meant to act as a drop-in replacement for various business and stock market-focused publications. It was funded primarily by Dewey, Cheetum & Howe, but was later made profitable using the help of sponsored stock listings. Wallstreetbets News was most well known for its daily Stock Market Tally, released every weekday at 4:15pm, summarizing the stock market better than other news outlets could ever do.
In late 2018, Wallstreetbets was accused of stock market manipulation, owing to its "sponsored listings" feature. Plaintiffs describe how those are virtually indistinguishable from typical articles, and malicious actors, including Russian and Chinese ones, were paying large, undisclosed sums of money laundering via the platform. Wallstreetbets' honorary editor-in-chief, Elon Musk, issued an apology, one which was wholeheartedly accepted by others. No controversies have arised since.
Forum division[edit | edit source]
Wallstreetbets' forum members were in outrage when it was initially shuttered, but the firm now owning it wanted to clean it, in order to purge the poor from it. After careful negotiations with forum leaders, the admission barrier was set to be equivalent to an income of $50,000 USD annually or $500,000 USD net worth. As expected, the poor complained, but to no avail.
(TBC)