Spencer Jakab - The Psychology of Meme Stocks

This week on Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby, Dr. Crosby speaks with Spencer Jakab. Spencer Jakab is the Editor of the WSJ's Heard on the Street. He previously wrote Ahead of the Tape for the Journal and the Lex Column for the Financial Times. He was an analyst and later a director of emerging markets equity research at Credit Suisse and is the author of "Heads I Win, Tails I Win: Why Smart Investors Fail and How to Tilt the Odds in Your Favor." His book about the meme stock squeeze, "The Revolution That Wasn't," comes out on February 1, 2022.

Tune in to hear:

- What in particular about the environment, including the pandemic and lockdown, contributed to the sort of fervor and madness we saw around meme stocks like Gamestop?

- Risk, excitement and novelty were somewhat systematically stripped from our lives during the initial quarantine - what role, if any, did this play in the meme stock phenomenon?

- How did the trading apps themselves, and the gamification of trading, catalyze some of these behaviors?

- Who is Keith Gill and how did he become so central to this movement?

- How central to the phenomenon of Wall Street Bets was the moral dimension of “sticking it to the man?”

- Many of these meme stocks are still soaring greatly above where they were 2-3 years ago, and yet Spencer thinks that this “revolution” is bound to fail. Why does he think this is the case?

- Will the phenomenon of "Finfluencers" continue or will further regulation and other obstacles put an end to this?

- Did many financial professionals use the Wall Street Bets phenomenon as a sort of Trojan Horse to benefit themselves?

Twitter @spencerjakab

https://spencerjakab.com/

Compliance Code: 0158-OAS-1/25/2022