Dumb Money ending explained: Who won Reddit vs. Wall Street?
Sony PicturesDumb Money is Craig Gillespie’s new movie about the infamous 2021 GameStop saga, pitching Wall Street vs. Reddit in a David and Goliath tale for the internet era. So, what happens at the end of the film – and who won the battle?
With a star-studded cast and an incredible true story, Dumb Money looks at how “everyday people” got rich and screwed hedge fund titans in the process by turning GameStop – the mall videogame store – into the world’s hottest company.
As per the official synopsis: “In the middle of everything is regular guy Keith Gill, who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock and posting about it. When his social posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets rich – until the billionaires fight back, and both sides find their worlds turned upside down.”
With the movie now out in cinemas, we’ve broken down the ending of Dumb Money as we explore who came out victorious in the Reddit vs. Wall Street saga – and who lost out. Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Dumb Money ending explained: Who won Reddit v Wall Street?
Technically, the Reddit GameStop investors won this battle. In the final scenes of Dumb Money, Keith Gill – known as Roaring Kitty online – gives his inspiring testimony to Congress at one of a series of GameStop hearings, arguing that he didn’t manipulate the market and cause stock prices to skyrocket.
Following this, we see the testimony of Gabe Plotkin, the villain of the saga and the founder of hedge fund Melvin Capital, which took out a huge short position on GameStop and went bust after losing billions when GameStop stock skyrocketed.
A series of title cards then reveals what happened after the hearing, including the news that Gill – who said in his statement that he is neither a cat nor a hedge funder – is let off. On April 16, 2021, he shared his last post, at which point his $53,000 investment in GameStop shares had shot up to $34 million.
Sony PicturesThe film explains that after the hearing, GameStop stock prices rallied once more and effectively doubled, making the everyday Reddit investors rich while screwing over the “a-hole” hedge funders in the process.
Speaking of which, the ending shows us what happened to Plotkin, who believed his short position – aka betting against a company doing well – would pay off. However, as we’re told, Plotkin’s Melvin Capital shut down in May 2022, having lost $6.8 billion in the GameStop short squeeze.
This is despite Melvin’s bailout from the likes of hedge funds Point72, run by Steve Cohen, and Citadel, run by Ken Griffin, both of whom didn’t exactly face the consequences and are both still worth billions of dollars each.
But the same can’t be said for Robinhood founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt. For context, these two started out being good guys, as their commission-free trading platform became the app of choice for retail investors, including those trading GameStop shares.
Sony PicturesHowever, this all changed on January 28, 2021, when Robinhood halted the trading of GameStop and other memestock shares. Tenev and Bhatt’s relationship with Citadel led to accusations that the hedge fund pressured Robinhood into suspending trades, which became part of the focus of the congressional hearings.
Although Robinhood continued on with its initial public offering, the ending of Dumb Money reminds us that it experienced the worst IPO of its kind. As for Tenev and Bhatt, they quickly lost their billionaire statuses.
On a positive note, the various fictional characters representing the everyday people who invested every penny they had into GameStop in a bid to take down Wall Street stuck to their guns, hodled their stock, and ended up cashing in for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In a conversation with Deadline, director Gillespie explained what it was about Gill that made him ideal for the story. “In that world, everybody is very harsh and critical obviously, and they can really smell BS,” he said. “There was this earnestness, intelligence, and I really think this altruism to him and sincerity that just captured the internet.
“There was no agenda. He was posting these seven-hour videos every week, and it was just about having a community and talking about the stock and why he believes in it. And there’s this real genuineness to him that I think people connected to. He really believed in it and he believed in the case and he made some very strong arguments.
“He was working as an analyst at MassMutual. He didn’t have any clients at all, but that was his field of work. There was this massive short squeeze on GameStop, I think 140% of the value of the stock. He preached this for a year as the stock was short-squeezed.
“I think the Wall Street fed guys started seeing there was an opportunity here to do this, but you needed people to come together and drive stock up. So that’s where the community started talking about it.
“Combined with the zeitgeist at the time, the helplessness we felt with Covid and the discontent that was going on in the country… people had nothing to do and wanted a voice in what is happening in the world.”
Dumb Money is in cinemas now. You can check out more of our coverage below: