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A viral tweet riled up a conversation online after a man claimed he lost more than $9,000 from his Robinhood account in one year.
The tweet, posted by @jmf_34, received more than 110,000 likes, 6,800 retweets, and 3,100 quotes tweets
Retail brokerage app Robinhood saw an increase from 2 million users in 2017 to more than 22 million in 2022, according to Statistica.
In January 2021, many individuals made Robinhood accounts to buy and short sell GameStop stock. As a result, the value of the stock nearly doubled every day, causing Robinhood to restrict the GameStop stocks for a few days.
In April 2022, the Robinhood stock dropped by nearly four percent, leading to large-scale layoffs.
"About a year ago I put $12.5K into a Robinhood account to play around with," the viral tweet read. "I figured I'd get to $15K+ in no time. The portfolio is currently at $3,400."
The next day, @jmf_34 replied, claiming that he lost another $400 since the initial tweet.
"I feel u, my 60k portfolio is now $12k it hurts," user @miczraza replied.
"Only gamble with money you're willing and ready to lose already," user @ShineUrLiteOnMe wrote. "Sorry to hear you learned the hard way."
"Yes, this was money I was willing to lose," @jmf_34 replied to the user. "Don't plan on selling anytime soon and I'm confident the portfolio will at least double from here."
He added that his Robinhood account was designated for tech stocks, meme stocks and crypto, so he wasn't "awfully surprised" about the losses.
"Should have just done index funds. You would only be down 15% from ATH and would still get dividends and the knowledge it will rebound and set a new ATH over time."
Newsweek reached out to @jmf__34 and Robinhood for comment.
In another viral tweet, a man gave users a "simplified" explanation of short selling. In his analogy, "regular people" are the apes, and hedge fund people are the snakes.
"Let's say 5 banana's currently cost $10," the analogy read. "One ape on the market has 5 banana's.nake asks to borrow 5 banana's for a bit and instead sells the 5 banana's thinking price will go down soon (shorting). He thinks he can buy them later for less and give them back to ape, so he make's profit on the difference.
"Group of apes notice what stupid snakes are doing and decide to buy all banana's on the market until snakes have no other choice than to buy from the group of apes in order to return what they borrowed. If group of apes stay strong then price will go UP."
About the writer
Samantha Berlin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on trends and human-interest stories. Samantha ... Read more