Elephants, pangolins and sea turtles – as well as thousands of gorillas – have been handed a lifeline by amateur investors who played the stock market at its own game. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent adopting endangered animals by users of a Reddit trading tips community, giving conservation organisations across the world a much-needed financial boost during a difficult year. The money came from users of the WallStreetBets subreddit, who earlier this year bought small volumes of shares in the retailer GameStop en masse. This inflated the company’s share price , raising value for themselves and deliberately withholding it from professional investors such as hedge funds and big Wall Street firms who had hoped to profit from its failure. Instead of splurging on cocaine, yachts or political donations, many of those small investors have spent their modest gains adopting animals. Gorillas have been the biggest beneficiaries, partly due to the sad story of Harambe, which still persists as a meme . In a typical weekend, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund gets 20 new gorilla adoptions. But since Saturday it has received more than 3,500 adoptions worth $350,000 (£252,000). Many were made out to fictional names including […]
Reddit investors use GameStop proceeds to adopt thousands of gorillas
