Every now and then I get sent a book that my non-fiction, current event loving husband is eager to get to before me. The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich is a perfect example.

Mezrich writes accessible stories about big, complex topics related to business and money. This particular one is a fun retelling of the craziest David vs. Goliath stock story, describing the day that Main St. investors took one of Wall St.’s largest investment funds for a ride.

A pool read for someone who normally prefers a newspaper or magazine

Like many readers, I was first introduced to Mezrich’s work with the excellent The Accidental Billionaires, the story of how Zuckerberg et al founded, launched and grew Facebook. Since then, he’s published a number of interesting and timely books, and The Antisocial Network is no different. A fascinating and well-told narrative of the GameStop drama of last year, I really enjoyed this.

The clearest lesson I took away from The Antisocial Network is that Wall Street and the stock market are too often treated like a game, by too many people — even for hedge fund managers with vast resources under management, there is something about the way they approach their trades and moves that seems divorced from the potential repercussions. Maybe it’s just because of the events surrounding the GameStop drama, and the frankly strange moves that supposedly serious, intelligent investors and managers were making. The book also lays bare the ways in which institutional investors can manipulate the markets, with support of regulators and governments in some cases.

It’s a pretty wild story, and Mezrich does a fantastic job of laying out events in a clear and gripping narrative, showing how a single-minded individual managed to encourage and direct an army of others to take on Wall Street and attempt to beat it at its own game. The author provides plenty of detail and evidence, facts and figures to place the GameStop events into the wider context of stock trading, hedge funds, and policy. He introduces us to the wide range of characters who got roped into the GameStop drama — from hedge fund managers to redditors and RNs — and takes us into their homes and offices, explaining their choices and actions as events unfold.

Overall, then, The Antisocial Network is a very good example of what Mezrich does best: it is a briskly-paced narrative, engagingly told, and also illuminating. (If you’ve ever wondered how short selling, puts, etc., work then this book offers very good, concise and clear explanations.) For audiobook fans, The Antisocial Network is expertly narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi.

Recommended.

The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich is a very highly recommended account of the GameStop short squeeze when a group of amateur investors, gamers, and Internet trolls took on one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street. This comprehensive nonfiction book reads like a thriller and is the compelling true story of what happened.

Most people heard about the members of a Reddit group called WallStreetBets, who dubbed themselves "apes," when they started investing in Game Stop stocks in early 2021 and sent the price per share rising sky high which resulted in a short squeeze costing Wall Street hedge funds billions of dollars. Perhaps you also heard "The Tendieman" sea chanty. The Antisocial Network is truly a real life accounting of a David-vs.-Goliath movement. Mezrich starts the narrative back at the beginning, following the story of average people who were members of WallStreetBets, like nurse Kim Campbell, hair salon employee Sara Morales, college student Jeremy Poe, and Keith Gill who livestreamed on a you tube channel called "RoaringKitty." He tells the story of the co-CEOs Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt who started Robinhood, the investing app that was being used by the "apes" because it allowed ordinary people to trade on the stock market without brokerage fees. And he covers Gabe Plotkin of the hedge fund Melvin Capital and Ken Griffin of Citadel Securities, along with others.

Mezrich's does an excellent job presenting what happened. The events leading up to the news breaking story of the Game Stop short squeeze is clearly presented in an understandable manner that is accessible for interested readers. Even though you know what happens, it really is a page-turner. I could follow the technical information about trading and investing, although I was also following the story when it was happening. I thoroughly enjoyed The Antisocial Network from start to finish.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grand Central Publishing.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Edelweiss, and Amazon.

The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich is an enthralling and engrossing read with a great plot and characters! Well worth the read