Endgame

From the New York Times bestselling author of Black Edge comes an untold true short story about the meme stock machine phenomenon and the small investors’ battle to beat Wall Street at its own game.

After the 2008 financial crisis, investment banks and other professional investors had the edge when it came to bailouts and stock trading. The crisis also ushered in a wave of new small-scale retail investors who were hell-bent on crushing the big guys by using social media channels to connect, share ideas, promote stocks, and reap the rewards—Robin Hood–style. But did the meme short squeeze stand a chance in a rigged playing field? This concise, definitive account of a daring Wall Street heist exposes a fight to the death against a fraudulent system—dreamed up by Vegas, backed by hedge funds, and built by Silicon Valley—that cost real people more than they ever bet on.

Sheelah Kolhatkar, a former hedge-fund analyst, is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she writes about Wall Street, Silicon Valley, economics, and national politics, among other things. She is the author of the bestseller Black Edge, about the largest insider-trading investigation in history and the transformation of Wall Street and the US economy, which was named a Top Book of 2017 by the New York Times. Before becoming a journalist, she spent several years as a risk arbitrage analyst at two hedge funds in New York City.