Hunger Games

You were told that markets reward skill and research. You were told that retail investors could "democratize" Wall Street by banding together. Last week proved both stories false. But in the wreckage of the GameStop frenzy, something unprecedented was exposed: the actual mechanics of who profits from your trades, who sets the rules, and how quickly those rules can change when the game stops working for those in charge.

• Your bets don't determine winners. Other bets determine winners. The GameStop surge proved that price movement can happen independently of what any company actually does, that collective betting itself becomes the entire "game." This breaks the basic assumption underlying all market narratives about investing.
• The referees own the game, not the players. Market makers like Citadel Securities pocket the spread on every single trade without taking any market risk, making billions regardless of whether you profit or lose. They don't care which direction you're betting, only that you're betting.
• The rules exist to protect those rules. When retail buying threatened hedge funds, the settlement clearinghouse mysteriously raised capital requirements, forcing trading platforms to shut down at a critical moment. This wasn't an accident or a system failure. It was a system working as designed.
• The "revolution" narrative was manufactured by those it claimed to oppose. Every politician, media outlet, and financial player used the retail revolt to advance their own agenda while the actual structure of market power remained completely untouched and more entrenched than ever.
• Something fundamental shifted in what everyone now knows. Retail investors can no longer believe the market is primarily determined by company performance. The curtain is pulled back. The question is whether that collective awareness changes anything.