Last week, the short-busting activity of the subreddit WallStreetBets crowd dominated the financial news, with stocks like Gamestop, AMC and other companies with high short interest (in some cases much more than the total float of shares outstanding, which added more fuel to the short squeeze). This activity appears to have had some ripple effects throughout the broader stock market, with some observers thinking that the short squeeze forced hedge funds holding the short positions to liquidate their long positions to cover, driving down prices of some of the more popular stocks and driving down the overall stock market averages in the process. This has also become a social movement for equality, not unlike other populist movements of the recent past (Occupy Wall Street), except this movement packs a punch because it involves the loss of real money by those institutions on the other side of the crowd. This movement has garnered a lot of attention, from lawmakers, regulators, media and celebrities and seems likely to have far-reaching consequences. At a minimum, institutions will need to be careful about taking short positions in companies and broadcasting their rationale to the media. Individual investors will have to be careful about their entry point into shorted stocks when the rally "fades" and they could be stuck waiting a long time for the stock values to return to their parabolic peaks.