Power to the Players: The Real GameStop Story and Why It's Only Getting Started

Prepare yourself for the ultimate exposé of the retail trading revolution.

The sea shanties, YOLOs, and red bandanas were just the beginning. Did you know Robinhood didn’t actually initiate the infamous trading halt? Or why Redditors refer to 2021 as the “sneeze” rather than the squeeze? And what if I told you that some shares in your brokerage account might be counterfeits? If not, buckle up.

Witness firsthand the real and utterly ludicrous hivemind that brought Wall Street to its knees in January 2021, and discover why GameStop was only the beginning of an even more unprecedented retail contagion—one that will challenge everything you think you know about our markets all over again.

If the meme mania of 2021 drew blood from Wall Street, what follows is the Shakespearean realization that Reddit’s blade was, in fact, poisoned. In a digital world where information is frequently deleted, revised, and buried, accurately piecing together events is nearly impossible. While other authors and journalists have understandably struggled, Rob Smat offers a clear and unfiltered account, having witnessed every twist of the GameStop phenomenon firsthand.

Power to the Players is as much an unabridged history of the GameStop “sneeze” as it is a roadmap of how retail traders regrouped when everyone else thought the story had ended in calamity. The truest of diamond hands never sold, and their power has only grown stronger since. Before, Redditors were merely a nuisance to the status quo. Now, they’re poised to upend it completely.

 

Rob is an author and filmmaker from the Southwest. His films include The Last Whistle (2019) and Walkout: Change Within the World's Largest Company (2023). His books include Power to the Players: The Real GameStop Story (2023) and The Wedding March (2024).