March 9, 2018: WSB users come to the defense of Shkreli on the day he's sentenced to federal prison after a jury found him guilty of fraud. Options can generate steep losses if people don't use them correctly. But the contract may be worthless if the stock moves in the other direction. Options are contracts allowing investors to buy or sell shares at specific prices investors use them as a kind of bet on the stocks' direction.
As appreciation, and to Make WSB Great Again, I hereby petition that he become a WSB mod and WSB god," a user wrote.ĭecember 2017: Robinhood introduces options trading, a riskier form of investing in stocks than simply buying them. Trump "has created some great trading opportunities for us today and in the coming weeks. 2 post on WSB is a proposal to make Republican Donald Trump a moderator of the message board. 9, 2016: As the votes are being counted in the presidential election, the No. May 2016: Robinhood wins a design award from Google. His personality ends up as a clear fit with WSB subscribers, and eventually someone with his name becomes a WSB moderator. Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical executive best known at the time for raising drug prices, gets an invitation to join WSB while he's doing a Reddit Q&A. 24, 2015: Bigger names start to take notice of WSB. WSB, meanwhile, has about 18,000 subscribers. Within two weeks, the number of daily active users nearly triples, from 67,063 to 176,883, according to data from the app analytics company Apptopia.
Reviews are positive, and it's a challenge to other online brokerages that charge fees for each transaction, such as E-Trade.Īpril 2015: By now, a popular new feature is beginning to appear on WSB frequently, the label "YOLO," short for "you only live once." It starts to capture the culture of the message board, in which people justify taking big, risky bets on the idea that investors should live it up.Īugust 2015: Robinhood launches its app on Google's Android operating system, creating a much bigger possible customer base.
It's still tiny by Reddit standards, but the message board has a certain rhythm down: discussion of earnings, advice about how to trade off the news and tales about a "kid" who lost $100,000 by betting wrong on Twitter.ĭecember 2014: After years of development, Robinhood launches its first trading app to the public on Apple's iOS app store. 14, 2013: Robinhood wins approval from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to operate as a stock brokerage, allowing it to expand beyond just tracking stocks.įebruary 2014: Barely two years old, WSB surpasses 5,000 subscribers on Reddit, according to SubredditStates, a site that tracks message boards. It targets younger potential investors with a mobile-only trading platform, and it will go on to become a favorite with WSB users. Initially it's just a way to track stocks, but the company is building toward the idea of being an online brokerage with no commissions. One popular early post is a "great vid" in which investor Mark Cuban says "diversification is for idiots."Īpril 2013: Robinhood is founded in the San Francisco Bay Area. And Reddit's mostly self-regulating communities ensure that users set the culture. Even though it's unorganized and small, it attracts people who aren't interested in relatively boring investments, like index funds, or in traditional ways of measuring the value of stocks. Late 2012: The culture of WSB begins to take shape. Let's play." (Later, the motto will change to something more sinister-sounding: "It's like 4chan found a Bloomberg terminal.") The discussion board will become known by the shorthand WSB. Its initial motto is playful, with little hint of what is to come: "Inspired by earnings seasons. January 2012: The "wallstreetbets" subreddit is created by Jaime Rogozinski, an entrepreneur living at the time in Washington, D.C. Here's a timeline of how r/wallstreetbets, also known as WSB, and Robinhood came to be.