I am sorry to hear about your losses, but that does not disprove my explanation. I also am a member of WSB and read all the top posts. I think most of them make the argument to hold the position as a short squeeze is coming, and very few of them argue the stock is truly worth a ton of money. Very few people actually believe a company that sells video games the same way Blockbuster sold movies has a lot of potential.
That absolutely disproves your explanation. You said nobody was making a case for GameStop being a good stock, and the other comment pointed out that the single most popular name associated with this trade has been doing exactly that.
You also quoted the SEC saying that manipulating a stock price to cause a short squeeze is illegal but also that short squeezes occur naturally. Expecting a short squeeze and intending to profit off of it is not illegal.
You make the point that some people on wallstreetbets made comments that crossed the line on manipulation. I'm sure that's true, but if you see a few problematic comments out of millions it's obviously absurd to say that a stock mustn't be bought because of them.
Ironically, you are criticizing what is clearly not manipulation (valuing GME highly and expecting to profit off of a coming short squeeze) in order to defend what clearly is manipulation (banning a million retail investors from taking one side of a trade at a critical moment).
I'm not a member of WSB, and I don't follow their forum. Having done an independent analysis and deciding that it is potentially a good (but risky) move for me, why am I not allowed to trade GME? I can trade any other stock this way.
