These are gorillas.
This is not monkey business. Members of the Reddit group – who received national attention for their role in the January trade delusion of GameStop (GME), AMC (AMC) and other meme shares – gathered over the weekend to use their earnings to “adopt” gorillas symbolically through donations to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
Why gorillas? This is a bit of a joke: members of WallStreetBets refer to themselves and others on the page as ‘monkeys’ as part of the group’s internal language.
It all started on Saturday when a member of WallStreetBets
a baby gorilla adopted Urungano of the organization named on behalf of GameStop. Since then, Dian Fossey has received thousands of new adoptions and more than $ 333,000 in donations, compared to about 20 adoptions in a typical weekend.
“Unrealized GME profits used to adopt a gorilla,” said one WallStreetBets poster on the website.
“Monkeys rescuing monkeys,” said another.
WallStreetBets investors raised GameStop’s shares by more than 1,500% earlier this year, halting hedge funds that shorted the stock and sparking a debate over whether individual retail investors’ access to Wall Street is equal to that of large institutional investors.
One WallStreetBets poster said Monday that the surge in donations to save gorillas points to the benefits of making stock trading more accessible to individuals. Some members of the group have also discussed over the past few days donating a portion of their ‘tendencies’ (or earnings) for trading GameStop shares to workers in the games store.
“Monkeys on Reddit will use (profits) to donate to good causes, pay medical bills, help the needy in their communities,” the user said. “I can not wait for wealth to be returned to the boy and for everyone to benefit.”
GameStop shares fell sharply after peaking at around $ 350 during the trading week in January. But over the past few weeks, the stock has started to climb again and traded around $ 200 on Monday, up more than 66% since the beginning of this month. Many WallStreetBets members say they are still holding the stock in the hope that the profits will continue.
The Dian Fossey Fund
said in a tweet that gorillas are in fact “an excellent investment”, adding that funds will help locate, monitor and study wild gorillas and their habitat. The fund says it is the ‘world’s largest and longest-running’ organization for the conservation of gorillas.
“Gorillas live in the Congo Basin, the second largest rainforest in the world and a natural defense against #climate change,” the group said. “If we save gorillas, we save the planet. How about #ROI?”
The organization’s CEO, Tara Stoinski, also posted a video on WallStreetBets, thanking the Redditors who helped fuel the donations.
“Hello WallStreetBets … I was just made aware that you have adopted gorillas via our website,” Stoinski said in the video. “I just wanted to say thank you so much for this incredible support.”
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