The Revolution That Wasn't by Spencer Jakab

Author:Spencer Jakab [Jakab, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Right Type of Rich

When it comes to influencing the newest and most active group of investors, neither wearing a tie nor working on Wall Street is a big plus. Already being rich, which one might think is a strike against you for a generation that resents widening inequality, doesn’t seem to be a problem at all. Seriously, who wants money advice from a poor person? In the study of billionaire wealth gains during the pandemic through February 2021, Musk was all by himself at the top with an increase in net worth of almost $158 billion, or 642 percent. By making his stock one of their top holdings as it climbed to levels that had more experienced investors shaking their heads and losing big as they bet the wrong way, the young generation of investors was in no small part responsible for his fortune.

Emulating rich people who happen to be self-made isn’t unique to younger generations—it is quintessentially American. But then why vilify the somewhat younger Gabe Plotkin and cheer Musk?

“They benefit from the fact that hedge funds are more cartoonish villains than them,” explains O’Mara. Chad Minnis, the retail investor who was incensed enough about the trading restrictions to start a registered political action committee, says that most executives and politicians leave him and his generation cold compared with no-filter Silicon Valley billionaires.

“They have that way of talking—they use a lot of words and they don’t say a lot,” he says. “It doesn’t seem real. Elon talks to people the way that people talk to their friends.”

Palihapitiya burst onto young investors’ radar a bit later than Musk when he lambasted hedge fund managers and came out against aid to failing companies on CNBC as the market was plunging in the spring of 2020. “We’re talking about . . . a hedge fund that serves a bunch of billionaire family offices? Who cares?” he said. “They don’t get to summer in the Hamptons? Who cares?”

He gained a lot of fans that day.

“Through all the pain watching all of our portfolios go up in flames the past few weeks, this motherfucker came in and spoke for all us and really put a smile on my face,” wrote a poster on WallStreetBets at the time.[5]

Later, at the height of meme-stock mania, on the day that Robinhood and others restricted purchases of certain stocks, Palihapitiya telegraphed his support for the retail traders who wanted to push GameStop to the moon, tweeting:

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