‘The Game Is Rigged’: How Fury Over The Great Recession Fueled The Reddit Trade

Occupy Wall Street participants march down Fifth Avenue in New York on May 1, 2012. Lingering anger over the 2008 global financial crisis has fueled several populist movements, including most recently, the battle waged by amateur investors coordinating in Reddit against hedge funds.

Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images

James McCombs was 13 years old in 2008 when he found out the money set aside for his college tuition was gone.

“I was old enough to know what was going on, and old enough to hear my parents’ conversations,” he remembers. “Old enough for them to tell me that the college fund was gone.”

The fund had been tied up in the stock market, and it didn’t survive the market crash sparked by the global financial crisis.