New York Young Republicans ‘Re-Occupy Wall Street’ in Wake of GameStop Debacle

Members of the New York Young Republicans staged a “Re-Occupy Wall Street” demonstration Sunday over the financial sector’s manipulation of GameStop stock after a Reddit group launched a buying surge.

The group stormed Zuccotti Park in in lower Manhattan on Sunday at noon to protest the hedge funds and other financial institutions that undermined Reddit-driven stock purchases in video game retailer GameStop this week.

“What we saw the last few days was absolutely despicable. It’s pissed off a lot of people,” group President Gavin Wax told the New York Post. “We have the elites and the substrata of everyone else who doesn’t get to sit at the big-boy table and make the big-boy money.”

GameStop, a mall retailer of video games and electronic accessories, saw shares soar more than 1,700 percent this week when amateur day traders bought massive amounts of the stock to protest Wall Street short-sellers who were banking on GameStop’s failure.

The Reddit page WallStreetBets initially organized the mass buy.

As the stock skyrocketed and hedge funds lost billions of dollars, trading apps tried to block additional sales of the stock. One of the apps, RobinHood, faces a class-action lawsuit.

“I do think they need to be prosecuted. A lot of these guys need to go to jail. Text messages and emails need to be seized. It was coordinated. There needs to be repercussions,” Wax said of the institutions’ efforts to shut down amateur trading.