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Dumb Money

By: Ben Mezrich
Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
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Summary

*Now a major movie starring Seth Rogen, Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley, Sebastian Stan and Nick Offerman*

The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders that Brought Wall Street to its Knees.

Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account of how a loosely affiliate group of private investors and internet trolls took down one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, firing the first shot in a revolution that threatens to upend the financial establishment.

It started on a subreddit forum called WallStreetBets – a meme-filled, freewheeling place where a disparate group of investors shared their shoot-the-moon investment tips, laughed about big losses and posted diamond hand emojis. Until some members noticed an opportunity in Game Stop – a flailing bricks and mortar video-game retailer – and somehow rode a rocket ship to tens of millions of dollars in earnings overnight, simultaneously triggering unfathomable losses for one of the most respected funds on the street.

In thrilling, pulse-pounding prose, DUMB MONEY (previously published as THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK) offers a fascinating, never-before-seen glimpse at the outsize personalities, dizzying swings, corporate drama, and underestimated American heroes and heroines who captivated the world during one of the most volatile weeks in financial history. It’s the amazing story of what just happened – and where we go from here.

©2021 Ben Mezrich (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
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Critic reviews

"Mezrich mans the conveyor belt at the factory that turns raw reality into its eventual slick cinematic depiction."―New York Times

"Mr. Mezrich, the author of bestsellers on topics ranging from the origins of Facebook to beating the odds at Las Vegas, tells the story of GameStop through the eyes of an array of characters, especially small investors who had little or no previous experience in the stock market."―Wall Street Journal

"The David vs. Goliath-esque GameStop short squeeze of Winter 2021 was undoubtedly one of the most entertaining stories of the year, and Mezrich brings new life to the whole thing in this look at the outrageous personalities and corporate drama that fuelled it."―The New York Post

What listeners say about Dumb Money

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    4 out of 5 stars

Great story and learned a bit as well

Really enjoyed this book.. would recommend even for people who are not interested in finance

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

More of a pamphlet than a book

Not Ben's best work. Pretty short overall. Liked all his other books in fairness.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

An exercise in how to turn a fascinating story into a chore.

The story told through a selection of personal experiences. Each one felt like it had been stretched out and padded out to make the audiobook last 7 hours. Tedious and hard to finish. I did, but regretted it, feeling I hadn't learnt much new from the experience.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not Ben's best book

I was excited to hear that this book was going to be released having followed the $GME saga on Reddit and Twitter and wondered what Ben Mezrich, author of some books I really enjoyed such as Breaking Vegas, Bringing Down the House and Bitcoin Billionaires, would bring to the story.

My first thought was how this book could be written whilst the story was still unfolding, that was my first red flag, there was clearly a notible event in January 2021 but looking at the stock price through until the books release there has only been more drama, controversy and news that could and should have been included in this book.

I think that being first to put a book like this out, and of course sell the film rights, is one thing and of course the money that will bring but also the opportunity to write a sequel as the story develops.

Anyway what did I think of the book? I didn't like it. It didn't feel like Ben's other books do, to the point where there were several points that I thought "did he even write it?". It picks some "normal" people to follow through their GME journey, I didn't like any of them, not because they're bad people but just the way they're written, Ben includes so much detail setting the scene that it just turned me right off who these people were as characters. They're supposed to represent the everyday retail investors, like me but I just didn't care about their story the way it was written. It annoys me still to be honest, the end of the book kind of forgets about them anyway. An afterthought shoehorned in because there wasn't enough substance otherwise.

Then we come to Ben's description of "key" figures in the story where he tries, unsuccessfully, to be funny. Elon Musk battling AI with a flamethrower, Ken Griffin and his throne of bones, I don't know what the point of this was but it didn't add any humour.

The fact that the book is called the "ANTIsocial network" clearly a play on the fact that Ben has a previous book about Facebook called the Social Network, we get that but the way Reddit is described is as though it's full of trolls, racists, bigots and criminals is far from the mark. People of that type exist, sure but they do on all forms of social media and the way that stood out to me was not of community coming together to share ideas and information but to conspire to corrupt. He may have thought that he was giving an unbiased critique on Reddit as a whole but if Ben spent more than 10 minutes looking for select quotes to prove his thesis I think he would have written this part a lot differently.

I listened to the full book but I wish I hadn't bothered, I'm not dissappointed that it wasn't the story I wanted to hear, like watching the movie Titanic I knew what was going to happen before I listened to it, but the way it was written just wasn't engaging or interesting.

If you know absolutely nothing about the GME story then this might be of some interest but if you listen to it pay Reddit a visit afterwards and make your mind up about the rest of the story after that.

The narrator was good and to be honest that's where this books 2 stars come from, the performance.

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4 people found this helpful