The biggest thing that this has shown is how corrupt the entire stock market system is. The folks from r/walstreetbets played the game according to the same rules that Melvin Capital was playing by. If it hadn't been a bunch of average guys from Reddit but another hedge fund doing the play, everyone would have shrugged and said that it was the cost of doing business. The traders from Melvin Capital would have gotten new jobs, the owners would have had a bit less money, and life would have gone on. But it wasn't the usual players, it was gasp, ordinary people, how dare they intrude into high finance. So the rest of the players didn't shrug and call it the price of doing business. They threw a hissy fit that some normal shmucks beat them at their own game. Then they exposed how much control they have over the nominally "fair" system of checks and balances that are supposed to protect everyone in the stock market from the kind of manipulation that Melvin Capital was doing and r/walstreetbets did to fight back. This exposed that those controls only protect the big players from the little players and keep the minor players from getting ahead in the game. So welcome to Wall Street, a free market as long as you are one of the players. Not so free if you aren't part of the club.