Reddit day traders wanted to beat Wall Street to prove the system is rigged. Instead, they did it by losing.

Reddit day traders wanted to beat Wall Street to prove the system is rigged. Instead, they did it by losing.

Keith Gill, the day trader and member of Reddit group WallStreetBets who is widely credited with igniting the recent GameStop trading frenzy, claimed in late January that he had turned his $54,000 investment into a $48 million dollar fortune.

Days later, it had been sliced by more than half to $22 million, and regulators had set their sights on Gill, investigating him over potential disclosure violations.

Many retail investors fared far worse. One Robinhood user lost $70,000 in savings and contemplated committing suicide. Another, Alexander Kearns, did.

GameStop's stock, which had peaked at more than $480, had dropped to around $52 as of Friday.

Before the rollercoaster went off the rails, however, one hedge fund walked away with a $700 million profit, brokerage app Robinhood raised billions in new financing after being forced to restrict its users from buying stocks, and trading giant Citadel likely made a hefty sum from the increased market volatility.

While the dust has far from settled, and some Wall Street firms did lose big, a David versus Goliath victory now hardly seems like the most likely outcome. 

It had made for a compelling narrative, too: an army of retail investors “” without deep pockets, sophisticated trading algorithms, proprietary market data, or