Kiwis among online activists taking on Wall Street financial elites with GameStop stock surge

The David and Goliath story is centred in the US, but it has taken the world by storm.

Kiwis are joining in an international movement that's stormed Wall Street and shocked financial elites.

Aucklander Isaac Hill is one of those.

He first noticed chatter on Reddit a week or so ago, about buying up shares in struggling video game retailer GameStop.

An online flash mob of sorts had formed after noticing hedge firms had shorted stocks in the company.

The price quickly shot up to be the most heavily traded stock, with some individual investors making thousands of dollars.

Hill says it seemed like a safe bet so he chucked a fair amount of money on it.

He's more than quadrupled his money.

His paper profits shot up to over $100,000, but started dropping away by the time he sold up.

As well as making a profit, there was one clear reason for jumping on the bandwagon.

"The sentiment is one of exasperation. We're tired of being fed crumbs when billionaires are hoarding wealth and they can manipulate the market to keep us out of it when we're just trying to have our piece of the pie," he told 1 NEWS.

"Everyone I know is up, it had a massive dip yesterday, and only a few of us were in. A lot of them took their profits earlier in the week."

And he'd take the risk all over again.

"One-hundred per cent, it can be a little disheartening when you feel like the billions are in cahoots and they're conspiring against you.i I's hard to believe in it when they can manipulate the market so aggreviously and there's nothing you can do," he says.

"One of the main trading partners is called Robin Hood…you're stealing from the poor."

That sentiment is being felt by many individual investors worldwide — but not so much on Wall Street, where some funds have lost billions of dollars.

In New Zealand, online share platforms Sharesies and Hatch say they are taking a cautious approach to trading in the shares and warn there are always risks with investing.

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