Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of Reddit sub r/WallStreetBets’ Gamestop frenzy. Where a group of retail investors from a subreddit called WallStreetBets revolted against Wall Street hedge funds by pushing up the over shorted stock of video game retailer Gamestop by over 3000%.
Today, we’ll take you to r/IndianStreetBets – a WallStreetBets clone trying to replicate Gamestop story with Suzlon Energy stocks in India. The subreddit, apparantly wants to ‘pump Suzlon to the moon’.
The idea behind ‘pumping Suzlon’ is to put more money into Suzlon/BE to boost its price. This is despite the fact that experts say that such a move isn’t possible in Indian markets due to SEBI’s tight regulations and conservative circuits.
Nithin Kamath, co-founder of Indian discount broker Zerodha (known as Gayrodha among subreddit members) wrote an informative Twitter thread on why such a scenario in India isn’t possible.
Despite experts’ warnings, ISB members are adamant on pumping Suzlon. The keyword ‘Suzlong’ is flashing repeatedly in the sub’s Discord server (a chatting group) that has over 3100 members.
On Wednesday, the subreddit had close to 10500 members and has now added about 1500 members in only two days. Suzlon is still a buzzing topic among subscribers despite the subreddit moderators themselves recommending people not to invest.
Under one such thread on Suzlon, a user wrote “It’s literally impossible for any rally like Gamestop in India due to SEBI regulations. The US has a layered market, and there’s no hedge fund industry in India. Total AIHF Industry is about 25,000 Crores here, which is not comparable even to a single hedge fund like Melvin out there in the US.”
To which, another user replied, “Ban him. My head hurts with logic”. There are countless memes and edited videos on the subreddit trying to imitate WSB and boost Suzlon’s prices.
The subreddit is also full of hateful slurs. ISB users refer to each other as ‘autists’ and ‘retards’, Zerodha as ‘Gayrodha’, and their founder Nithin Kamath as ‘Cumbath’. There are also disturbing posts about ‘seducing Nirmala Tai‘ and several alt-right references on the subreddit and their Discord group.
It is unknown whether ISB users are attempting a Suzlon pump just for the sake of memes or not, but it is noteworthy that the stock has reached its upper circuit on Friday. Trading at Rs 6.30 ever since the markets opened.
