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How I Got Sucked Into a Discord Stock-Trading Group and Made Thousands
Reddit’s WallStreetBets isn’t the only online hangout for passionate amateur traders
Just around dawn, before I’ve brushed my teeth, fed the cat, or even put on my glasses, my iPhone hovers glowing just above my face as I launch my trading app. From first glance, I can tell if it’s a red morning (market dumping) or a green one (the bulls are buying). I glance over the gains/losses percentages in my positions tab. If there’s a huge deviation — if bitcoin surged overnight and my shares of MARA, a bitcoin-adjacent stock, have skyrocketed, for instance — I might put in an order to sell shares, or adjust an existing order.
Next, I jump into my Discord app and race through alert channels on Xtrades, a paid discussion group I joined back in November where amateur analysts share tips. When the GameStop meme-stock bubble blew up in late January, attracting a swarm of new investors, I’d already been in the Discord group long enough to understand what was happening and why it might be best to avoid jumping in. When Dogecoin and bitcoin rose dramatically, I was already positioned to benefit from some of the related interest in stocks I was holding. Groups like WallStreetBets and communities such as StockTwits have attracted lots of users and media…
