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Turns Out Meme Stocks Have Basically Been Around Since 600 B.C.
The first-ever options trader discovered a key insight about the nature of risk — and how to profit from it
An epic amount of ink has been spilled over the past few weeks about Reddit’s WallStreetBets and wild trading of options for meme stocks like GameStop. Much of this ink describes meme stocks as a unique phenomenon with little or no precedent. But the history of the financial markets is actually filled with precedents for meme stocks. Sure, nobody was buying stock in video game retail companies in ancient Greece. But believe it or not, the very first option trader in ancient Greece blazed a trail followed by Gamestonkers. And that story reveals a lot about leverage, the value of risk, and how money has just as much to do with human emotion and human storytelling as it does with addition, subtraction, and calculating odds.
A standard history of finance will tell you that stock option trading began in 1973, to celebrate the 125th birthday of the Chicago Board of Trade. But the idea of the option is much older than that. Before there were stock exchanges, before there was paper money, and even before there was Jeff Bezos — there was Thales of Miletus, the first person to make a fortune with options.
