#7 - To the Moon: WallStreetBets, GameStop, and the Rise of Popular Expertise

Welcome, friend and future deep-dweller!

This is the first interview episode of Deeponomics—a podcast exploring the research, deep ideas, and theories shaping markets, finance, and accounting.

This episode features a conversation with Hervé Stolowy and Luc Paugam from HEC Paris, centered on their upcoming article Shaping Collective Action in Financial Markets through Popular Expertise, soon to be published in Accounting, Organizations and Society.

The discussion focuses on the WallStreetBets movement on Reddit, where retail investors used humor, memes, financial analysis, and shared frustration to challenge the status quo of financial expertise. This collective effort helped trigger the GameStop short squeeze and raised questions about who holds epistemic authority in financial markets.

Topics explored include:

• The meaning of “popular expertise” and how it formed in digital spaces

• The hybrid language of memes, finance, and emotion on Reddit

• The shifting role of trust, expertise, and community in market behavior

• What this article signals about the evolving landscape of financial legitimacy

  
  

  
  

This is not just a story about meme stocks—it is an exploration of how narratives shape markets, and how ordinary voices can become powerful forces in finance, and challenge traditional expertise.

Oh, and if you are interested in reading the paper, hit this link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368224000485

Subscribe to follow along as each episode unpacks academic work, interrogates market assumptions, and ventures beneath the surface of financial storytelling.

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