After a wild ride, GameStop posts a gain of 400% for the week

Redditors behind the explosive group Wall Street Bets held AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions on Twitter and Reddit on Friday to answer questions that have been coming their way this week.

They note that since the GameStop stock spike attracted public attention, the community has grown to over six million subscribers, up from 300,000 during the past year.

Describing the community of r/wallstreetbets as “irreverent and self-deprecating,” the team of moderators wrote that users originally gathered in this group to talk about their stock market losses and gains and celebrate or lament those experiences. The moderators denied having ties to “real world subcultures,” such as Trump supporters, Occupy Wall Street or the alt-right.

There are a large number of people in America today that see a series of risky lottery tickets as a more viable path to the American dream than grinding away at a day job,” the moderators wrote.

They declined to comment on the SEC’s monitoring of the volatility that’s been linked to their collective trades, saying “we are not the judges of this affair.”

The group also shed some light on its philosophy towards Wall Street.

“Traditional Wall Street is scared of retail understanding the individual power now at their fingertips, and for good reason. Wall Street has historically been the gatekeeper, whether for information or for actual control of people’s funds,” the team wrote. “Having retail investors cut them out and decide their investment choices on their own eliminates the informational advantage traditional Wall Street has enjoyed by being those gatekeepers.”