[JakeTheAndroid]

The WSB strategy: Buying call or puts instead of individual stocks. Calls are when you think a stock is going to go up, puts are when you think it's going to go down. Instead of having to buy an individual stock, you can simply buy a call because you think the stock price will go up. If it does go up like you project, then you will make money. If instead it goes down, you lose money. This is generally a non-standard type of trade for the common investor.

It's easy enough on the surface to understand, but much harder to actually execute, because you generally do want some deeper understanding of market trends and how stocks move. That barrier of entry hasn't slowed down most people on WSB, because the loss porn was kind of the point of the subreddit. They didn't really care if they guessed right, they cared about having the most daring bet.

[henryfjordan]

A lot of the craziness is from exactly what bets they are making. The cool thing to do is to buy "Out of the Money" options (where $TSLA might cost $420/share but the options are for $450), sometimes with borrowed money. These options are dirt cheap, so you can buy a ton of them. Usually you lose your whole investment when the options expire, but if the stock jumps over the price of the option you can make a ton of money.