[jaxwerk]

If the play here were a simple pump and dump, that would all be accurate. Your ability to sell at 10,000% relies on there being a greater fool and that greater fool that ends up holding the bag could often be just a regular person investing unwisely.

The social media hype here is about this being a short squeeze. Large institutional investors have taken short positions and will likely be compelled to purchase to purchase shares at whatever price when margin calls come in on Friday. The current share price does not reflect the potential to profit off Gamestop as a company, it reflects the potential to profit off of the institutions that have taken incredibly risky short positions.

Here, the greater fool is already committed to buying your shares, and the timeline for that purchase is known with enough certainty to make this a fairly low-risk play.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Large institutional investors aren't compelled to wait for Friday to exit; they can decide (and largely seem to have already decided) that the market isn't acting rationally and they'd better get out early. I suppose that's not an entirely impossible theory - in principle even the losses they've already closed out are wealth transfers from them to WSB buyers - but I'm very skeptical that it won't ultimately end up being retail traders holding the bag.