[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/business/gamestop-wall-street-bets.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/business/gamestop-wall-street-bets.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) A real estate salesman in Valparaiso, Ind. A former line cook from the Bronx. An evangelical pastor and his wife in Huntington Beach, Calif. A high school student in the Milwaukee suburbs. They are among the millions of amateur traders collectively taking on some of Wall Street’s most sophisticated investors — and, for the moment at least, winning. Propelled by a mix of greed and boredom, gleefully determined to teach Wall Street a lesson, and turbocharged by an endless flow of get-rich-quick hype and ideas delivered via social media, these investors have piled into trades around several companies, pushing their stock prices to stratospheric levels. >"GameStop shares have soared 1,700 percent as millions of small investors, egged on by social media, employ a classic Wall Street tactic to put the squeeze — on Wall Street."