Bloomberg and the GameStop saga: The fear of stock market democracy

Abstract

The GameStop saga aroused the emotion and indignation of a large part of the financial community. This paper accounts for this reaction by exposing the conflict of expertise at the heart of the saga: the Bloomberg Terminal of market professionals and the forum of retail investors supported antagonistic perceptions of events. It then generalizes these findings by characterizing the framing operated by the Terminal mobilized by traders, and by underlining its essential divergences from the framing of the internet forum. Through their selection, weighting and ranking operations, these devices offer different points of view on the financial markets. This pluralization of the informational bases guiding investors’ decisions allows this paper to address the issue of the democratization of finance, its conditions of feasibility and desirability.