Among the most vivid recent examples of boredom’s economic influence occurred late last month when amateur traders, many of them followers of the Reddit forum Wall Street Bets, piled into shares of GameStop, a down-for-the-count retailer for gamers. These investors pushed its stock to astronomical highs before it crashed back to earth.
Part of their motivation was the idea that they could stick it to hedge funds, which had bet that GameStop would fall. Part of it was boredom.
“Im bored i have 8k in free money what can i invest in that will make at least a little profit,” a Reddit user who goes by biged42069 wrote on Wall Street Bets at the height of the stock market frenzy. The response was unanimous: GameStop.
On Thursday, the House…