"We Like the Stock" An Exploration into Investor Sentiment

Scraped hundreds of r/WallStreetBets posts using a custom Python pipeline, then coded them in NVivo across 8 themes — sentiment, biases, community dynamics, decision-making, and more — to understand how social media actually moves markets.

What started as a question about meme stocks turned into something more interesting: retail investors aren't just being irrational, they're operating in a completely different information environment to institutional investors. One that's unfiltered, emotionally charged, and designed to reinforce group identity. Platforms like Reddit don't just reflect sentiment — they amplify it through echo chambers, herd behaviour, and FOMO at a scale traditional finance theory wasn't built for.

The research showed that biases like confirmation bias, loss aversion, and overconfidence don't disappear when people invest — they get louder. And for Gen Z, where 62% of those in the market are holding social media-driven stocks, that's not a niche finding. It's a structural shift in how markets work.