GameStop Investors and Hedge Funds May Not Have Violated Laws—but Market Chaos Has Other Dangers

“There are arguments of market manipulation on both sides, levied against the hedge funds that lost billions of dollars, as well as the retail traders,” says Shaswat K. Das ’94, who served as senior counsel for the SEC in the early 2000s. “In neither case is it abundantly clear or immediately apparent that there was any securities fraud going on.”