Honest question as I’ve been pondering this (and not my orb 😞) recently and I’m not sure if my reasoning makes sense.
You mentioned day-traders making option plays. I can see how that could be used as a signal by the rest of the stock market. Does that have a bigger impact than, for a lack of a better term, mega investors? I’m not a huge investor. My holdings are primarily in ETFs. But I have some money in my portfolio to play around with.
To me it seems like my stocks are affected more by what berkshire hathaway does for example than actual consumer/investor sentiment. To the point where I’m wondering if unless we band together, like GME, we are primarily along for the ride. All while massive firms, insurance companies, tech companies and other large holdings managed by small number of individuals impact stock price a lot more and with that don’t have an insensitive to sell holdings they bet big on.