In the US there are currently millions of educated and computer-literate individuals at home with considerable time on their hands. This collective, while perhaps not always wise but already a force in popular culture and politics, has now turned its attention to the financial sector.

In the last 10 days, some corners of the US financial markets have been extremely volatile, with reports of sophisticated market participants having suffered billion-dollar losses due to short squeezes on stocks such as GameStop initiated by large numbers of retail investors.

The professionals say that the risk was unforeseeable. Perhaps, but the world of pop culture, retail and politics have been transformed in recent years through websites, social media and more recently bots exacerbating trends. It was only a question of time before other sectors would draw attention.

Going forward, any industry would be wise to analyze whether any part of its business and affairs may be subject to a new risk: large groups of individuals acting simultaneously to get their “fair share” from a system (political, financial, social) that they view as skewed toward a minority.

The so-called “K-shaped recovery” is exacerbating this risk. In responding to Covid-19, governments have created one of the world’s greatest transfer of wealth. The problem is that the transfer has benefited primarily those with assets, not those with the greatest need.

The result is that the tsunami of cash created in the last year is looking for a home. This has created bubbles in certain sectors. This reflation or inflation, often unmeasured, is squeezing out large portions of the populations from middle class aspirations and jaundicing their belief in social mobility.

The response of regulators to these recent events has been awkward, as if they were surprised and unprepared. In the age of internet and free trading sites such as Robinhood, they still had not foreseen the risk.

In the 2011 financial movie thriller Margin Call, investors holding investments when the “music stops” suffer great financial losses. The music will eventually stop here, as it always does after times of financial excesses, but the damage may not be limited to investors and may very well include our current political and financial system if it is not reformed so as to be more inclusive and distributive.