I’ve had a small brokerage account for a few years now, something I’d throw a few bucks into every now and again and forget about. But when I started hearing rumblings about GameStop, the traditionally brick-and-mortar video game retailer, my ears started to perk up. This led to a string of late nights and stress-filled days doing research, looking into FINRA reports, obsessively following the stock ticker, and looking up what each and every abbreviation and statistic really meant.

For the uninitiated, GameStop recently experienced a fervor of trading, brought on by the prospect of a “short squeeze”, along with some promising outlooks brought on by new blood on the board. Simply put, a short squeeze occurs when traders must buy shares on the open market but there aren’t enough shares available to purchase. When this happens the price of each share skyrockets and people who own the stock can sell for a massive profit. See for example Volkswagen in 2008, where it briefly became the most valuable company in the world.

Much of the enthusiasm towards the stock came from an online forum known as WallStreetBets, where users frequently post their gains, losses, research, and humorous content for each other to comment on or critique—frequently with language reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s where I first came upon this news well before most media picked up on the story.

It should go without saying, but never make an investment without doing your own due diligence first. I did my own before pouring in a small amount of cash into the stock in late January, when the price was just under fifty dollars.

It’s difficult to describe the minute-to-minute emotions during the weeks I held the stock—sort of a prolonged, bored anxiety. I’d look through every repetitive article which catalogued the insanity that was occurring, and the sheer amount of panic being felt by a few rich hedge funds. Sources estimated their losses in the billions and the stock soared. A fifteen-percent gain was a slow day. More and more people had piled on to the stock and it seemed that the ride would never end. My investment doubled, then quadrupled, then increased tenfold. At this point I was planning my exit strategy. I had already sold off a few shares prior, enough to recoup my initial investment costs but retaining the majority of the shares I had bought.

Then the market conditions changed. A number of retail brokers (what most common investors use, me included) restricted the shares a person was allowed to buy, effectively halting the continued spike. It’s entirely possible that other factors were at play as well, though hedge funds are able to conceal their positions making it difficult to tell if they were doing anything on their end as well to push the stock price back down.