College student who made thousands off GameStop stock praised for generous act

A 20-year-old college student who made nearly $30,000 off his GameStop stock has been lauded for using some of his newfound money to help sick children, the New York Post reports.

Hunter Kahn, who studies mechanical engineering at Cornell University, struck big when GameStop stock jumped to a record-high toward the end of January. Kahn, who said he bought the stock in response to a tweet from Citron Research, purportedly managed to liquidate $30,000 from $200 call options (in layman’s terms, call options are agreements that allow the option buyer to buy a stock at a set price at a specific time).

The student then decided to head to a local GameStop in Minnesota, where he bought six Nintendo Switches. He later donated them to the Children’s Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis.

“As a beneficiary of the recent events on Wall Street I think it is important that myself and others pay forward our good fortune,” he explained in an Instagram post that has gotten over 29,000 likes. “These events have highlighted a lot of corruption and with this transfer of power it is important that we don’t become men in suits ourselves.”

The Cornell student has since been praised for his generous act.

“Good job Hunter!!” one person commented.

“This is so nice,” another added. “Ur awesome dude.”

In an interview with the Post, Kahn said he joined the subreddit thread r/wallstreetbets during his senior year of high school. Members of the thread were largely responsible for the surge in GameStop’s stock price as they coordinated together to buy options, to the dismay of many short-sellers.

While Kahn’s bet on the video game company has paid off in a big way, the student told the Post that he’s just glad that he could use the money to help others.

“I wanted my donations to be GameStop purchases since that is how this all started, and there is no better group of people to receive a bunch of Switches than a bunch of kids going through a hard time,” he said.

Kahn apparently isn’t the only person to turn his latest Wall Street gains into a force. At least one other Redditor, who similarly made major money off his GameStop stock, also bought Nintendo Switches for patients at Medical City Children’s Hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

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