How Rage, Boredom and WallStreetBets Created a New Generation of Young American Traders

By the end of 2011, Jaime Rogozinski, 29, had fallen into a rut. He spent his days in front of a computer screen in a windowless office at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, where he had an unexciting job helping to maintain the endless databases of economic statistics that the executives used. After work, he took the train home to his bland condo in the suburbs that he hadn’t bothered to decorate. When he came in at night, he generally made a beeline for his bedroom, where he spent more hours in front of a different computer screen, scrolling through the dribs and drabs of other people’s lives on social media.

Rogozinski had not always been such a sad sack. Growing up in Mexico City, he’d been the kind of kid who did well in math, got along with the theater nerds and managed to win the title of class clown. He had a muscular jawline and a thick head of black hair that made it easy for him to get girlfriends. But the alcohol that was a social lubricant in college became an addiction in the years afterward. By 2011, six years after graduating, he generally drank alone, avoiding family and friends so no one would comment on the many red flags pointing to his dependence.