A mysterious Reddit user on the WallStreetBets page — which made headlines for driving the so-called meme stock rally in GameStop and other stocks earlier this year — appears to have predicted Amazon’s deal with buy-now-pay-later company Affirm that sent the latter’s stock soaring.
“$AMZN is up to something with $AFRM,” Reddit user RossPG wrote on Aug. 15, referring to the stock tickers for Amazon and Affirm.
“On August 12th, something very strange happened. The url amazon.com/affirm no longer led to an error message,” the user added. “In fact, it redirects to a link that says ‘Pay over time with Affirm’ in the tab title, and, if you’re on the app it says ‘Search in Pay over time with Affirm’ in the search bar.”
The user, who declined to identify themselves or speak in an interview when reached for comment by The Post, included an image of a search bar with that text that purported to show an example from an iPad.
When The Post went to that page from an iPhone, the text in the search bar did not mention Affirm and instead read, “Search in Pay over time.”
The user added that the URL was set up on Aug. 12, citing a review of the website page source.
Also, the user claimed they identified a specific node ID associated with the URL. A node ID is a unique set of numbers in a URL that directs users to a new section of content added to a website.
“It seems very unlikely they set up a specific node ID url if something wasn’t brewing,” the Reddit sleuth said.
The user added that other Amazon customers had recently noticed the addition of the word “option” on the e-commerce site’s checkout page under “monthly payments,” suggesting that there may soon be more than one option.
And finally, the user noted that Google search results for “Amazon Affirm” had changed a couple months ago, hiding a robo-generated search result that had previously been there that could have suggested an Amazon partnership with Affirm.
The user surmised that all this meant “something is going on” between Amazon and Affirm.
And sure enough, 12 days after the post, on Aug. 27, Amazon and Affirm announced a partnership, sending Affirm stock soaring more than 46 percent on Monday.
The Reddit user who appeared to be ahead of the curve claimed he owned 21 call option contracts at a strike price of $70 per share expiring in November and three call option contracts expiring in September at a strike price of $75 per share.
Shares of Affirm closed Monday well above those prices at nearly $100 per share.
To be sure, there’s reason to be skeptical of the user, who created his Reddit account in 2017 and first appeared in the WallStreetBets channel on Aug. 14, just one day before posting about the Amazon-Affirm research.
On Twitter and Reddit, some hailed the purportedly amateur investigator for their work, while others poked that they could be an Amazon employee.
This post first appeared on Nypost.com
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