© REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo
A sign is seen outside a GameStop store in Niles, Illinois, U.S. May 23, 2016.
Shares of videogame retailer GameStop Corp surged another 130% on Wednesday in pre-market trading as amateur investors continued to pile into the stock that has
skyrocketed nearly 700% over the past two weeks.
The share spikes in GameStop and others including BlackBerry Ltd, headphone maker Koss Corp and Nokia Oyj, have sent short-sellers scrambling to cover losing bets, while raising questions about potential regulatory clampdowns.
The top securities regulator in Massachusetts thinks trading in GameStop stock, which has jumped to $148 a share from $19.95 since Jan. 12, suggests there is something "systemically wrong" with the options trading surrounding the stock, Barron's reported on Tuesday.
GameStop, BlackBerry and Nokia were among the most heavily traded U.S. stocks before the bell, with
analysts putting the moves partly down to herds of amateur investors chasing tips from Reddit discussion threads or the private Facebook group "Robin Hood's Stock Market Watchlist".
"These are not normal times and while the (Reddit) r/wallstreetbets thing is fascinating to watch, I can't help but think that this is unlikely to end well for someone," Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid said.
Trading in GameStop stock was halted for volatility nine times on Monday and five times on Tuesday.
Short sellers in GameStop are down $5 billion on a mark-to-market, net-of-financing basis in 2021, which included $876 million of losses early Tuesday, according to analytics firm S3 Partners.
But some hedge funds have refused to budge from their bearish bets, with FIS' Analytics data showing investors had piled on $2.2 billion in bearish bets on GameStop - a whopping 20% of its market capitalization.
Meanwhile in Europe, shares of Evotec and Varta jumped on chatter that Melvin Capital Management was being forced to unwind its short positions to cover losses on its other bearish bets, including GameStop.
Comment: While it's kind of funny that a Reddit thread could be affecting the market in such a dramatic way, investing in video games would seem to be a rather safe bet in the age of lockdowns.
UPDATE: Here's Saagar Enjeti of The Hill explaining the larger story here:
Wall Street Elites DESTROYED, Beaten By Redditors At Their Own RIGGED Game:
UPDATE: It seems the Wall Street elites are not happy and are attempting to take down the Reddit r/WallStreetBets community in an attempt to fight back.
From CNet:
Reddit's WallStreetBets is back, taking on GameStop stock after intentional lockdown
Ian Sherr Jan. 28, 2021 12:40 a.m.
For the past week, Reddit's r/WallStreetBets community has been the center of an epic war between large Wall Street investors and small-scale social media betters. On Wednesday evening, the community reeled from seeing the subreddit locked and hidden, only to be made public again about an hour later. Meanwhile, chat app Discord has banned WallStreetBets outright.
Around the same time, spooked investors appeared to dump GameStop and AMC shares the community had been buying up to take on people betting against the company's futures.
Then, as suddenly as everything began, the subreddit came back, a new Discord community was formed, and others bought in to the stocks, sending AMC and GameStop prices back up.
OK.
If all this is confusing, don't feel bad. These fast and dramatic moves are happening amid one of the most dramatic weeks on Wall Street in years. At stake are millions of dollars that small-time investors working together on social media have made while taking on Wall Street investors who bet GameStop and AMC stock would plummet. Instead, as the two company's stocks have soared, the Wall Street investors have reportedly hemorrhaged billions of dollars.
As the drama unfolded from the Discord ban and the Reddit community going on lockdown, GameStop shares fell 32% in after-hours trading late Wednesday, to $218.32 per share, down from $347.51 at their close. During the day, they'd more than doubled. AMC shares also fell, dropping more than 40%, to $11.90 per share, after closing at $19.90. That stock had risen more than 301% during the day.
Both stocks have recovered somewhat, and the r/WallStreetBets community is back. If you'd taken an hour and a half to watch Pixar's new movie, Soul, you'd have missed it.
Though GameStop shares have been jumping in recent days, analysts and experts say they're doing so because of quirks in the market and not because of actual increased value for the struggling video game retailer. The same is true for the movie theater chain AMC, which had warned it was near bankruptcy late last year.
All this wasn't the only bad news for the WallStreetBets community. Its worst community members, who repeatedly broke Discord's rules, caused the group to be banned from the platform, the chat app company said in a statement. "Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings," Discord said. It added that the ban had nothing to do with any talk of finances or stock that happened among WallStreetBets users.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla who's helped to drive attention to the GameStop stock madness, tweeted his disappointment with Discord Wednesday.
UPDATE: The trading app Robinhood has
banned users from buying GameStop, AMC, Blackberry and Nokia stock, citing "market volatility." Users are rightfully infuriated (
more than half of Robinhood users have GameStop stock), with many accusing it of blatant
market manipulation. They received over 100,000 1-star reviews
in one hour on the app star, and a
class-action lawsuit has already been filed in New York. House Financial Services allegedly is getting
flooded with calls about the issue.
There is some chatter about
shady dealings between Citadel and Robinhood. And calls to Robinhood from the White House and Sequoia Capital:
Here's Tucker Carlson's take:
Wokal Distance on Twitter has a useful summary and analysis
here.
UPDATE: RobinHood is selling off people's GME shares without their permission.
The red pills are flying...
UPDATE: Wallstreetbets is back up on Discord after a brief ban. From Bloomberg:
WallStreetBets, the investment group famous for fueling rallies at GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., is back on Discord's service after getting banned for allowing hate speech.
The group is now up and running on a new server -- a digital room where people can gather to chat -- according to Discord, a communications platform that's popular among gamers.
Discord said Wednesday that it had barred the group for not doing enough to stem hateful speech. The company cited multiple violations of its community guidelines and said it had issued warnings to the administrator of its server. The move wasn't tied to the group's efforts to promote stocks such as GameStop.
"We will welcome the group back so long as they improve their moderation practices and follow our community guidelines," Discord said in a statement Thursday. "We have reached out to the moderators to provide them with support and advice, like we do for many of our large communities."
And p*rnhub & co.