Why GameStop is surging and what it means for the stock market

what is gamestop

Since then, GameStop stock has soared more than 800 percent, almost cratering a well-known hedge fund called Melvin Capital. Left said Wednesday he has exited his short bet against GameStop. Of course, any hype online or on social media would raise a share’s price, but without the low entry price or the short squeeze, those extreme multiplier factors aren’t there. As the share price rose and rose, more people bought in – both to trigger the short squeeze, and because the price itself was now a way to make money. More 9 forex trading tips than four million people are in it, usually discussing stocks and shares and where they’re going to invest money.

What’s Elon Musk got to do with this?

what is gamestop

There are Love Island forums, football forums, history forums – you name it. The sort of thing you’d find between a doughnut shop and a makeup retailer in an American mall.

These options force so-called market makers — usually big financial firms — to buy more shares themselves in order to hedge their own exposure. For others, it is a form of wealth transfer – the only losers in this trade are large hedge funds, and the winners are lower-income internet users, some of whom are only putting up a few thousand How to buy bitcoin sv dollars. The “live by the sword, die by the sword” attitude to the hedge funds is, in many ways, revenge for the GFC. A lot of people are crowing that this is giving large hedge funds and traders a taste of their own medicine.

Australian investors warned to be careful as GameStop share frenzy spreads

They’re being fueled by an unruly crowd of rookie investors on chat forums like Reddit. A series of users on the Reddit forum r/Wallstreetbets noticed that GameStop was (a) undervalued by the market and (b) vulnerable to a short squeeze. Reddit forums trade tips on anything from bodybuilding to relationships and finances, but this one is about risky stock market investments. It’s been around for years – offering a highly variable level of return to its members. “They seem hell-bent on taking on Wall Street, they seem to hate hedge funds and threads are peppered with insults about ‘boomer’ money.

Why are BlackBerry, AMC Entertainment and Bed Bath & Beyond up, too?

This has nearly bankrupted a few hedge funds, to the delight of smaller investors, mostly organised and egged on by the online forum Reddit. You may have noticed that the stock price of GameStop, a struggling US computer games retail company, has soared from US$96.80 to $347.50 in the past three days – a rise of 359%. Or, more impressively, a rise of 10,692% compared to its price of $3.25 in April 2020. GameStop was one of the companies that loads of hedge funds (companies who do these bets) had bet on to lose a lot of value.

  1. The demand raised its share price massively, which nobody saw coming, and everyone who had banked on it dropping in value had to buy their shares back.
  2. On Jan. 11, GameStop said it would add three new directors to its board.
  3. The meme itself started circa 2017 with this absurdist, funny cartoon and it has now become the default lingo of r/Wallstreetbets.
  4. Analyst Neil Wilson says some of the traders had a “peculiar vigilante morality”.

With fewer people out shopping due to the pandemic and most games being sold online, things weren’t looking great for the company. A lot of sentiment on r/Wallstreetbets celebrates the fact that the rush on GameStop is no different from the dotcom bubble, the property bubble, or strategic drops in the traditional financial media. The Tesla boss loves a tweet – and when he does, financial worlds tend to take notice. This one-word entry was enough to further send GameStop’s price soaring.

R/Wallstreetbets is marked out by a devil-may-care approach to shares – its users are keen to gamble big and disdainful of traditional traders. It has evolved its own language and in-jokes, with users openly talking about making dumb decisions and the subsequent coin-toss of losses and gains. Earlier this week, AMC’s stock spiked after the company atfx trading platform announced it would avoid bankruptcy with new financing. In normal times, the news wouldn’t have necessarily boosted the shares — the financing means AMC is going deeper into debt and will water down its existing shareholders. Stonk is essentially just a funny way to say “stock” – and once you understand that, it explains everything else that has happened. The meme itself started circa 2017 with this absurdist, funny cartoon and it has now become the default lingo of r/Wallstreetbets.