Those betting on GameStop stock’s price decline, or short-sellers, lost around $1.9 billion in just two days as the Reddit crowd’s favorite “meme stock” renewed its enormous rally.
Shares of the video game retailer skyrocketed over 100 percent on Wednesday, with the enormous volatility even prompting trading halts. The sudden rally brought $664 million in mark-to-market losses for investors betting against GameStop, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners.
The frenzied buying continued on Thursday, with GameStop stock surging as high as 84 percent in intraday trading and closing with 19 percent gains. Thursday’s intraday moves booked another $1.19 billion in losses for short-sellers, S3 Partners’ calculations show.
As of Friday morning, GameStop’s shares were slightly up again in pre-market trading. Given the latest gains in GameStop stock, short-sellers’ year-to-date mark-to-market losses now amount to $10.75 billion, according to the analytics firm. However, even billions in losses don’t stop investors from further betting on the company’s decline, with the number of GameStop shares shorted over the past week rising by 15 percent to 1.97 million.
The latest surge is nothing like the market mayhem we saw in January when shares of the retailer jumped around 1,800 percent at some points. The trading frenzy was fueled by retail investors based on Reddit, including the now-notorious WallStreetBets group, who declared a full-fledged war on big Wall Street sharks. Those small investors gobbled up GameStop shares, pushing its price to historic highs and forcing a short squeeze on big hedge funds that had to cover the negative bets or face massive losses.
The Reddit crowd also bought other stocks, also called “stonks” or “meme stock,” including theater operator AMC, telecom company Nokia and smartphone maker turned security services vendor BlackBerry.
The so-called “meme-trading” drew the attention of politicians and regulators. Last week, lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee questioned top executives of companies that played a role in the GameStop saga, including the head of Robinhood, the app which was at the epicenter of the trading frenzy and restricted trading in volatile shares.
Those betting on GameStop stock’s price decline, or short-sellers, lost around $1.9 billion in just two days as the Reddit crowd’s favorite “meme stock” renewed its enormous rally. Read Full Article at RT.com Read More
Germany’s complicity with Israel in the genocide against the Palestinians is not limited to expressions of solidarity with the right-wing Netanyahu government. The German government is playing a central role in arming and equipping the Israeli war machine, which has destroyed large parts of the Gaza Strip in the past four weeks and killed more […]
The pronounced Western media coverage of the Banjska incident suggests that the U.S. and Britain have calibrated the incident to their advantage. The Banjska terror attack is back in the news, with Western media framing it as Serbian aggression against Kosovo. The incident was more likely a provocation by NATO intelligence services. That means Serbia […]
“In so many of the little places of everyday life in which life is lived out, somehow democracy doesn’t exist. And one of the creeping hands of totalitarianism running through the democracy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation… Because why does the FBI do all this? To scare the hell out of people… They work […]
