Many of today's adults spent their youths in GameStop stores. They bought and sold consoles and games there. They lined up for launches, too. Now some of those gamers have become rich buying the company's stock and encouraging their friends on Reddit to buy it too. GameStop's shares rocketed higher than ever expected in the past couple weeks, and all because activity between social media investors began pushing it up. Wall Street had bet heavily that the company would fail, but as the price kept going up, investors were forced to reset their wagers. That led the stock to rocket up, and then swing wildly.
Jaime Rogozinski, the apparent founder of the Reddit community at the heart of all this, told The Wall Street Journal it's like "a train wreck happening in real time." Keith Gill, the trader in the Reddit community who helped kick off the battle, told the paper he "didn't expect this." Last week, on Thursday alone, GameStop's stock hit all-time highs of $492.02 per share, only to drop by more than half a minute later. It closed trading at $325 the next day. GameStop itself hasn't fundamentally changed in the past month. It's still a struggling retailer facing an uncertain future against the rising tide of online shopping. But its stock has shot up as much as 1,800% -- that's not a typo -- since the beginning of the year. This dynamic's led Wall Street investors who bet against the company's future to lose billions of dollars, and the excitement is driving the hype even further.
Credits:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gamestop-reddit-and-the-battle-of-wall-street/
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