A week ago, GameStop (NYSE:GME) was trading at around $37/share. Today, GameStop is trading at around $277 $334 a share – jumping by over 80% 120% today alone. If you thought the ICO rave was crazy, think again. More mundane traditionally regulated markets may be the new crazy as the pundits wonder why a stock that traded at about $4 a share a year ago is now the topic of all the financial news shows who are pointing a finger at investors collaborating on Reddit.
So GME seems to have literally broken retail investors access to the market right now. Trading212 down. ETrade down. Robinhood in the US down. Ameritrade down. If you aren’t following this story you need to start, it is crazy.
— Jason Mountford (@jmountfordfp) January 27, 2021
Robinhood and TD both “down” pic.twitter.com/f0wufWk2qh
— rhino (@jrhino_) January 27, 2021
While trading platforms all seem to be up and running now, less than an hour ago Twitter was full of chatter that Robinhood, along with other established brokerages, was struggling to keep trading platforms alive. TDAmeritrade, Vanguard, Schwab, and more are reporting periodic outages, according to CNBC. “Due to unprecedented trading volume,” allegedly.
Reddit and several subreddits may be the cause. Smallstreetbets and Wallstreetbets are full of interesting comments like:
We go until the hedge funds are destroyed
Stop setting sell limits at 1000, stop telling people we go until 1000, and STOP thinking about 1000. 1000 is for ugly people and the last time I checked, our mommy’s have always told us that we are the handsomest little men she’s ever seen.
1000 is only a 4-5x away from happening and we just tripled the stock price from EoD Monday in 24 hours. All you 🌈🐻, 🧻👐’ed wannabe 💎🦍’s are going to cause a self-induced crash BACK DOWN and sell off in the hedge funds’ favor.
Here’s why:
The hedge fund’s know they’re beat. They know they have to incur serious losses. But they also know that 9/10 of you losers plan to sell at 1k and that all of you except the true believes of Our Lord DFV will panic sell to escape missing the squeeze.
Sooooo, the hedge funds start their buying BUT STOP near $1k. Then you morons all go “hurr durr this measly 2x must be the squeeze hurr durr I don’t know math let me exit with my $3 profit” and it will cause the price to go down while hedge funds scoop up the discounted shares all the way down and live to laugh at us all
Or how about:
“FOR ALL THE BIG FUCKING HEDGE FUNDS MONITORING US, THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM US TO YOU, WE FUCKING OWN YOU NOW, FUCK. YOU. GO BUY THE FUCKING NEWS. LIKE AND COMMENT SO THEY SEE THIS POST. FUCK YOU MELVIN CAPITAL. FUCK YOU CITRON RESARCH. YOU HAVENT CLOSED SHIT. THIS IS GONNA GO DOWN IN HISTORY.”
It appears that the crowd may be targeting highly shorted positions to create a short squeeze in shares like GameStop. Targeted trading on a highly shorted position can drive prices higher quite rapidly. Right?
It was recently reported that Citron Research went short on GameStop because it was in “terminal decline.” That may have been a bad decision as the rapid price increase compelled Citron to close out its position. It is not clear how much of a loss it took before it got out. I wonder if other short-sellers are revisiting their investment decisions today as the Reddit game is having an impact. Perhaps the Redditors will be looking for other targets.