By GARRET ROBINSON
Staff Writer
In recent days GameStop has made a lot of noise recently with some people becoming millionaires seemingly overnight, and others losing millions or even billions of dollars. It seemed to have started with some billionaire hedge funds that were betting on the fact that GameStop was going to fail, shorting the company’s stock $GME as a common practice. But through a cohesive buying effort of a community on Reddit called r/wallstreetbets they were able to increase the price of the stock so much that the hedge funds were forced to buy back in to cover their losses for their failed predictions. That, in turn, caused the price to surge, even more, attracting even more investors. The cycle continued until the stock price reached around $400, totaling a 1700% gain from earlier this year. Similarly, shorted stocks also saw huge gains in the past week, from similar efforts of the members of r/wallstreetbets. Stocks like AMC Theatres ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB), Nokia ($NOK), and a handful of other stocks were part of the rally. With how many other stocks that could be as volatile as GameStop, Reddit made the r/wallstreetbets subreddit go private and discord also banned their discord server so the people couldn’t communicate with each other on what was happening. In addition, on the morning of Thursday, January 28 popular trading app Robinhood pulled many of these stocks from their trading platform. Several other stock exchanges followed in Robinhood’s lead, including WeBull, TDAmeritrade, and Charles Schwab which caused a massive outcry from all over social media for stopping trade and protecting the wealthy elite. This prompted a class-action lawsuit that is being filed against Robinhood for restricting trade for no reason. But for now GameStop is now considered a Fortune 500 company with the likes of Walmart, Amazon, Apple and Tesla.
