(New York)

The brick and mortar electronics store GameStop experienced an internet fueled rally this January with the stock prices closing at $147 on Tuesday. The surge was primarily driven by the “wallstreetbets” subreddit, an internet message board. Trading on Gamestop was paused 9 times on monday in order to halt the perceived hysteria. Short sellers are nowhere near dropping off despite having a mark to market loss of more than $5 billion. In fact, shorted shares have increased to over 900,000 in the last week which brings their value of the position to $69million. On the message boards one redditor posted screenshots of their own return at over$1000.

FINSUM: Frenzied bubbles are not an exception in markets and are recorded back to the17th century, however the driving force being a small message board on the internet does make this unique. The stock did experience strong growth in the 4th quarter of 2020 in part as response to the release of new video gaming consoles, but this rapid rise has more to do with memes than it does with fundamentals.