12/31/2022 0 Comments The big short explained reddit![]() Hundreds of thousands also searched in panic for investment platform “Trading 212” after it succumbed to technical gremlins under the strain. Soaring numbers of people asked “when does the stock market open,” with spikes early in the morning as uninitiated observers impatiently awaited the latest updates. GameStop’s business model and the effects of Covid made it was a target for short sellers (Photo: Getty Images) ‘When does the stock market open?’ And hundreds of thousands of people googled Nokia (“Nok stock” – catchy) and BlackBerry as they too were targeted by vigilante online traders hell-bent on disrupting Wall Street. Interest in AMC Entertainment, the US cinema chain which was also subject to the Reddit “short squeeze”, approached similar levels, attracting millions of UK queries. And the figures were even more astronomical in the US, where searches for “GameStop stock” passed 10 million on Wednesday, with interest doubling the following day. ![]() It overtook interest in both “lockdown” and “schools,” which attract millions of queries every day as they lead the coronavirus news agenda. The sheer volume of search traffic was extraordinary. Whatever was going on, I was far from alone in googling “what is a short” or “GameStop share price explained” – before diving back into my WhatsApp group chat about it all, suddenly fluent in Wall Street nuances. They were apparently trapped in a painful-sounding “short squeeze,” forced to buy shares to cover their position and thus inflate the price even more. However, in a huge co-ordinated effort, members of the “WallStreetBets” board on the social media platform Reddit bought shares in GameStop en-masse, wildly increasing its share price, causing havoc and potentially huge losses for funds trying to “short” the stocks. While the Redditors of r/WallStreetBets are buying options, GameStop shorts are getting squeezed, and some big Wall Street firms are. Suddenly everybody has become an expert on the nuances of Wall Street (Photo: AP) The GameStop chaos is what happens when a stock becomes a meme. GameStop, whose anachronistic high-street business model meant it was already at risk before Covid decimated retail, was a prime candidate. Need a quick reminder? It centres around this thing called “short selling,” or “shorting,” which involves hedge funds betting on the stocks of struggling companies losing their value, as a way to make money.
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