A spat between the Wall Street and Reddit users cost $6 billion to short-sellers year-to-date.
GameStop stocks were moving around $20 for some time. Stock’s fate changed when Ryan Cohen, an activist investor gained a board seat on 11 January with two of his allies and start a transformation. On 13 January, stock prices start to increase and ultimately stabilize around $40. Melvin Capital and Andrew Left’s Citron Research started short-selling. At some point equal to %139 of shares are shorted. Short interests skyrocketed. There are some discussions between the GameStop fans and short-sellers, but the final straw comes after Citron Research’s tweet:
An army of Reddit user retail traders organized and use WallStreetBets forum to pump shares. As of 25 January, 4 workdays after the initial tweet, GameStop surged nearly %334 then stabilize over $60, and close nearly %106 above from the 19 January.
Here is the Citron’s video for GameStop:
After the big short squeeze and $6 billion loss of short-sellers, there is still a high level of bearishness for the stock. Original short-seller probably was taken out but there are new short-seller who wants to profit from the aggressive surge. At the same time, in the options market, put option purchases are more than call option purchases by more than 200k, similar to Friday. Another surge may cause more mayhem to short-sellers.
Meanwhile, buying frenzy may have already spread to other stocks, Express Inc. jumped %132 after Reddit speculations.
