Reddit, GameStop And Wall Street: Here’s Everything You Need To Know

1 min read

5 years ago Curated by John Wysocki

Photo by Patrick Weissenberger on Unsplash. Article b

Free trading apps like Robinhood have seen an influx of new users — and the video game retailer’s stock surge is tied into that.

In the most basic terms, the battle over GameStop stock is a David-and-Goliath story, pitting old against new, “smart money” against “dumb money,” the Wall Street establishment against everyone else. Who wouldn’t want to root for the underdog?

Of course, it’s all a bit more complicated than that.

So what is happening with GameStop?

The video game retailer’s stock price has seen a nearly 2,000% increase since the start of January. A year ago, it was trading under $4. On Thursday, it reached a high of $470 ― which is weird, because the increase has not been driven by astonishingly good performance on the company’s part. Rather, a bunch of Reddit users worked together to catapult the price, at the extraordinary expense of hedge fund managers. […]