14 Mar GameStop investors start a revolution
Barbara McClintock, MA, Certified Translator
It’s a “very interesting” story according to U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Amateur investors and gamers have taken on hated Wall Street hedge funds which considered that GameStop, an American video game retailer, was failing. The same hedge funds started to short sell GameStop shares. Do you remember the movie The Big Short (Plan B in French)? In other words, high rollers bet that the price of GameStop shares would fall. People on Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum got wind of it and started buying GameStop stock in droves, driving the share price through the roof. Small investors trading with the commission-free Robinhood app created a “short squeeze.”[1] A short squeeze[2] occurs when a stock jumps so the short sellers have to buy more of it in order to prevent having even greater losses. Wall Street investors have lost billions[3] and are calling for an investigation into market influence. It was so bad that Robinhood stopped all trading at one point. You would think that a trading platform like Robinhood would help the poor and less fortunate, but here it is helping the rich. In any case, Reddit investors have saved the struggling video games retailer for the moment. Let’s hear it for the underdogs!
Barbara McClintock, MA, Certified Translator, has over 20 years of experience in translation in both the private and public sectors, acquired mainly in financial and accounting translation and related fields.
Future outlook for REDDIT and Wall Street Bets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OghIdKOsRuY
[1] Rob Davies and Mark Sweney,The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/29/robinhood-to-restore-gamestop-trading-as-it-wins-1bn-backing, accessed January 30, 2021
[2] Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortsqueeze.asp
[3] Ibid https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/29/robinhood-to-restore-gamestop-trading-as-it-wins-1bn-backing
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