GameStop Corp. shares they experienced another volatile session and negotiations stopped on Tuesday, continuing the battle between short sellers and brokers meeting on an Internet message board.
GameStop GME,
the stock stopped at 12:50 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday for about six minutes, the second trading session interruption for the day’s session, with the stock price falling to a $ 114.24 intraday high. The stock fell immediately after the stoppage, but suffered another increase less than an hour later, which raised prices to $ 124.58.
Read also: How the options trading frenzy is driving up stocks and raising market fears
Stock trading stopped nine times on Monday, with stocks more than doubling to a high of $ 159.18 before ending a violently volatile session with an 18.1% rise at $ 76.79 . As of Monday’s close, GameStop’s shares have increased 334% since the end of trading on January 8, pushing the company’s market capitalization to $ 5.4 billion, the highest since the end of the 2007- 09.
GameStop has been one of the darlings of Reddit’s message board, WallStreetBets, where hundreds of posters have been pushing for stock purchases after investors betting against the network have increased their short stake to more than 100%. On Tuesday morning, the big investor Chamath Palihapitiya publicly joined the party by buying call options that were paying off after the second sudden spike in the day.
To find out more: the Reddit moderator criticizes the “fat cats” of Wall Street while GameStop’s wild ride continues
Short sellers target GameStop’s actions as the pandemic increases online sales problems. Famous short seller, Andrew Left of Citron Research, released a video on Thursday night outlining points about why GameStop should be a $ 20 action, then stepped back and claimed that he and his family were threatened. Shares began to rise in the middle of the month, rising 57% on January 13, with five of the next seven trading days posting daily gains of 10% or more, despite a disappointing preliminary retailer earnings report.
GameStop did not release any news that coincided with the peak and did not respond to a request from MarketWatch for comment. The Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment on Monday about any possible investigation into the deal.
Don’t lose: how you can lose everything by selling short shares, whether betting against GameStop or Tesla
Earlier this month, GameStop admitted that sales for the Christmas quarter fell more than 25% and were below expectations. In the past two quarters, losses to the company increased significantly, after the quarter ended in April 2020, when GameStop reported an adjusted loss of $ 1.61 per share against the 7 cents per share in earnings it had reported in the quarter of the previous year.