(Reuters) – Shares of GameStop, a Reddit darling, rose on Thursday, rising more than 20% at one point in another unexplained move that left market watchers looking for a possible catalyst.
GameStop’s shares closed up 6.4% at $ 131.93, after previously hitting $ 147.87, the biggest increase since an increase in heavily sold shares at the end of last month.
An analyst and some Twitter users pointed to a cryptic tweet from Ryan Cohen, one of GameStop’s major shareholders and founder of e-commerce company Chewy.com, as a plausible reason for the change, although Reuters could not determine the cause in any way. independent.
The late afternoon rally on GameStop started around the time Cohen tweeted what appeared to be a screenshot with the advertising mascot of the puppet dog from Pets.com, a famous dot-com victim two decades ago.
Cohen and GameStop did not comment on the tweet.
The tweet was “as good an explanation as any” for the sudden increase in GameStop shares, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in an emailed comment to Reuters.
“The central ‘story’ is that he will change the company and reverse his luck, so anything he does to reinforce that change … will take the stock up,” he said.
“I don’t know if that was the real catalyst today, but in such an ugly market, it makes sense.”
Wall Street ended in a sharp drop on Thursday, leaving the Nasdaq down about 10% from February’s record.
A GameStop rally last month was also linked to a tweet from Cohen. An increase in the company’s stock on February 24 started around the time Cohen tweeted a picture of McDonald’s ice cream with a frog emoji.
The tweet left some GameStop rumors wondering online if it was a veiled message that Cohen would fix GameStop’s business, as the fast-food chain modernized its ice cream machines.
GameStop has become one of the most well-known so-called meme stocks, which are closely followed on sites like Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum.
The shares rose more than 1,600% in January, after a wave of purchases forced investors to bet against the company’s shares to undo their positions, before reducing most of those gains in the following month.
Activist firm RC Ventures de Cohen reached an agreement with GameStop in January, giving Cohen seats on the company’s board.
Sinéad Carew reporting; Additional reporting by Jessica DiNapoli; Franklin Paul, Ira Iosebashvili and Subhranshu Sahu edition