GameStop: The Internet vs. Wall Street Part One

When the worlds of finance and tech collide, my man, Jeff Bakalar, is my go to source! (And I'm his go to source, which is why he had me on his CNET show earlier in the week to help explain the concept of short selling. You can check it out here.)

You've heard Jeff on the pod before, but in case you've forgotten, Jeff is the editor-at-large at CNET, and a total tech geek who's with us this weekend to help explain what in the world happened this week with GameStop and Reddit.

GameStop, the brick-and-mortar video game seller that many presumed was destined to the dustbin of retailers, started to attract enormous interest from individual investors on Reddit, a message board where community members create content, submit links, and comment on specific topics (subreddits).

The GameStop believers touted the upside as early as mid-2019, after Michael Burry (the guy featured in “The Big Short,” who bet against the housing market in the mid-2000’s) had amassed a big position in the company. The chatter continued into 2020, when GameStop was trading at about $4/share.

GameStop saw the culmination of the mother of all short squeezes on January 27th, when the stock soared by more than 130 percent to nearly $350/share, almost ten times the value from the prior week and putting its year-to-date return at 900 percent.

And remember folks, those who are investing in volatile stocks like GameStop should be prepared for a wild ride, and should only risk what they can afford to lose. 

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"Jill on Money" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.