GameStop Stock Rises Again After R/wallstreetbets Caused Surge Last Year

Over a year after stock shares in GameStop (GME) experienced a short huge jump in value, primarily motivated by users of the Reddit forum r/wallstreetbets, the company’s share values have been rising at impressive levels over the past days despite recently-reported mediocre earnings.

As of March 14, GameStop shares were in the toilet compared to last year’s highs of over $400 a share. Shares were only $73 on March 14, but as of Wednesday afternoon, they are up to around $143 per share.

GameStop current chairman and the co-founder of Chewy, Ryan Cohen, drove more online interest in the stocks by increasing his stake from buying 100,000 more shares in the company and tweeting about it.

Cohen has big plans for overhauling the retailer, saying in an interview last year he was leading an initiative to invest in NFT and blockchain technology. He also hired former Amazon executives to be the company’s new CEO and chief financial officer. The new CEO Mark Furlong reiterated these goals in a recent earnings call.

Furlong said that they plan to launch their NFT platform “by the end of the second quarter.” He also added “we have learned from the mistakes of the past decade, when GameStop failed to adapt to the future of gaming. It is important to stress that GameStop had become such a cyclical business and so capital-starved that we have had to rebuild it from within.”

After GameStop share prices ballooned in 2021, the trading app Robinhood, where many of the Reddit Users’ stock buys took place, froze transactions in stocks of GameStop and other companies due to “volatility,” angering some users and even lawmakers for the response.

Several other brokerages and investing services besides Robinhood paused transactions related to GameStop as well, however, as they were clearly blindsided by the power of collective financial action possible on the internet.