From Wall Street breakfast.
It was the catalyst the WSB/Reddit crowd had been waiting for... GameStop (NYSE:
GME) announced Wednesday that its chief financial officer Jim Bell would
resign on March 26. Several sources indicating that the board pushed him out to execute its turnaround more quickly, but an
outsized reaction ensued amid a sudden burst of activity. Shares surged more than 104% following two afternoon halts, and even rose another 83% in AH trading to $168.13, before paring some gains to $130.58 in today's premarket session.
When all was said and done, more than 82M GameStop shares traded hands on Wednesday, the highest level since January 27. Derivatives trading also seemed to exacerbate the move in GameStop, according to Susquehanna's Christopher Jacobson, with some 262,000 call options contracts trading hands. Looking back, another management change prompted all the activity back in January. The appointment of Ryan Cohen (co-founder of Chewy) to the GameStop board helped drive shares heavily upward and eventually resulted in the epic short squeeze that saw retail traders inflict severe losses on hedge funds. The stock still has significant short interest at nearly 42%.
Note: The new advance came after Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy
faced offwith Robinhood's (
RBNHD) Vlad Tenev over the GameStop saga. Reddit also went down after GameStop shot up, sparking a range of theories. While subreddit r/WallStreetBets, which has championed the stock, seemed to be getting a lot of heavy traffic right before the crash, it's unclear if the two were related. Last week, GameStop bull Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty, shared a screenshot
showinghe had doubled his long position to 100K shares.
On the move: Other meme stocks also took off on the developments, with AMC Entertainment (NYSE:
AMC) soaring 18% (it's up another 15% premarket) and Koss (NASDAQ:
KOSS) skyrocketing 55% (ahead by an additional 50% in premarket trade). Some of the usual suspects also got a lift yesterday, including American Airlines (NASDAQ:
AAL) +5.6%, BlackBerry (NYSE:
BB) +5%, Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:
BBBY) +9%, Express (NYSE:
EXPR) +41%, Naked Brand (NASDAQ:
NAKD) +31%, Nokia (NYSE:
NOK) +4.7%, Sundial Growers (NASDAQ:
SNDL) +15%, Tootsie Roll (NYSE:
TR) +2%, Trivago (NASDAQ:
TRVG) +15%.