Here we go again.
The WallStreetBets Reddit crowd is again sending shares of GameStop (NYSE:GME) and other so called "meme stocks" sharply higher.
A flurry of buying caused GameStop shares to almost quadruple from Tuesday’s close this week. GameStop’s share price jumped 104% in Wednesday’s regular trading session, spurred by a final-hour surge that brought its biggest advance since January 29.
Shares of movie theatre chain AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC) rallied 18% to push its three-day gain toward 59%. Naked Brand Group (NASDAQ:NAKD) gained 31% and Koss Corp. (NASDAQ:KOSS) jumped 55%.
The flurry of activity inflated trading volumes in the ‘meme stocks’ and caused an outage on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, the hub of the January rally and volatility in these same stocks.
The latest tumult continued in after market trading, where GameStop rallied another 120% before paring its advance. At $135 U.S. per share, the stock is up more than 200% from its close on Tuesday of this week.
The sudden revival in these stocks recalls the frenzy last month that captured the attention of Wall Street, regulators and Congress as members of Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum took on professional short sellers.
The latest GameStop frenzy came after it was announced that Chief Financial Officer Jim Bell was pushed out of the video game retailer in a disagreement over strategy to make way for an executive more in line with the vision of activist investor Ryan Cohen, the co-founder of online pet-food retailer Chewy.com.
The WallStreetBets forum, which boasts 9.2 million members, saw so much demand Wednesday evening that the site would not load. The website effectively crashed.
