For anyone interested in what's happening with GameStop $GME but not interested enough to actually read an article about it, here's a brief :

GameStop is a video game retailer, operating 5.5k+ stores around the world. It was also the single most-traded US stock yesterday... 1/

6 months ago $GME was trading at $4 per share. A week ago it was at $35. Last night it reached a high of $243. This rise has been driven almost exclusively by a subreddit r/WallStreetBets which has 2.8m subscribers & describes itself as "Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal." 2/

Some call $GME a 'meme stock', a case of small investors working together to drive up the price. It's a stunning example of collective action. Some traders are getting really rich, becoming millionaires overnight... but more interestingly, some hedge funds are losing billions. 3/

Big hedge funds can make a lot of money 'shorting' stocks – essentially betting that a stock price will fall. $GME is one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street ('physical video game shop during a pandemic' says it all). When shorted stocks rise, 'shorters' lose... 4/

So 'meme traders' are not only out to get rich, but also 'punish' short sellers for hoping that a company will fail (especially when it's a beloved video game retailer).

A real loser from this saga is the hedge fund Melvin Capital which has now lost billions shorting $GME... 5/

The meteoric rise of $GME meant that Melvin needed a massive bailout (to the tune of nearly $3bn) in order to avoid bankruptcy. The latest news is that Melvin (& Citron Capital, another hedge fund 'shorter') closed out shorts with losses undisclosed but likely in the billions. 6/

So basically some subredditors who call themselves "autists" nearly bankrupted a hedge fund worth $13bn through sheer collective will (& steely resolve, a mass sell-off would have threatened the whole endeavour). Which of course means that the finance world is very angry... 7/

Financial analysts are concerned that "the wrong people are manipulating the stock market". Recall that stock market manipulation on a much larger scale is what caused the financial crisis of 2008. The difference now is that this time Wall Street is the one getting screwed... 8/

This is a funny and absurd situation that proves the stock market has no real ties to reality. The rise of $GME makes as much sense as the US market in general reaching record highs amidst a devastating pandemic that has killed 430k and left millions unemployed… 9/9

This article by @JamesSurowiecki goes into much more detail about this very strange and very of-our-times story: https://marker.medium.com/gamestop-proves-were-in-a-meme-stock-bubble-b3f39163a77f

UPDATE: $GME opened at $351 today with overall market value of $22 billion. Both Citron & Melvin have fully covered their shorts, with at least 100% loss (undeclared but easily in the billions).

From latest White House press briefing: Biden team is "monitoring the situation"

In case anyone was wondering about the "free market", banks are preventing people from buying $GME because their big clients are losing so much money. The "invisible hand" is quite the interventionist.