Cooped up at home, glued to Reddit and Stocktwits chat forums, empowered by Robinhood accounts, funded by massive government money-printing and emboldened by a bull market that has turned reckless risk-taking into a virtue, America\u2019s new band of day traders is frantically bidding up a wide range of fringe, oddball stocks in what has become one of the great financial manias in recent history.<\/p>\n
To capture how fast and furious the action is and how extreme the price swings \u2014 and the trash-talking \u2014 are, Bloomberg News tracked Wednesday\u2019s events in real time.<\/p>\n
The fireworks actually started the night before, when Elon Musk blasted out a tweet that became a rallying cry for redditors to keep piling into shares of GameStop, which had already soared 276% in the past five days, and inflict more pain on the Wall Street pros.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the day\u2019s highlights.<\/p>\n
Wednesday, 5:45 a.m. EST:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Propelled by Musk\u2019s \u201cGamestonk!!\u201d tweet, GameStop hits $365.42 in early morning trading. A week ago, it sold for less than $40.<\/p>\n The tweet also spurs excited speculation on Reddit about whether Musk had joined in. One redditor, whose username is Apparently, asks, \u201cPapa Elon, are you here? Show us a sign\u201d<\/p>\n 7:33 a.m., stocktwits.com:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not just GameStop. Retail traders band together, scouring the internet for other bygone \u201990s-era companies. On Stocktwits, a user named CEO_Andrew_Ryan casually muses:<\/p>\n 9:15 a.m., r\/wallstreetbets:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n In their frenzy, the cocky hordes on Reddit\u2019s r\/wallstreetbets forum manage to turn the tables on short sellers and inflict heavy losses on the likes of Andrew Left and Melvin Capital. According to one early morning post, they\u2019re not done yet.<\/p>\n And did we mention cocky?<\/p>\n 9:30 a.m., Summit, NJ:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Mike Zigmont, head of trading and research at Harvest Volatility Management, can only shake his head as the market opens.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if this is the future, I don\u2019t know if this is just something quirky, but thank god I\u2019m not involved. It\u2019s not investing, it\u2019s a financial form of a game of uncle. The fundamentals don\u2019t matter, numbers don\u2019t matter. Boy oh boy, it\u2019s wild.\u201d<\/p>\n 9:40 a.m., minutes after the market open:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n AMC Networks, ticker AMCX (and not to be confused with Reddit darling AMC Entertainment, ticker AMC), soars 19%, extending a rally to 67% over past five days. And AMC Entertainment?<\/p>\n #SaveAMC also starts trending on Twitter, while Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy says he\u2019s buying AMC on his \u201cDavey Day Trader\u201d livestream.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m rooting for AMC, I\u2019m rooting to put the hedge funds out of business,\u201d Portnoy says.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, other heavily-shorted Reddit names like Macy\u2019s and Dillard\u2019s also jump. <\/p>\n 9:43 a.m., Tootsie Roll is halted after its shares soar 53%:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Max Gokhman, director of asset allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors, via IB chat from Costa Mesa, CA:<\/p>\n 09:48:06 Wow ok, I didn’t even know that was a stock 10 a.m., Newton, MA:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co., sees a direct link between the speculative retail buying of heavily-shorted stocks and the broader market decline, which takes the S&P 500 down roughly 1.5%.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s due to concerns about hedge funds. A lot of them are getting burned by their shorts, and I think the market is worried that they\u2019ll have to sell some stocks to meet their margin calls.\u201d<\/p>\n 10:16 a.m., r\/wallstreetbets:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The crush of retail trading causes outages at several online brokerages. Charles Schwab, Robinhood, E*Trade and Fidelity are all hit by service disruptions. TD Ameritrade limits some transactions on shares of GameStop, AMC and others. It says high volume may have curtailed access to its mobile app and urges clients to use its other platforms.<\/p>\n Some redditors see darker motives:<\/p>\n 10:44 a.m., the number of \u201cdegenerates\u201d on r\/wallstreetbets tops 3 million:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A user named WildInjury celebrates with this NSFW post, \u201c3 F—ING MILLION OF US. NEVER STOP! TENDIES FOR 2021!\u201d<\/p>\n 11:32 a.m., r\/wallstreetbets:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A user claiming to be Elon Musk piles on …<\/p>\n 11:33 a.m., Mountain View, CA:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The froth is also alive and well in SPAC land.<\/p>\n *23ANDME SAID TO BE IN TALKS ON GO-PUBLIC DEAL VIA BRANSON SPAC 12:08 p.m., AMC trades at $14.19, up 186% from its previous close:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The movie theater operator says it sold 63.3 million shares in at-the market transactions since Jan. 25, raising about $305 million in the process.<\/p>\n YOLO indeed. Meanwhile on WSB, the hedge fund taunts keep coming …<\/p>\n 12:53 p.m., GameStop shares trade at $338.83, up 129% on the day:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n On Stocktwits, Dude2U has some thoughts …<\/p>\n Less than a half an hour later, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says at a briefing that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others are monitoring the situation with GameStop.<\/p>\n 1:56 p.m., shares of Koss are halted again after surging 296%<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The circuit-breaker halt is one of at least 84 on the day. As of roughly 2:30 p.m., trading in Koss, a maker of loudspeakers and headphones, has been stopped at least 18 times. <\/p>\n 2:39 p.m., Federal Reserve press conference following its policy meeting:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Fed Chair Jay Powell starts taking questions from the Eccles Building in Washington D.C. The first one is on Gamestop\u2019s wild ride. He ducks it.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to comment on a particular company,\u201d Powell says. He parries away other questions related to monetary policy and market froth.<\/p>\n In a chatroom for Reddit users, SmokeHalo responds: \u201cPowell dodging questions like neo dodging bullets.\u201d<\/p>\n 3:20 p.m., Washington D.C.:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren releases a sharply worded statement pressuring the Biden administration\u2019s financial regulators to crack down on Wall Street, citing the frenzied volatility in GameStop.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, the same hedge funds, private equity firms, and wealthy investors dismayed by the GameStop trades have treated the stock market like their own personal casino while everyone else pays the price,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s long past time for the SEC and other financial regulators to wake up and do their jobs \u2014 and with a new administration and Democrats running Congress, I intend to make sure they do.\u201d<\/p>\n
09:48:17 Or, rather, a stonk<\/p>\n
*23ANDME DEAL COULD BE VALUED AT ROUGHLY $4 BILLION<\/p>\n