(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kyung Soo-hyun = One of the hottest topics in the US stock market recently is the stock price of GameStop, a video game retailer chain.
The company’s stock continued its upward streak for four consecutive trading days, closing at $147.98 per share on the 26th (local time) on the New York Stock Exchange, up 92.7% from the previous day.
As a result, the company’s stock price, which was $18.84 at the end of last year, has soared eight times this month.
Investors gathered around a discussion room opened on social media (SNS) Reddit under the name’WallStreetBets’ led the stock price to rise.
Accordingly, a hedge fund that has been selling large-scale short-selling to this company, which can be viewed as an obsolete business, while online distribution is becoming the norm (a trading technique in which an investor who expects a fall in stock prices sells stocks not owned and then buys them back later). Etc. Professional investors suffered huge losses.
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It is reported that Melvin Capital Management, a US investor with tens of trillion won in assets under management, has even been in a situation where it has received trillions of won of funds in the aftermath of the loss of its GameStop investment.
Gamestop is not the only stock whose stock price has surged recently due to the purchase of stocks by individual investors based on SNS.
AMC, a US movie theater chain, rose 134.0% this month, and during the same period, security software company Blackberry (185.4%) and bedding and bath goods chains, Bed Bath & Beyond (107.6%), also recorded a three-digit increase.
However, Wall Street’s general evaluation is that the large-scale favorable news that can support such a surge in stock prices is not particularly noticeable.
In this regard, to some experts on Wall Street, the recent trend has started to appear to symbolize overvalued stock markets, Reuters reported.
Some even point out that it is market manipulation by SNS users.
Market Watch, an actual market-specialized media, reported, citing experts that “there is growing concern for market manipulation.”
Anthony Sabino, a lawyer who specializes in securities crime, said, “It would be shocking if the securities authorities didn’t look into GameStop stock trading.”
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Of course, it is difficult to say that expressing opinions in an unorganized SNS discussion room is a market manipulation without considering intentionality or false information.
In addition, individual investors object to this view.
One of the founders of the Reddit discussion room argued that it is absurd to accuse them of manipulating the market, saying that some Wall Street experts have been using traditional media as a market manipulation tool.
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2021/01/27 11:49 sent