US Department of Justice and Prosecutors Investigate whether the’Game Stop Incident’ stock price manipulation
[앵커]
The U.S. Department of Justice and the prosecution are investigating whether the stock price has been manipulated in the’game stop situation’, which has been controversial around the world due to the fight between individual investors, commonly referred to as ants, and hedge funds.
If the fact of the stock price manipulation is revealed, the ripple is likely to increase.
Correspondent Kang Gun-taek reports in New York.
[기자]
The U.S. Department of Justice and the prosecution have started investigating whether the stock price has been manipulated in relation to the’Game Stop Incident’.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice and federal prosecutors in San Francisco are seeking information on related activities from stock exchanges and social media companies that have been the epicenter of the GameStop stock frenzy.
The prosecution is said to have sent subpoenas to several securities companies, such as Robin Hood, which private investors called ants, used to trade in GameStop stocks, asking for data.
The prosecution is likely to first determine who actually bought and sold GameStop stock through the data used by securities companies.
GameStop, a video game distribution chain, climbed vertically from $20 to $483 in just two weeks, and recently took a roller coaster crashing back to $50.
The background is that the ants who rebelled against the short selling of hedge funds gathered around the online community and intensively bought this stock.
This led to a’short squeeze’ in which GameStop’s stock price was expected to decline and the short-selling forces sold unowned stocks by lending them to buy these stocks to reduce losses.
This incident attracted a lot of attention as the ant won the battle between’David and Goliath’ against a large hedge fund.
However, some are raising suspicions that the stock may be rising through social media.
Some experts have argued that some of the ants have participated in a kind of price manipulation called’pump and dump’ through online communities.
If it is investigated that a small number of key figures instigated the purchase of the GameStop group, this situation is expected to turn into a stock price manipulation case.
This is Gang Geon-taek from Yonhap News in New York.
Yonhap News TV article inquiries and reports: katok/line jebo23
(End)