GameStop stock soared and trading was halted. Then Reddit crashed.
Here we go again.
GameStop madness — or GameStonk madness, if you prefer — struck again on Wednesday afternoon. GameStop's stock price soared at the end of the trading day, rising more than 100 percent from about $44 per share to around $91 per share. Things got so nuts as the 4 p.m. ET closing bell approached that trading of the stock was halted twice for volatility.
Things only got more strange from there. People rushed to Reddit as the price shot up — you know, since this whole GameStop stock thing originated on the platform — and soon enough Reddit had crashed. It's unclear if a rush of traffic was the only reason for Reddit going down, but the site was down for nearly an hour before finally stabilizing at 4:52 p.m. ET.
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When reached for comment, a representative for Reddit would not discuss why the site went down, and directed Mashable to its status page.
The chaos for GameStop seems to be never-ending these days. The company announced Tuesday that Jim Bell, its executive vice president and CFO, would step down next month in the wake of the Reddit trading madness. Business Insider reports that Bell was pushed out by the company's board.
In case you forgot, the TL;DR is that last month smalltime investors, primarily organized through Reddit's WallStreetBets (at least at first), drove up the price of GameStop's stock while simultaneously screwing hedge funds that had taken massive short positions against the video game company. The price shot up to some $350 and eventually the stock-trading app Robinhood stopped allowing GameStop trades
It was such an anomaly that the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on it this month.
Wednesday sure seemed like it could be the beginning of another wild ride. By about 4:30 p.m. ET, Reddit appeared to be recovering.
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In after-hours trading, meanwhile, GameStop stock was rising even further, hitting $183 before 5:00 p.m. ET.
UPDATED: Feb. 24, 2021, 5:09 p.m. EST
Topics Reddit
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
