(Reuters) – Shares of GameStop, estimated by Reddit, rose on Thursday, rising more than 20% at one point in another unexplained move that left market watchers looking for a possible catalyst.
Shares of GameStop closed up 6.4%, at $ 131.93, after hitting $ 147.87, the highest since the rise of very short stocks late last month.
An analyst and some Twitter users cited a cryptic tweet from Ryan Cohen, a major GameStop shareholder and founder of e-commerce firm Chewy.com, as a plausible reason for the move, although Reuters was unable to determine how. independent of causality.
The afternoon rally on GameStop began around the time Cohen tweeted about what looked like a screenshot of Pets.com’s puppet dog advertising pet, a famous victim of the dotcom bubble two years ago. decades.
Cohen and GameStop did not comment on the tweet.
The tweet was “as good an explanation as any” for the sudden rise in GameStop shares, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in an email to Reuters.
“The basic‘ story ’is that he will change the company and invest his fortune, so whatever he does to reinforce that change … will make the shares increase,” he said.
“I don’t know if that was the current catalyst, but in such an ugly market it makes sense.”
Wall Street ended sharply on Thursday, leaving the Nasdaq down about 10% from February’s record high.
A GameStop rally last month has also been linked to a Cohen tweet. A Feb. 24 increase in the company’s shares began around the time Cohen tweeted a photo of a McDonald’s ice cream with a frog emoji.
The tweet left some GameStop bulls wondering online if it was a veiled message that Cohen would fix the GameStop business, as if the fast food chain was modernizing its ice cream machines.
GameStop has become one of the most visible of the so-called meme stocks that are closely followed on sites like Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum.
Shares rose more than 1,600% in January after a wave of buyouts forced investors to bet on the company’s shares to relax their positions, before stopping most of those gains the following month.
Cohen’s activist company, RC Ventures, reached an agreement with GameStop in January, giving Cohen seats on the company’s board of directors.
Reports by Sinéad Carew; Additional reports by Jessica DiNapoli; Edited by Franklin Paul, Ira Iosebashvili and Subhranshu Sahu