GameStop shoots almost 70%, trade stopped briefly amid an epic short squeeze

Wall Street’s most hated stock, GameStop, rose again on Friday as strong compression continued to fuel its explosive rally.

Video game stocks soared 69.4% to a high of $ 72.88 on Friday, raising gains to more than 100% this week alone. Stock trading stopped briefly due to high volatility. The shares were last traded at around 35%, up to $ 58.

GameStop has more than 138% of its floating shares sold short-term, the shortest name in the U.S. stock market, according to FactSet citing recent submissions.

Shares initially rose last week after the company announced that Chewy co-founder and former CEO Ryan Cohen is joining the board. The news sparked massive short coverage where hedge funds and other players had to run to cover their bets against the shares.

Meanwhile, retail investors also rallied, further fueling the rally. Early in the afternoon trading, more than 92 million GameStop shares have changed hands, quadrupling their 30-day trading volume to 23.8 million.

Citron Research, which has been a short seller, has shown its vocation on stocks, saying buyers of these high levels are “the suckers of this poker game,” according to a tweet on Tuesday. Citron said GameStop will fall back to $ 20 per share “quickly.”

On Friday, Citron said it would no longer comment on GameStop because of the attacks by the “angry mob” that owns the action.

Shares rose more than 250% in 2021 after a 209% rise last year.

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