Shares in Gamestop FALL as rally cools after 1,600% gain as traders turn their sights to sliver

Shares in Gamestop fell as much as 30 per cent in early trading Monday as Wall Street’s main indexes opened higher following a shift in the trading frenzy to silver.   

Organised on Reddit and traded with fee-free brokers such as Robinhood, small-time investors had driven a 1,600 per cent rally in the shares of the video game retailer, scooping up assets big fund managers had bet against.    

But by Monday morning the market saw Gamestop’s shares last down about 30 per cent. Cinema chain AMC, another stock targeted by online traders, was up around 12 per cent shortly after opening bell. 

Instead, day traders now are turning their sights to silver with prices jumping as much as 13 per cent Monday.

On Twitter, #silversqueeze was trending as investors looked to the latest market strategy to emerge from the ‘WallStreetBets’ forum on Reddit. Silver had already been up 6 per cent last week. 

Robinhood, which had restricted the purchase of 50 different stocks late on Friday, reduced that list to just eight companies by Monday. 

They are; GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., BlackBerry Ltd., Express Inc., Genius Brands International Inc., Koss Corp., Naked Brand Group Ltd. and Nokia Oyj.

The list had included blue-chip names Starbucks and General Motors. Vaccine makers Moderna and NovaVax were also on the list. The move was an apparent act of desperation as the company’s cash reserves were stretched to the limit. 

Shares in Gamestop fell as much as 12 per cent in early trading Monday as the Reddit-fueled volatility continued into February

Now silver has become the latest example of the influence wielded by followers of WallStreetBets targeting inequality in the global financial system

The precious metal price has jumped after being targeted by Reddit traders