GameStop (GME) shares closed down 30% on Monday, following a massive short squeeze last month fueled by retail investors on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum.
As the short squeeze phenomena on shares of the video game retailer garnered international attention — the stock soared more than 1600% in January — the number of members of the WallStreetBets Reddit community soared to 8 million.
On Monday, trading app Robinhood increased the maximum number of shares and options contracts on restricted stocks which users can add. The number of GameStop shares Robinhood users can buy were bumped to 20 Monday afternoon.
Other stocks on the restricted list include on the list include AMC Entertainment (AMC), Express (EXPR) and Koss Corporation (KOSS).
The short squeeze saga has been seen as a battle between retail investors and hedge funds which had heavily bet against the stock. Last week hedge fund Melvin Capital announced it closed its position on GameStop.
Short interest in GameStop has plunged to 39%, down from 115% in mid-January, according to IHS Markit.
Last Thursday Robinhood restricted buying any GameStop during the entire session, drawing a backlash from lawmakers and users on the trading platform as the stock slid more than 60% intraday. A a class action lawsuit was filed against the company that same day.
Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev later announced an easing of restrictions and denied any “conspiracy theory” saying the buying limits were made by a market maker or hedge fund.
“Our decision to temporarily restrict customers from buying certain securities had nothing to do with a market maker or a market participant or anyone like that putting pressure on us or asking us to do that. It was entirely about market dynamics and clearing house deposit requirements as per regulations,” Tenev told Yahoo Finance.
On Monday Silver (SI=F) prices surged 10% as focus from Redditors appeared to target the precious metal. Members on the forum though urged no short squeeze on silver, saying it deterred from their efforts to take GameStop shares higher.
We've seen a lot of commentary about 'Reddit traders' and silver, but by our numbers only 3% of the mentions of tickers on wallstreetbets today were $SLV. Are they mistaking someone else for us as usual?
— wallstreetbets mod (@wsbmod) February 1, 2021
Ines covers the U.S. stock market. Follow her on Twitter at @ines_ferre
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