In today's podcast our resident financial expert Adrian Lawrence talks about Reddit Day traders and how they have sent the shares of Gamestop rocking upwards.  Reddit is a social media platform where members can chat and discuss a wide range of topics a sub group with Reddit known as Wallstreetbets has sprung up and is frequented by tens of thousands of amateur investors and day traders, they have been egging each other one to buy more and more share in a stock called Gamestop and the resulting stock squeeze has sent its share price through the roof.
Some of the threads point to a revenge aspect to this activity in that hedge funds shorted stocks during the 2008 financial crisis and in so doing left many small investors badly out of pocket.  Now they have targetted Gamestop where short sellers had a large open position, by driving the share price upwards they have forced many of these funds to close their positions, causing them large losses and compounding the shortage of stock.
Sadly this is likely to end with large losses for the small investors concerned as the share price has moved outside of the range which is realistic for a stock like this, so investors should be very wary of following the crowd.
There is even talk of an overspill into UK stocks such as Cineworld.
If nothing else its a great story, the small investor versus the large Wall street funds.
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