GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) - A major video game retailer is getting a lot of publicity in recent days as the price in their stock market shares go up and down.
If you’ve watched the news or been on social media at all in the last couple days, you’ve seen articles and posts about GameStop and the stock market.
When it comes to stocks, some people understand it while others are left in the dark.
But when a major video game retailer became the top headline on Wall Street, we needed to find out what was going on.
When COVID-19 hit, a lot of retail stores experienced significant drops in sales, bringing the value of their company down.
GameStop was one of those, since people are now streaming and downloading games online.
But investors want to make a profit from stock prices going down, so they use a method called a short stock to make money.
Now, there are millions of individual investors who have gathered on Reddit, a social media platform, who decided to use the system to their advantage.
GameStop stock rose 8,000 percent in the last 6 months.
GameStop opened at $350, jumped to $469, went down to $115, rose and fell a few more times to finally hover around $230 Thursday afternoon.
People have been furious though, because they use an app that has allowed them to trade and buy stocks for free, called Robinhood which has more than 13 million users.
Robinhood, Thursday, put some restrictions on trading GameStop stock as well as some others, they say to adhere with capital requirements mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for broker dealers.
Hunt said that small investors, in the long haul will most likely lose money they can’t afford to lose when this is all said and done.
The Robinhood app has also put restrictions on Blackberry, Bed Bath and Beyond and several other retailers.
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