A new Gamestop documentary will tackle the infamous events where Reddit users took on Wall Street, causing the company’s stock to rise 2500%.
Whilst Gamestop – the bricks and mortar video games chain – often finds itself in the headlines for questionable reasons, last January the company found itself making the news for an entirely different reason, in a strange story that just kept getting stranger. In an incredible storm of stock market volatility, the retailer saw its stock rise by 2500%, a stratospheric leap that caught the attention of news outlets around the world, not least because as a bricks and mortar chain who specialises in physical media, Gamestop’s incredible rise in value on the stock market ran counter to all conventional wisdom regarding the company’s worth.
The stock market run was caused by a group of investors, not from Wall Street as is usually the case, but who had organised themselves on Reddit, coming together to form a ‘short squeeze’. It was an audacious move which challenged the established Wall Street investment hedge fund crowd, and saw the Reddit group ultimately coming out victorious. This David and Goliath story, of everyday people taking on the Wall Street ‘Masters of the Universe’ (to quote Bonfire of the Vanities) and triumphing, is charted in a new feature-length documentary, set to arrive on January 26th in the US. It’s called Gamestop: Rise Of The Players.
