The last gasp of the meme-stock era

So long and thanks for all the fun

Feb 2nd 2023

Two years ago the stockmarket was in the grip of speculative mania. Shares in GameStop, a struggling video-game retailer, hit an all-time intraday high of $483 on January 28th 2021, up from around $5 at the beginning of the month. Retail traders co-ordinated in a Reddit forum and snapped up shares using brokerage apps like Robinhood. Empowered by technology, newcomers piled into GameStop, ostensibly because the beleaguered chain was one Wall Street had heavily sold short (ie, bet that the firm’s shares would fall in price). Short-sellers were the villains. When GameStop spiked they lost their shirts. What could be better?

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Requiem for a meme”