(Reuters) – Shares of videogame retailer Game Stop Corp jumped 11% in early deals on Monday even as recent social media-hyped trading hysteria in other stocks appeared to be fizzling out.
Game Stop and other companies including cinema operator AM and headphone maker Kops have seen wild gyrations in their stocks over the past two weeks as amateur investors on forums such as Redd it’s WallStreetBets acted in concert to bid up stocks that some U.S. funds had bet against.
The rally, which catapulted Gamester’s shares to as high as $483 from around $20 before they fell back to about $64, has drawn the attention of regulators, although Treasury Secretary Janet Yell said on Sunday it was too soon to say whether new policies or regulations were needed to deal with the volatility.
In pre-market trading on Monday, Game Stop shares were up 10.8% following a 20% jump on Friday. AM shares, on the other hand, rose just 1.3% after falling about 4% on Friday, while Kops dropped 1.9%.
Trading volumes in Game Stop also appeared to be settling following a record 24.71 million shares traded on Jan. 25 at the beginning of the slugfest between small investors and Wall Street hedge funds. About 7.6 million shares were traded on average every day last week, although that was still well above the stock’s 50-day moving average volume of roughly 4.4 million.
(Reporting by Sagarika Jaisinghani in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernard Orr)
