It’s not clear whether the fire started because of carelessness or “an intentional act.” Reports from the authorities in New London, Conn., reveal that the former Zappos chief had locked himself in a shed moments before a blaze broke out. He signed executive orders strengthening anti-discrimination housing regulations and pledged to push for increased funding for minority-owned small businesses and historically Black colleges and universities.ĭetails emerge about the fire that killed Tony Hsieh. President Biden moves to improve financial racial equity. in March, Roz Brewer will be the only Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 business. When she becomes the pharmacy giant’s C.E.O. In the U.S., the Biden administration said it was near a deal to bolster the country’s supply of vaccines. threatened to restrict the export of Belgian-made shots to Britain, prompting British lawmakers to accuse their European counterparts of blackmail. While most attention is on WallStreetBets, we hear that some traders are starting to use encrypted messaging services - which are harder to monitor - to discuss new investment strategies.Ī growing battle over Covid-19 vaccine supplies. Still, “it suggests that there is something systemically wrong with the options trading on this stock,” William Galvin, Massachusetts’ securities regulator, told Barron’s, referring to the GameStop craze. If a big group of traders simply decides to buy options on a stock at the same time, out in the open, for the heck of it, proving malfeasance may be difficult. and elsewhere are closely watching internet chat rooms for signs of potential market manipulation, though they can do only so much without clear signs of fraud. In any case, this is “an enforcement nightmare,” the Duke law professor James Cox told Bloomberg. Is there something else at play? Commentators are split: Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion reckons that this might all be a game to participants, while his colleague John Authers sees a populist uprising against establishment institutions “I believe there is a systemic targeting of highly shorted stocks,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers.
(Such investors have lost $5 billion on GameStop alone.) While much of that was because of the overall rise in stocks, shares in other heavily shorted companies, like the headphone maker Koss, are up big. Short-sellers were down $91 billion for the month through yesterday, according to data from S3. (Extra credit: “ Delta hedging” is also a factor in all of this.)Ī big worry is that this has become a short-squeeze revolt.
If you want to sound smart, traders call this phenomenon a “ gamma squeeze.” And if this sounds familiar, it’s because SoftBank’s mass buying of tech stock options last year - earning it the moniker of the “Nasdaq whale” - worked in a similar way. That’s driving the astounding rise in the company’s stock price, which began the year at $19 and at the time of writing was around $230. As more traders snap up options, the brokers have to buy up more shares. The frenzy has forced market makers who sold the options to buy the underlying shares to hedge their risk. (A sample comment on the board: “PUT YOUR LIFTOFF DIAPERS ON ITS ABOUT TO START.”) Both Elon Musk and Chamath Palihapitiya also egged on the crowd via Twitter. What’s happening: Traders on the Reddit message board, WallStreetBets, a community known for irreverent market discussions, made GameStock their cause du jour and rushed to buy out-of-the-money GameStop options. Why is Wall Street obsessed with GameStop, the video game chain that until recently was known for middling performance? The company’s stock has soared to scarcely believable levels - its market cap as of yesterday was $10 billion, and its shares briefly doubled in premarket trading today - thanks to an army of small traders spurred on by a Reddit message board.