Stocks of video game retailer GameStop exploded in January 2021, effectively doubling in value on a daily basis. At the close of trading on January 27, GameStop Corporation's stock price reaching 86.88 U.S. dollars per share - or +134 percent compared to the day before. On December 30, 2020, the price was valued at 4.82 U.S. dollars per share. The cause of this dramatic increase is a concerted effort via social media to raise the value of the company's stock, intended to negatively affect professional investors planning to ‘short sell’ GameStop shares. As professional investors started moving away from GameStop the stock price began to fall, stabilizing at around 11-13 U.S. dollars in mid-February. However, stock prices unexpectedly doubled again on February 24, and continued to rise, reaching 66.25 U.S. dollars at the close of trade on March 10. The reasons for this second increase are not fully clear. At the close of trade on January 29, 2025, GameStop shares were trading at nearly 27.5 U.S. dollars. Who are GameStop? GameStop are a retailer of video games and associated merchandise headquartered in a suburbs of Dallas, Texas, but with stores throughout North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. As of February 2020 the group maintained just over 5,500 stores, variously under the GameStop, EB Games, ThinkGeek, and Micromania-Zing brands. The company's main revenue source in 2020 was hardware and accessories - a change from 2019, when software sales were the main source of revenue. While the company saw success in the decade up to 2016 (owing to the constant growth of the video game industry), GameStop experienced declining sales since because consumers increasingly purchased video games digitally. It is this continual decline, combined with the effect of the global coronavirus pandemic on traditional retail outlets, that led many institutional investors to see GameStop as a good opportunity for short selling. What is short selling? Short selling is where an investor effectively bets on a the price of a financial asset falling. To do this, an investor borrows shares (or some other asset) via an agreement that the same number of shares be returned at a future date. They can then sell the borrowed shares, and purchase the same number back once the price has fallen to make a profit. Obviously, this strategy only works when the share price does fall – otherwise the borrowed stocks need to be repurchased at a higher price, causing a loss. In the case of GameStop, a deliberate campaign was arranged via social media (particularly Reddit) for individuals to purchase GameStop shares, thus driving the price higher. As a result, some estimates place the loss to institutional investors in January 2021 alone at around 20 billion U.S. dollars. However, once many of these investors had 'closed out' their position by returning the shares they borrowed, demand for GameStop stock fell, leading to the price reduction seen early in early February. A similar dynamic was seen at the same time with the share price of U.S. cinema operator AMC.

Stocks of U.S.-headquartered movie theatre operator AMC Entertainment Holdings started to rise sharply on January 26, 2021, rising fourfold compared to the previous day. Their stock price then fell by over 50 percent by the close of trading on January 17, only to climb another 50 percent to reach 13.26 U.S. dollars per share at the close of trading on January 29, 2020. As professional investors moved away from AMC the stock price began to fall again, stabilizing in mid-February. Since then stock prices rose again in late May with the reopening of cinemas in many parts of the U.S, reaching a peak of 62.55 U.S. dollars per share at the close of trade on June 2, 2021. Since then stock prices have fallen back, sitting at 3.21 U.S. dollars at the close of trade on January 29, 2025.The primary cause of this dramatic fluctuation is a concerted social media campaign, notably on Reddit, for individual investors to purchase the company's stock. This campaign was partly motivated by the nostalgic value of the struggling cinema operator to many people, and partly to cause losses for professional investors intending to 'short sell' AMC stock. In this sense the situation is similar to the dramatic rise in the price of GameStop shares which occurred at the same time.

It is forecast that the global online trading market will increase at a global compound annual growth rate of *** percent per year, increasing to an estimated **** billion U.S. dollars in 2026. This is from a base of around ***** billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Following the coronavirus pandemic beginning in 2020, online trading activity increased among millennial investors. Many online brokers, including Robinhood, experienced notable growth in the number of platform users from the second quarter of 2020 through to 2021. A low-cost business model, paired with technological integration and social media promotion were contributing factors to the popularity of online trading. What is an online trading platform? The online trading market is typically accessed through an online market broker, providing a platform for users to track market prices and execute buy and sell orders on financial securities. The user typically holds their portfolio through an online broker. The number of monthly downloads for leading online trading apps spiked in early 2021. While this was influenced by media attention to popular news stories such as the increase in the price of GameStop shares, online trading is expected to continue as an alternative to traditional investment methods. Factors driving online trading The integration of technology has improved investing activities. From a global survey, most respondents stated technology made investing easier, cheaper, and more efficient. The use of technology allowed information such as real-time data, industry and firm reports, and trading notifications to be more accessible directly to the investor. Online platforms had experienced an increase in the number of trades placed per day, in 2019, interactive brokers had an average of 1,380 trades placed per day. This number steadily increased to 3,905 trades per day in 2021. Technological integration allowed trading via online platforms to be an alternative to traditional methods of relying on an in-person full-service broker.

The daily stock price of the U.S. based home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond (ticker BBBY) peaked in late January 2021, along with other so-called meme stocks such as GameStop (GME). More recently, the company's share price tumbled to 1.31 dollars per share in early January this year, after the company announced diminished net sales and low inventory for the three-month period up to November 2022. The retailer has also recently announced a number of store closures effecting more than 120 locations across the United States.

As of June 17, 2024, the most shorted stock was for, the American holographic technology services provider, MicroCloud Hologram Inc., with 66.64 percent of their total float having been shorted. This is a change from mid-January 2021, when video game retailed GameStop had an incredible 121.07 percent of their available shares in a short position. In effect this means that investors had 'borrowed' more shares (with a future promise to return them) than the total number of shares available for public trading. Owing to this behavior of professional investors, retail investors enacted a campaign to drive up the stock price of Gamestop, leading to losses of billions when investors had to repurchase the stock they had borrowed. At this time, a similar – but less effective – social media campaign was also carried out for the stock price of cinema operator AMC, and the price of silver. What is short selling? Short selling is essentially where an investor bets on a share price falling by: borrowing a number of shares selling these shares while the price is still high; purchasing the same number again once the price falls; then returning the borrowed shares at a profit. Of course, a profit will only be made if the share price does fall; should the share price rise the investor will then need to purchase the shares back at a higher price, and thus incur a loss. Short selling can lead to some very large profits in a short amount of time, with Tesla stock generating over one billion dollars in short sell profits during the first week of March 2020 alone, owing to the financial crash caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, owing to the short-term, opportunistic nature of short selling, these returns look less impressive when considered as net profits from short sell positions over the full year. The risks of short selling Short selling carries greater risks than traditional investments, and for this reason financial advisors often recommend against this strategy for ‘retail’ (i.e. non-professional) investors. The reason for this is that losses from short selling are potentially uncapped, whereas losses from traditional investments are limited to the initial cost. For example, if someone purchases 100 dollars of shares, the maximum they can lose is the 100 dollars the spent on those shares. However, say someone borrows 100 dollars of shares instead, betting on the price falling. If these shares are then sold for 100 dollars but the price subsequently rises, the losses could greatly exceed the initial investment should the price rise to, say, 500 dollars. The risks of short selling can be seen by looking again at Tesla, with the company causing the greatest losses over 2020 from short selling at over 40 billion U.S. dollars.

The net revenue of the online trading platform Robinhood experienced a peak of *** million U.S. dollars in the second quarter of 2021. Following this, revenues have remained relatively stable, resting at *** million U.S. dollars in the final quarter of 2023. Robinhood came under the spotlight in January 2021, in connection with the GameStop story, when they implemented a trade halt on GameStop stocks for a few days, which benefitted the hedge funds who were still able to trade, and upset their users.

Downloads of the trading app Robinhood grew over five times between December 2020 and January 2021, according to Google Play Store and Apple App Store figures. The number grew from around ******* downloads in December 2020 up to around **** million downloads in January 2021. The reason for the increased number of downloads was that the app played a central role in the GameStop story in January 2021, where young investors saw an opportunity to make money on the GameStop stocks with commission-free trades via the Robinhood platform. Popularity of Robinhood Investors' viewpoints are increasingly turning toward the utilization of technology when investing as the majority of wealth management clients worldwide agreed technology has improved investing decision making and allowed for higher efficiency and reduced costs. Robinhood's ease of accessibility to investors and low-cost business model are contributing factors that allowed them to previously outperformed other leading trading apps in the number of monthly active users on their platform. The future of online trading The total net revenue of Robinhood has continued to increase with a large spike in the fourth quarter of 2020. Despite events such as the GameStop story passing, Robinhood`s revenue has continued to grow. Many traditional asset management firms are also beginning to implement technology in their business operations as the technological move becomes more prominent. The global online trading market is forecast to continue to increase in value in the coming years, leaving opportunity for online trading platforms like Robinhood to expand.

The number of active monthly users of the commission-free trading app Robinhood grew steadily since 2014, even though the app did not officially launch until mid-2015. The number of users grew from ************** in 2014 up to **** million, reaching a peak in 2021. While the number of active monthly users now rests at under ** million, the average revenue per user (ARPU) has increased. The app’s net revenue did also grow steadily since its official launch, reaching *** million U.S. dollars as of 2023. Robinhood and the GameStop story Robinhood was a key player in the GameStop story in January 2021, when they restricted the trading of GameStop stocks for a few days. The platform with its commission-free trading is known to be “for the young and poor," and their trading halt caused a lot of anger among its users, who called it market manipulation and claimed the company was helping the hedge funds. Did the GameStop story affect the number of downloads? The number of downloads of the Robinhood app increased markedly in April 2021. The number of downloads grew by almost **** times compared to the previous month, reaching around **** million downloads from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in April 2021. This increase shows that the app had a central role for the GameStop stocks, where young investors saw an opportunity to make money with commission-free trades.

Dogecoin trading volume did not reach until significant value until 2021, when public endorsements and certain events led to significant investor interest. The biggest recorded volume occurred in **************, two days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted - and eventually deleted - a cryptic tweet that said "Doge Barking at the Moon", along with a picture of the 1926 painting with the same name from Spanish artist Joan Miró. Many people saw this message as yet another endorsement for the cryptocurrency, as it looked like a reference to "to the moon" - originally a catch phrase from Reddit group WallStreetBets for the GameStop stock and eventually became associated with Dogecoin. This because around this time, the Dogecoin price development exceeded that of Bitcoin.