LONDON (Reuters) – GameStop shares surged another 60% on Wednesday in pre-market trading, boosted by increased interest among amateur investors who have lifted the share price by 700% over the past two weeks.
But some hedge funds have refused to budge from their bearish bets, with FIS’ Analytics data showing investors had piled on $2.2 billion in bearish bets on the U.S. video game retailer — a whopping 20% of its market capitalisation.
In the meantime, Reddit’s Wallstreetbets stock trading discussion group were backing the company, buying shares and call options on the stock.
A similar euphoria has boosted BlackBerry and Nokia.
Meanwhile in Europe, shares of Evotec and Varta jumped on a chatter that Melvin Capital Management was being forced to unwind its short positions to cover losses on its other bearish bets, including GameStop.
(Reporting by Thyagaraju Adinarayan; editing by Sujata Rao)
