A surge in GameStop stock, caused by a small group of investors influenced by social media posts, has people talking around the world.
Stocks in GameStop, the parent company of EBGames, rose suddenly from about US $18 dollars a share, to US $347 dollars before settling back to about US $193 dollars.
Investors on the social media news site Reddit collectively caused hedge fund, Melvin Capital, to lose billions of dollars, while at the same time suddenly boosting the price of shares in GameStop, a video game retailer.
Similar efforts were made boosting trading in companies like BlackBerry and Nokia – among others.
Local tech blogger Kevin Andrews teaches technology and is a computer systems administrator.
He says the recent phenomenon of boosting up lagging companies is being described as ‘meme stock.’
Andrews says Wall Street has been susceptible to that type of thing before, but not on this scale. He says it highlights the power of social media in boosting misinformation and false claims.
As long as people are able to post what they want and misinformation goes unfiltered, says Andrews, you’ll have others believing things that don’t make sense.