GameStop (GME) shares were up about 30% about 30 minutes into the trading session on Thursday. The stock’s rally is an extension of the sudden 104% gain on Wednesday. Those watching the last hour of trading yesterday wondered if an afternoon tweet from activist investor Ryan Cohen was one of the catalysts for the unexpected spike.
On Wednesday WallStreetBets members had been discussing the upcoming exit of GameStop’s CFO Jim Bell. The company announced that Bell will be stepping down in March.
Just before 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, board member Cohen tweeted a frog emoji with a picture of a McDonald’s soft ice cream cone. Hundreds of comments linked the image to GameStop in an attempt to de-code what it meant.
The theories behind the image ranged from fixing a broken ice cream machine to a MACD technical indicator.
GameStop shares were at the center of a massive short squeeze in January fueled by Redditors who drove up prices as high as $483 each as some hedge funds and other short sellers were forced to cover their positions.
The GameStop saga was recently the focus of a congressional hearing where RobinHood CEO Vlad Tenev denied any collusion with hedge funds to disable buying of the video game retailer shares in order to stop the frenzy. The brokerage firm had restricted buying the stock on January 28. That day shares began plunging.The declines continued as restrictions were eased in the days that followed.
Citadel CEO Kenneth C. Griffin also took part in the hearing, along with Melvin Capital founder and CIO, Gabriel Plotkin, and Keith Gill, a YouTuber known as “Roaring Kitty” who has been bullish on GameStop for over a year.
Other recently shorted stocks also saw double digit percentage gains on Wednesday, including Koss Corporation (KOSS) , Express (EXPR), and AMC Entertainment (AMC).
