Shares of GameStop more than doubled on Wednesday, less than a month after the “meme” stock’s dramatic fluctuations captivated investors and threatened to upend the status quo on Wall Street. GME finished at $97.71, a 104% increase from the day before.
The extraordinary surge follows news that the company’s beleaguered chief financial officer, Jim Bell, will resign in March. Business Insider reports that Bell’s departure represents a coup for one of GameStop’s largest investors, Ryan Cohen. Cohen, the co-founder of e-commerce darling Chewy, wants the company to prioritize online sales.
Trading of GME was halted twice on Wednesday afternoon as a feeling of déjà vu emerged among investors. Just weeks ago, a Reddit-fueled run on GameStop caused the stock to soar 1,600% in a matter of days. It peaked at nearly $350 a share on January 27th after spending most of 2020 valued under $10 a share.
Reddit users, posting on the now infamous forum WallStreetBets, cheered Wednesday’s rally. Reddit went briefly offline for many users as the trading day reached its close, but the company did not identify the specific cause of the outage.
Earlier in the day, Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger, the longtime business partner of Warren Buffett, told a group of investors, “It’s really stupid to have a culture which encourages as much gambling in stocks by people who have the mindset of racetrack bettors. And of course it’s going to create trouble, as it did.”