Retail traders team up to buy stocks

Top Glove HQ

ON Tuesday, Haris (not his real name), a 35-year-old architect in Malaysia, told some of his friends to consider buying into a little-known US-listed stock. His pick was GameStop, a loss-making brick-and-mortar video game retailer.

Then, GameStop was trading at US$65 per share, which was already up more than 300% since the beginning of the year. But two days later GameStop’s shares skyrocketed to as high as US$350 per share. Haris belongs to the group of global but mostly US-based retail investors inspired by Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets community.