(Reuters) – RedStit-darling’s GameStop shares rose on Thursday, rising by more than 20% at one point in another unexplained move that left market watchers looking for a possible catalyst.
GameStop shares closed up 6.4% to $ 131.93 after previously hitting $ 147.87, the highest level since the stock shortened strongly at the end of last month.
An analyst and some Twitter users cited a cryptic tweet from Ryan Cohen, a major shareholder in GameStop and founder of e-commerce company Chewy.com, as a plausible reason for the move, although Reuters could not independently determine the causation. .
GameStop’s late afternoon rally began around the time Cohen posted on Twitter what appeared to be a screenshot of Pets.com’s puppet dog advertising mascot, a famous victim of the dotcom bubble. two decades.
Cohen and GameStop did not comment on the tweet.
The tweet was “as good an explanation as any” for the sharp rise in GameStop shares, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in an email to Reuters.
“The bottom line is that he will change the company and reverse the fortune, so whatever he does to consolidate this change … he will move the stock higher,” he said.
“I don’t know if this was the current catalyst today, but in such an ugly market, it makes sense.”
Wall Street ended sharply lower on Thursday, leaving the Nasdaq down about 10% from the February record.
A GameStop rally last month was also linked to a tweet from Cohen. An increase in the company’s shares on February 24 began around the time Cohen posted an image of a McDonald’s ice cream cone with a frog emoji on Twitter.
The tweet left some GameStop bulls wondering online if there was a hidden message that Cohen will fix the GameStop business, as if the fast food chain is modernizing its ice cream machines.
GameStop has become one of the most visible of the so-called meme stocks that are closely watched on sites like Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum.
The stock rose more than 1,600% in January after a wave of buying forced investors to bet against the company’s shares to unleash its positions, before valuing most of those gains next month.
Activist Cohen’s RC Ventures reached an agreement with GameStop in January, giving Cohen a seat on the company’s board of directors.
Report by Sinéad Carew; Additional reporting by Jessica DiNapoli; Editing by Franklin Paul, Ira Iosebashvili and Subhranshu Sahu