Day traders have sent GameStop’s share price sky-high

FOR MOST of 2020 shares in GameStop, a struggling seller of video games with more than 4,000 shops across America, fetched a few dollars apiece. The stock languished as the pandemic shuttered malls. But in August Ryan Cohen, the former boss of Chewy, an online pet-food store, started amassing a large stake. In November he wrote an animated letter to the board, urging them to review GameStop's business and invest in e-commerce to boost online sales. Investors seemed to like his plan: by January 11th, when he took a seat on GameStop’s board, his 12.7% stake had doubled in value. The shares were worth around $20.

Then came the madness. By January 27th shares in GameStop were worth 17 times as much as they had been just a fortnight earlier, leaping to a record high of more than $350 a pop. The firm, worth just $250m at its lowest in 2020, now has a market capitalisation of more than $25bn.