Which brings us to Reddit, and more specifically, r/WallStreetBets, a half-fascinating, half-terrifying forum for meme-fueled day-traders that bills itself as “4chan with a Bloomberg terminal.” The short version of the story is this: influential r/WallStreetBets users realized that a staggering amount of GameStop’s shares were being shorted- per CNBC, it was the most-shorted stock on U.S. It’s a vicious cycle that can destroy short sellers, but benefit investors who owned the stock before the squeeze.

That drives up demand and reduces supply, further increasing the price and thus getting even more short sellers to buy, and so on. But when a huge number of people are shorting a particular stock that suddenly takes off, it can trigger a “short squeeze,” wherein short sellers rush to buy up more shares to give back to their lenders. For instance, if a company they’re shorting suddenly skyrockets in value, they can buy the shares back at a slightly higher price rather than risk a bigger loss-if you short Tesla at $20 and it climbs to $30, you may decide to eat the $10 loss rather than chance an even worse fate. Short sellers have ways to defend against this.

Gamestop just cause 2 pc