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YOLO trading: Riding with the herd during the GameStop episode

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  • Lyócsa, Štefan
  • Baumöhl, Eduard
  • Vŷrost, Tomáš

Abstract

We explore the 2020 and early 2021 price variation of four stocks: GameStop, AMC Entertainment Holdings, Blackberry and Nokia. The four stocks were subject to a decentralized short squeeze that exploited the short positions of institutional investors. This investor movement was likely initiated by retail investors concentrated mostly around the subreddit r/WallStreetBets (WSB). We demonstrate that part of the next day's price variation can be explained by an increase in activity on the WSB subreddit relative to Google searches (terms related to the event). We discuss implications for future research.

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  • Lyócsa, Štefan & Baumöhl, Eduard & Vŷrost, Tomáš, 2021. "YOLO trading: Riding with the herd during the GameStop episode," EconStor Preprints 230679, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esprep:230679
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    Cited by:

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    6. Felix Reichenbach & Martin Walther, 2023. "Financial recommendations on Reddit, stock returns and cumulative prospect theory," Digital Finance, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 421-448, June.
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    9. Banerjee, Ameet Kumar & Sensoy, Ahmet & Goodell, John W. & Mahapatra, Biplab, 2024. "Impact of media hype and fake news on commodity futures prices: A deep learning approach over the COVID-19 period," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    GameStop; WallStreetBets; Reddit; short squeeze; volatility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage

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