GameStop: What Happened in 2021
Excerpt from the 2021 SEC Report on GameStop created form PDF for easy reading. Extracted By: Larry Billinghurst, Oct 19 2021 https://www.sec.gov/files/staff-report-equity-options-market-struction-conditions-early-2021.pdf The Run-Up to January 2021 and Increasing Individual Investor Participation The underlying causes of the meme stock phenomenon that are unrelated to Market structure are a subject of speculation that is beyond the scope of this report. Regardless of the causes, many individual investors traded in the meme stocks, which may reflect increases in investor participation in 2020 in both the equities and options markets. By early 2021, increasing numbers of individual investors were downloading apps for broker-dealers. Against that backdrop, in January 2021, more than 100 stocks experienced large price moves or increased trading volume that significantly exceeded broader market movements. For some of these stocks, the amount of “s...