Rafael Henrique | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty Images
“Wallstreetbets” Reddit chat room, where retail investors marshal against short sellers, went private on Wednesday evening, limiting access to outsiders.
The community gathered an army of rookie day traders who go after heavily shorted stocks, pushing share prices higher and squeezing out short-selling hedge funds. The forum’s members topped three million as of Wednesday.
“You must be invited to visit this community,” the page now states. “We are experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB. We are unable to ensure Reddit’s content policy and the WSB rules are enforceable without a technology platform that can support automation of this enforcement. WSB will be back.”
GameStop, a popular target in “wallstreetbets,” saw its shares soaring more than 400% this week alone. The brick-and-mortar video game retailer has skyrocketed a whopping 1,700% as retail traders continued to encourage each other to pile on.
AMC Entertainment, another hot topic in the chat room, surged more than 300% Wednesday alone, experiencing its highest volume ever.
A Reddit spokesperson said “wallstreetbets” moderators set the community to private.
“Reddit’s site-wide policies prohibit posting illegal content or soliciting or facilitating illegal transaction,” the spokesperson said. “We will review and cooperate with valid law enforcement investigations or actions as needed.”
Many top posts in the chat room feature screenshots of investors’ brokerage accounts, showing massive returns from trading in GameStop and other names. Some of these enthusiastic investors call out short sellers in sometimes profane language and distasteful internet memes.
Some on Wall Street grew concerned that the buying frenzy from the Reddit crowd could potentially destabilize the market and hurt overall confidence. Meanwhile, mounting losses from hedge funds could spill over to other areas of the market.
Social platform Discord banned the “wallstreetbets” chat room on Wednesday.
“The WallStreetBets server has been on our Trust & Safety team’s radar for some time due to occasional content that violates our Community Guidelines, including hate speech, glorifying violence, and spreading misinformation,” a Discord spokesperson said in a statement.
“Over the past few months, we have issued multiple warnings to the server admin. Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings,” the spokesperson added.
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