A slugfest between Wall Street and Main Street took an unexpected turn late on Wednesday after moderators of a stock trading forum that has helped fuel massive rallies in the shares of GameStop temporarily closed its doors.
Shares of GameStop and other companies tumbled in extended trading after Wallstreetbets, a discussion forum popular with retail traders on the Reddit website, briefly turned invitation-only. They pared those losses around an hour later, when the forum opened back up.
“We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad night’s sleep. We’ve got so many comments and submissions that we can’t possibly even read them all, let alone act on them as moderators,” read a message from the group’s moderators after Wallstreetbets reopened.
Shares of GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Koss Corp, and BlackBerry all dropped at least 20% moments after the shuttering of the forum, highlighting the role it has played in fueling stock rallies that many say have been driven primarily by retail investors.
Earlier in the day, amateur traders chalked one up versus Wall Street as hedge funds suffered heavy losses on short positions in GameStop, and regulators and financial professionals called for more scrutiny of trading fueled by anonymous social media posts.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was aware of the market volatility and working with fellow regulators to “assess the situation and review the activities of regulated entities, financial intermediaries, and other market participants.”