Reddit website goes down as Gamestop shares jump
Reddit, the self-titled “front page of the internet”, crashed last night as shares in amateur trader favourite Gamestop climbed once again.
The site, which is accessed by millions of people daily, went down at around 9pm on Wednesday. Shortly afterwards Reddit tweeted that it had identified the issue and its systems had recovered.
It came as shares in Gamestop, which was at the heart of an amateur trading frenzy on Wall Street last month, rocketed 104 per cent in a session during which trading was halted several times.
The stock was up a further 83 per cent in after-hours trading.
Analysts struggled to pin down a reason for the rally, though one ruled out a short squeeze similar to the one that roiled markets earlier this year.
Some Twitter users pointed to an activist investor who tweeted a picture of an ice cream cone with a frog emoji, though it remained unclear what, if anything, this signified.
Others cited the resignation of Gamestop chief financial officer Jim Bell as the company focuses on shifting into technology-driven sales.
Following news of last night’s outage, Reddit users and followers of the Gamestop saga took to Twitter to suggest there may be a connection between Reddit going down and the boom in Gamestop shares.
“Gamestop going up 100 per cent, getting halted, and Reddit going down in the same day? Something is up,” one user tweeted.
There is nothing yet to suggest Gamestop’s share price rise and Reddit’s outage are connected.
Earlier this month Reddit literally became front page news for the role it played in the surge in price of Gamestop shares.
Reddit forum r/wallstreetbets hyped the stock, encouraging a short squeeze on hedge funds that had shorted the video game retailer. The move was a success, sending Gamestop shares to more than $400.