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Shares in Australian nickel and cobalt explorer GME Resources (GME.AX) surged as much as 53% on Thursday, apparently driven by the similarity of its stock ticker code to GameStop (NYSE: GME).
The company’s NiWest Nickel Cobalt Project is regarded as one of the largest and highest quality undeveloped nickel/cobalt resources in Australia, according to the company’s website. The project is located in the West Australian Nickel belt, adjacent to Glencore’s Murrin Murrin Nickel-Cobalt Operation.
Silver futures prices and shares of silver miners also climbed after a user in Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum posted about executing a “short squeeze” on the precious metal.
WallStreetBets is the same investor board that started the wild short squeeze on Gamestop Corp. and other companies. Shares of the US videogame retailer have soared about 17-fold since January 12 as small investors, organizing on social media, have piled in and forced professional short-sellers to abandon their positions with heavy losses.
Meanwhile, GME Resources managing director Peter Sullivan told the Sydney Morning Herald the surge caught him by surprise. “When I opened my share tracking app and saw it was at 9.4 cents, I was stunned,” he told the newspaper.
“There are people buying the stock just because of the ticker symbol”
Kyle Rodda, IG Markets
“It just went bang, and I thought: ‘Well, what’s going on here? Is there something about my own company that I don’t know?’”
“There are people buying the stock for shits and giggles, just because of the ticker symbol,” market analyst Kyle Rodda of brokerage IG Markets in Melbourne told Reuters.
“It’s got nothing to do with the company and entirely to do with this mad phenomenon that we’re seeing at the moment where these Redditers looking to swarm into these stocks and play around with the market a little bit for their own amusement,” Rodda said.
“Eventually my brother’s son, who works in Sydney, told us it was about speculation to do with the ticker GME,” Sullivan told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I was hoping to be able to say it was more to do with our world-class nickel projects.”
(With files from Reuters)
