NEW YORK : Shares of several retail trading darlings, including AMC Entertainment and GameStop, surged in heavy volume late on Tuesday, on no apparent news, dealing over US$1 billion in losses to short sellers.
"When you get a move that big it almost makes you think there is some big hedge fund or something out there that decided to do some trades," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Schwab Center for Financial Research. "Heavily shorted stocks have, for the last month, been less volatile than earlier this year. Today we saw an end to this," said Ortex co-founder Peter Hillerberg.
Several of these stocks also drew higher-than-usual trading volume in the options market on Tuesday, as traders jockeyed to either take advantage of the rallying prices or moved to cover positions that were under water.