It's time to weigh in on the Gamestop story. Apparently a group of people on Reddit decided en masse to buy Gamestop stock. The stock had been quite low as a result of the mall store having trouble competing with the online acquisition of gaming software. Hence the price was quite low.
I actually remembering going into one of the stores. It came in handy for grandmothers who wanted to buy something for their grandchildren but didn't want to deal with the exigencies of obtaining computer games online. It was handy. You could buy the game, wrap it up, and put it under a tree. Presumably the adored grandchild would know what to do with the present once it was in his/her hands.
For fun or revenge or perhaps for a desire for easy money, a group of members of a Reddit group all bought the stock at the same time. The price went from $5 a share to $400 a share in days. Apparently this was painful to some hedge funds who were "shorting" the fund. I am still a little vague about how you make money by "shorting" but it involves borrowing the stock and paying the same amount of shares back but making a profit because the same amount of shares could now be purchased at a lower price. Apparently well connected investors do this regularly.
The solution to this problem is to tax every purchase of a stock. This will take the fun out of buying and selling stocks at the drop of a hat.
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