Meme hisse senetlerinin borsa üzerindeki etkiii: Gamestop mania

WallStreetBets forum on the popular Reddit platform has drawn the attention of not merely financial market participants, but also policymakers as retail investors gathering in the forum circulate tickers of certain securities and jump on the bandwagon in an attempt to push up the prices. This study examines what transpired in January 2021 trading frenzy in GME which became a meme stock and the star of Redditors and other mania-influenced stocks igniting a battle between retail investors gathering in the forum and Wall Street hedge funds. The study deploys a VAR(p)-process and its structural analysis tools to examine the impact of the trading frenzy by empirically investigating whether an intertwined association significantly differs from the pre-saga time horizon by focusing on the most popular stocks among retail investors during the peak of the mania; GameStop (GME), AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (AMC), Naked Brand Group (NAKD) and Koss Corporation (KOSS) and the spillovers to the broad market. The daily time frame data covering the period from 23 July 2020 up to 29 June 2021 is divided into two equal data sets and analyzed independently in two separate models. The findings of the work suggest that the trading frenzy caused an intertwined correlation between the targeted securities which was absent in the timespan prior to the saga. This implies that trading risk increases during such trading activity as the stocks become highly correlated. The interconnectedness analyses shows that GME remains a non-transmitter stock despite a considerable increase in its contribution to the explanation of the broad market's return volatility. The study pinpoints that investors, traders, portfolio managers and institutional investors should not base their trading or investment decisions based merely on traditional data, alternative data should also be taken into consideration as they play a crucial role in influencing prices of the to become meme stocks.