the gamestop phenomenon. our special coverage continues. gamestop, closing near $350 a share today.eld by day traders, embedded forums, and more. apple and tesla meantime, lower after reporting results after the bell. dan ives has an outperformed rating on apple, a price target of 175 -- $175. we barely talked about apple and tesla today given what's going on in the market, but let's stop there for a quick moment. why do you think shares are lower at the moment? >> this is a knee-jerk reaction. if you look at these apple numbers, it is almost a cinderella story relative to expectations. talk about a super cycle. i think what you see tonight is the super cycle is for real. this is looking like it's going to be the biggest power cycle ever. a year from now, we are looking at three to relent dollar market cap -- a $3 trillion market cap. also the rating that continues to happen in the business. emily: meantime, tesla results also seem to be disappointing investors, lower profits, despite record revenue. what is your take away? >> of course, there's going to be a lot of profitability. i

a phenomenon called the gamestop frenzy. as to whether access to chief liquidity is the call. jerome powell disagrees. >> look at where it has been driving asset prices. it is not monetary policy. it is probably not as tight as people think. david: those were the comments from the fed chair. our first guest, equity research there at j.p. morgan. we just heard from the fed chair. your thoughts. risk-free rate -- surely that helps risk-free asset. >> it helps. it is important to take a step back and look at the overall tenor. we feel like certain elements delete the speculation. they would include areas like electric vehicles, energy stocks and the like. investor position as an asset class is relatively light. also highlighting that it is very light and emerging-market equities. we are not necessarily forecasting on a full year basis. david: i would imagine with your comments, keep in mind i am not pushing back, but we are almost wrapping u best january since 2012. also the best november. how can i sleep well if i am sitting o

emily chang hosts gamestop phenomenon.ing to dig into all of the intricacies, the market moves, and joe, romaine, phenomenal in terms of bringing back of the feel-good factor when you walk into blockbuster, get a tootsie roll, and to get a dvd. but if netflix falls on the back of these trades, it is a whole other world. joe: if you have to reduce your short exposure, your hedges are not working and you have to reduce your long exposure, so if shorting comes dangerous, you can see how it has ripple effects in the market. romaine: the problem is there were no hedges. enter gabriel's last points, who was going to determine what's good faith. joe: we will. caroline: that does it for what you miss. ♪ >> welcome to a special edition of "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. this hour, we bring your special coverage with what is going on with gamestop. shares closing at $380 apiece today, up 883% in just two weeks. a reddit based trading group has piled into the stock. some wall street investors will join us th

. >> reporter: the white house sa todff monitoring the gamestop phenomenon as reddit investors appear to set their sights on other struggling stocks, like a.m.c. and even blockbuster, though experts caution it is still a risky game for anybody involved. manuel bojorquez, cbs news, miami. >> o'donnell: some sad news. late today we learned that actress cloris leachman has died. she had quite an amazing career winning eight prime-time emmys, two for her role as phyllis on "the mary tyler moore show" in the 1970s. leachman also won an oscar for "the last picture show" and appeared in a string of comedies including "young frankenstein." cloris leachman died of natural cautions at home in california. she was 94 years old. an incredible life. and there is still much more ne abs evening news." an urgent warning about potentially toxic hand sanitizer. and, the pandemic couldn't stop this panda from making his public debut. deuvment-- debut. if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, ...little things... ...can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill

the gamestop phenomenon. the sec and bided administration say they are monitoring volatility as retail investors gang up to squeeze shortselling had funds. plus, jay powell repeats that the fed is nowhere near tapering stimulus, saying it needs substantial progress on jobs to end inflation. haidi: let's take a look at how we are setting up for this torrid trading session. it was a remarkable session as we had all of these concerns coming into create a perfect storm that caused that selloff on wall street. those losses, asx stocks by -- down by about 0.2%. numbers due to the pandemic effect, we saw that also weighing on sentiment. nikkei futures looking a little bit positive at 1/10 of 1%. snp futures looking like they will extend those losses for another session. a word on currencies, risk off move spread to the kiwi and the aussie. most of those steady and holding those losses. mostly 1% lower. let's get to tech earnings. it is a first for apple, quarterly revenue topped 100 billion dollars for the first tim

your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo >>> so is the gamestop phenomenonck market becoming more democratic here to talk about that this morning executive editor and cnbc contributor sarah swisher alongside tony thank you for joining us on this interesting day. >> good morning. >> thanks a lot. >> given all the liquidity that is sloshing around, the brokerages and social media and populism, is this taking you by surprise or not? >> well, i'm old enough, carl to have been around for etrade. if you remember there were a lot of stocks, one that did a disk drive that went crazy, that didn't exist, all the investors piled into i've been around to see this idea of the democratic investor. you can be for the democratic democracy in the stock market because most people are not in stocks though we talk about it a lot. most do not get to participate in this upside and that's a great thing. you can talk about a ridiculous gain about a company that's really in discretion and so in the end of this it's going to be hurt because these stocks go up and various people will

ben: i would say, the gamestop phenomenon is something i've never seen before in my 30 years in the marketsand certainly talking to others at gmo including jeremy grantham. maybe this existed in the 20's with the pools that were pushing stocks around. but this is something new and weird. the kind of speculative enthusiasm of the tesla's of the world is an absolute echo and similar in scale to past bubbles. but as you were saying earlier, tesla came out with earnings that were disappointing and the stock went down. you have the actual fundamentals of gamestop that have nothing to do with what is going on with its stock. and that is something different and quite dangerous for the market, even apart from the speculative enthusiasm for companies that have shown growth lately. vonnie: explain more about that to us. because we are hearing from a lot of regular visitors to these programs saying look, this is going to end at some point. this is going to go away. and yet, it doesn't seem like it is anytime soon. now that they are restricted in their robinhood movements. moderators are urging canadia

the market stephanie and i were just talking about, i don't know if you want to call it the gamestop phenomenon, what's happening a lot of people trying to cover shorts and stocks, moving in quite a volatile way what's an investor to look out for here and what do you think this is going to mean for trading in 2021 overall? >> well, i'm with stephanie on that i'm not one to be wanting to play around with those stocks. i agree with her, there's great possibilities of making a lot of money but you could lose a lot too. i think at the end of the day, john, this is a small number of stocks, heavily shorted in an upward moving market some semblance of this occurs in every bull market when the shorts get caught. this is pretty dramatic what we've seen with the movements in gamestop and a few others but i don't think it's that representative of the entire market and i certainly don't think it signals that there's some horrific cycle ending bubble that's about ready to play out at all for the stock market i heara lot that the stock market is way ahead of fundamentals but i think fundamentals are coming

he would not comment on the gamestop phenomenon. he did say there is pent-up demand out there and he expects consumers to spend in force when the pandemic is behind us. people are buying homes in massive numbers because of the low interest rates. home prices surged over the past year but the fed chairman says this is not a bubble but a passing event. >> there is a one-time thing happening with people who are spending all of their time in their house and they're thinking i need a bigger house or another house or different house or second house in some cases there is one-time shift in demand we think will get satisfied. that will call for supply. reporter: questioning houses prices. the fed statement reiterated interest rates will not change and the fed will continue to increase the balance sheet at the current rate. a statement also saying the path ever the economy will follow the virus and progress of the vaccine. >> but we're just not going to be able to get that last group of people back to work. it's a big group of people until w

play it very quickly, and we also reached out to a traditional trading house to discuss the gamestop phenomenon. while that investor cannot make an official comment, they did say, quote g m e is a nothing company driven up by a public forum. reddit young, stupid investors are using leverage without owning assets, not a good play. christien kafton ktvu, fox two news and shares of game stock and amc, another heavily shorted stock targeted by investors are both down in after hours trading. billionaire investor who made half a million dollars short selling, gamestop said today he'll donate all that money to struggling small businesses. he says his initial investment and all of the profits will go to the bar stool fund, which helps bars, restaurants and other mom and pop businesses that are struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic. so far, the bar stool fund has raised almost $33 million to fund 187 businesses. all right up in the sierra. a blizzard warning is in effect. until friday. there was a break in the snow earlier, giving caltrans crews the chance to catch up and get ready for the next

we also reached out to a traditional trading house to discuss that gamestop phenomenon while that investornot make an official comment, they did say, quote g m e or gamestop is a nothing company driven up by a public forum. reddit young, stupid investors air using leverage without owning assets, not a good play reporting live christien kafton ktvu. fox two news. already you can see i got the current radar up for you. well, you'll see her in a second, but it's zampa and you're wondering. well where's all the rain? if you're in santa rosa, san francisco, oakland, but if you look south down towards san jose, there it is. that's where the atmosphere atmospheric river has stalled out. it is actually beginning to shift a little further north, so we're starting to see some of those showers, especially up around the milpitas area. rainfall rates in here are significant rainfall rates doesn't mean it's good. you're gonna basically basically says in this case, it's an inch and a quarter an hour, so it they only ran for 20 minutes. but that rainfall rate is what you might find the tropical storm, so

play it very quickly, and we also reached out to a traditional trading house to discuss the gamestop phenomenoncial comment, they did say, quote g m e is a nothing company driven up by a public forum reddit young, stupid investors are using leverage without owning assets, not a good play. christien kafton ktvu, fox two news. shares of gamestop and amc, another heavily shorted stock, targeted by investors are both down in after hours trading. the federal reserve said today it plans to keep interest rates low to help the faltering economy. the benchmark short term rate will remain near zero that chief jerome powell says with hiring an economic growth slowing its key to continue pursuing low interest rate policies. powell says the economy is expected to contain. in you to struggle in the coming weeks and months until there are widespread vaccinations and it covid relief bill is passed. struggling bay area transit agencies will get millions of dollars in the most recent round of federal relief funding. the empty sea has voted to give the 1st $180 million out of the $982 million allocated for transi

and we'll have much more next week we're expecting a very volatile market on monday as the gamestop phenomenontinues and now, you know the news of this friday, january the 29th, 2021 i'm shepard smith. thanks for having us in tonight. and for followin . [upbeat music] - this is the green mile, a two-mile stretch along denver's south broadway that's literally putting the "high" into the mile-high city and leading the way into a multibillion-dollar global cannabis industry. on this street, it is said that there are more legal cannabis shops in closer proximity than anywhere else in the world. typical day of revenue here? - $10,000, $15,000. - for real? - mm-hmm. since cannabis sales were legalized in colorado six years ago, dispensaries have sold almost $8 billion of product.

and we'll have much more next week we're expecting a very volatile market on monday as the gamestop phenomenon, january the 29th, 2021 i'm shepard smith. thanks for having us in tonight. thanks for having us in tonight. and for followin ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ for every trip you've been dreaming of, expedia has millions of flexible booking options. because the best trip is wherever we go together. ♪ narrator: in this episode of "american greed"... because the best trip is wherever we go together. i'm just a demon. narrator: keith raniere is "vanguard"... everything was, "thank you, vanguard," even though the guy wasn't in the room. it was like "the wizard of oz." narrator: he is the self-proclaimed smartest man in the world. parlato: he was the most ethical. he was the highest-minded. he looked up at the clouds and saw through them. narrator: a god-like figure to his followers, who funnel millions to his "self-help" group, nxivm. ucci: people gave him money, like piles and piles to do what he wanted with. narrator: but as former insiders now reveal, he uses it to fuel his most dangerous appetites.

and we'll have much more next week we're expecting a very volatile market on monday as the gamestop phenomenonhe news of this friday, january the 29th, 2021 i'm shepard smith. thanks for having us in tonight. and for following us on twitter @the news on cnbc. sfx: [sounds of everyday life events, seen and heard in reverse] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ sfx: [sounds of fedex planes and vehicles engines] ♪♪ sfx: [sounds of children laughing and running, life moving forward] sfx:male announcer:ldren this week on undercover boss: - wow. - the ceo of taylormade, the world's top-selling golf equipment brand, poses as an out-of-work golf enthusiast trying to land his dream job in the industry. - i'm al. - it's nice to meet you. - nice to meet you. announcer: can this desk jockey survive without his million dollar beach home and private putting green? - [frustrated yell] i will be a superstar at every job you put me in. - ow. - oh! - what is this guy doing here? - i gotta go a little faster, huh? - yeah. he should keep his day job. announcer: will this former sales rep remember how to sell his own product? - yeah, this

why the gamestop phenomenon has proved there's a revolution happening in the world of finance.ns ali velshi for an interview at 9:00 a.m. ins ali velshi for an interview at 9:00 a.m. (dad vo) life doesn't give you many second chances. but a subaru can. (dad) you guys ok? (avo 1) eyesight with pre-collision braking. standard on the subaru ascent. the three-row subaru ascent. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. (avo 2) get 0% for 63 months on select new 2021 models, now through february 1st. ♪♪ this is what community looks like. ♪♪ caring for each other, ♪♪ protecting each other. ♪♪ and as the covid vaccine rolls out, we'll be ready to administer it. ♪♪ go pro at subway® for double the protein on any footlong. or on any new protein bowl! so many ways to go pro at subway®! it's not amateur-tein, it's pro-tein, baby! go pro and get double the protein for just $2 more. subway. eat fresh. >>> it is being called the french revolution of finance. a crowd-source effort to defeat billionaire traders at their own game. small investors banding together to take on big firms by running

he says this is unnatural, insane, dangerous, with this gamestop phenomenon.n these, these reddit groups and social media of course reigns in this era. do you intend to stifle free speech and what people write in social media? ashley: agreed. stuart: are you asking me? susan: yeah. stuart: no, i'm, well, are we talking about you know censorship what is written on reddit, are we talking about that, are we? susan: some people proposed for that, there needs to be some people to step in so sift through what is being said in these particular pages there are certain pages drive a lot of frenzied trading. i disagree. i feel sorry for hedge funders. no one should feel sorry for the billion dollar hedge fund managers in this case. do they need to be bailed out if they have a bad short trade? absolutely not in this case. let them lose their shirts. ashley: yes. stuart: i will drink to that. this debate will not end now it will go on for a long time to come. >>> next, something completely different and frankly outrageous. pakistan's supreme court freed the man accused of

one of the observers of what is going on with this gamestop phenomenon now being translated into theal market is that the coin shops are running out of coins, so that may not be unusual, and the silver market is much bigger than the market for a single stock like gamestop. there is a view the best the traders might do here is the short pop. we heard from j.p. morgan chase that this whole reddit phenomenon is not going to have a contagion into the wider market, it will be short-lived, but it is living on right now in the very big way, front and center in the silver market. heidi? haidi: unlike gamestop, silver is not the beaten-down little guy. precious metals have been on a roll since last year. reporter: that is definitely the case. silver has gained more than 50% in the past year. that is largely on recovery. in comments on silver began appearing on the reddit fueled platform called wall street bets just last week's -- just last week. people act each other to pile into silver. that may have something to do with the biggest banks out there positioning or putting out commentary that

one of the links we have not necessarily explored is between bitcoin and this gamestop phenomenon orenon. is this the same crowd? is this the same groups of traders, same groups of retail investors? i wonder what it does to your psychology around investment, if you are scolding an asset that does not have much to do with fundamentals and then translate that to wall street. at e: are we talking about -- eddie: are we talking about bitcoin, are we talking about gamestop? there is definitely some overlap in terms of the investor base. there is definitely some investors who are risk seeking and looking for the next big hot asset. therefore, potentially, some of this attention we have seen in stocks like gamestop that just rally phenomenally has taken some of the attention away from bitcoin. i think the underlying fact is that, you know, all of this, all of this activity that we are seeing across markets is being driven by ultra-loose monetary policy. there is no real end in sight for that. matt: may be people have sold bitcoin in order to buy gamestop. bitcoin still is worth so i think t

. >> gamestop phenomenon continues. >> who the hell is anybody out there to say, oh, you smo shoul stop being able to own gamestop. >> nobody's saying that! >>> hundreds of americans in the pan path of a winter storm. >> winter is here. >> no doubt. >> bernie sanders. get this. after one week holding the title for the highest number. >> all that -- >> and the new lawsuit claims no tuna in subway's tuna sandwich. >> what's it contain? selling a tuna sandwich with no tuna in said tuna sandwich, what's in the tuna sandwich. in fact, i don't want to know. >> joe didn't come to the white house alone. two german shepherds. major wondering finish that napkin? and champ, going to the bed bnb. >>> and a century old, would you do that? >> a world war ii veteran celebrating its 100th birthday wish gets his wish to go skydiving. >>> this morning's "eye opener" is presented by progressive. making it easy to bundle insurance. >>> love that guy! love the spirit. >> i want to go back to the tuna sandwich. >> if it's not tuna. >> i missed it. what's in it? >> not tuna. >> an amalgamation of things you d

two rules that we learned from this whole gamestop phenomenon is that you shouldn't bet money that youose. but then conversely for the hedge funders, you shouldn't be shorting on stocks you can't afford. we know it's a social media era, but the fact that we have these cartel trade thers that are able to align and coronate our reddit page in order to kill the billion dollar hedge funders, i think that's got to be the story so far of the year. and i would say we love the fact that it's democratizing the investment community. now average joes can get in. and when they call it dumb money versus smart money, i argue that there's no such thing as smart money anymore, 2020 has proved that. the fact that individuals can now recognize strategy and opportunity, why not let them come in but recognize you can also lose your money as well. neil: yeah. i think we have to do that latter part, we have to recognize that's the risk inherently in investing, whether you're shorting a stock or going long. having said that, dan, i'm curious you've heard these parallels, oh, it feels like 1999 all over again

bipartisan issue these days >> brendan, finally, your thoughts we've been talking about today, this gamestop phenomenon move at least in part by retail investors and epic short squeeze that's playing out in the stock right now. only a couple years ago we saw something similar. maybe not the same or as public as the reddit threads but a similar play in tilray stock what would you say to, say, the ceos of gamestop right now >> i've had a little bit of ptsd over the last few days i remember getting five different calls from the nasdaq in a single day about our stock being halted because the short sellers were beings squeezed i think the short sellers lost something like $600 million on that particular day, september 19, 2018 which actually pales in comparison to what i've been reading about about gamestop my advice to those ceos would be that at times like this, your company is not your stock and your stock is not your company to keep it all in perspective. as these very unusual market dynamics are taking place. >> yeah, you went from 20 to 300 in basically two months looking back at that chart you defini

steve weisz is here and brynn is the managing partner at requisite capital management but gamestop, the phenomenon we've all been witnessing as you look at the major averages. gamestop on the left 54%. looks pretty good. until you consider that the stock was up better than 100% at some one point today and an hour or so ago, that stock very much in focus steve, you've seen a lot of markets. you've seen a lot of crazy things within crazy markets. i'm wondering how you're viewing this and what you think investors should be thinking about as they watch it with us >> on this gamestop situation is the craziest i think i've ever seen usually you have a short squeeze and it goes up but this one keeps going. so this really speaks to the changing demographics of investors in the market. and what i mean by that is, the people that really chew investors never heard of reddit a few years ago. sure, it's been around we know it but for that to drive a short squeeze in a company that's so fundamentally flawed, as you pointed, 100% last week, 50% today, there's no there there. so that's why be careful but i don't

so is the aftereffects of this gamestop phenomenon also limited?yes it absolutely is let's take the most visible one. i am very close to bed, bath & beyond mark tritton, fantastic ceo, came out of target really amazing john dustin, changed there with a very aggressive process. and that's a stock it's hard to figure out was it worth ten no, i think the short sell pushed that. is it worth 36 i'd say 25 but that's of all these, carl, this is the only one that's a judgment call. but it's got 66% short the other ones are overly shorted and then you get down to stocks, anything under 5%. if you are thinking of a short squeeze you will be wrong because the company can alleviate the short squeeze. i called gamestop three times next week. now i am calling from the o.r. there is no doubt they should be selling. >> yeah, they might be towards the end of their quarter, and unable to until they report numbers. mike santelli pointed that out most people have covered and so this is -- i don't know this is not just squeezing here. this is pure buying. >> gamestop

the gamestop phenomenon was sparked by the reddit wall street account.colluding to buy stocks what they call pump and dump. facebook taking down the popular trading group called robin hood stock traders saying they violated community standards took the group's founder said there was no adult content on the page and they were trying to separate out retail investors and retell traders from the institutional professionals, but also notes facebook took on the same page january 7. the page was reinstated after appealed by the group, but it's not the first time and facebook said is not related to this week's gamestop frenzy. you have to decide who you want to believe in this case. stuart: i find that ridiculous. the founder of that wall street trading group said facebook said it violated adult such as content. what on earth does that have to do with it? susan: they said there wasn't any adult content on it, but we talked about this esther did what the implications are of this and what oversight might come down the pipeline and could then be shutting down some

thank you, dani burger on gamestop and this phenomenon. we are joined by dr. tatjana puhan.ught we could get your thoughts on this. to the extent you were able to contribute on specifically aim stop or more broadly around the theme of retail investors getting very involved in taking on hedge funds. you are close to quants and what they are doing. are you playing in this kind of market at this point? dr. puhan: we are not really taking these stocks. we are looking at the diversification benefits that a stock can bring to our portfolio. one thing i have been interested in over the last one or two years because i am conducting as study is how the market environment has changed because retail investors have changed from investing mainly in mutual funds to playing on platforms like robin hood and others. one hypothesis i'm looking into is this sector has become so high over the last one or two years, really unexpected levels, and there is a difference in the behavior. matt: i was looking through some reddit forums, retail investor talked yesterday and one of the mantras seems to

>> well, you know, the gamestop kind of trade phenomenon has caught the attention of almost every traderoday, glued on what happens with gamestop prices. and in a way, this is a story the about the democratization of -- talking about how to take down market professionals. and, you know, get rid of short positions chasing after imbalancing caused by huge shorts such as what we had at gamestop. 140% of float, that's huge. and that kind of market balance is something that's ripe for taking down, and market professionals have done that over time. but this time it's done by a bunch. of kids. and, you know, hooray for the kids because they had enough wherewithal to sniff out where the opportunities were, and they made use of it. so in some ways, that's a good thing. but this is also a distraction because the market collapse in general should have been anticipated when president biden said yesterday we've got to be revising trajectory of vaccines from 100 million people down to 100 million shots. well, what does that mean? it means that the lockdowns are going to continue, and what do we know a

gamestop. bloomberg authors call the phenomenon a rage against the financial machine, this latest bit of expect -- this latest bit of speculation has unemotional driver, anger. joining us on the phone with more is chris murphy of susquehanna financial group, go head of derivatives strategy. we know what has happened, but what is the why? what are you noticing in the market that's different? chris: obviously we talked about the shorts and the coordination of retail being the catalyst. we are focusing on the options in the options might have exacerbated the roots that we are seeing as people chase momentum, but we don't think it's been the catalyst, that might surprise some people. if you look at the gme call, with the open call position, that has not increased much since the beginning of the year back when stock was $13. the total call open interest is basically flat this year. somewhat under the radar -- this whole situation has been classified as retail versus institutional, that's another data point, these retail messageboard traders art opening and closing those trades in the same day which

the story is the phenomenon that is gamestop with its stock up again, some big short-sellers get outme. for an update we welcome romaine bostick. give us an update. it changes moment to moment. romaine: you are looking at a stock is up 1400%. this started late last year in december. a lot of retail traders decided that some of the short-sellers involved with this stock were not getting enough attention to what they felt was more of a long-term bull gaze. they went into the options market and started to buy and just put pressure on the price

joe: back to gamestop for a second, you have been following this reddit phenomenon for a long time. the strategy is not digestible long -- is not to just go along, but it has weaponized call options buying. how does the stock get selected and what specifically is the trade that forces what they believe is a perpetual motion machine higher? katie: this is an interesting nuance, this frenzy we have seen over the past few months. they are heading to the options market as well, which you might think is maybe a more sophisticated place, but it is cheaper to buy a call option than to buy the shares themselves. if you look at the most actively traded options today, it is a gamestop call with a $60 strike expiring today and yesterday, it was worth seven cents. today, it is worth a little under two dollars but that is cheaper than $64 per share. in terms of how that works, even though that is not a lot of money, the dealers who are selling those calls have to hedge themselves, so they have to go in and buy the underlying stock. we have seen this happen throughout the past several months and

phenomenon. the poster child, gamestop, as been halted for volatility at least 10 times today, which is only aboutours old. i want to know what the record is for the number of times a single stock has been posted. gamestop currently down by more than half. down by 73% right now. earlier -- he pointed this out. the most valuable company on the russell 2000. what a ride. john broderick, permanent capital portfolio manager. jason, walk me through what you think about what is happening here, and what your involvement has been. john: this is john broderick. we have been involved in this company for 10 years and we have always liked it on a mental basis. back in around 2015, they started to fall on hard times. a lot of turnover in the ceo suite. it kind of lost its way. hestia partners, we formed a group, and we wanted to accelerate the pace of change in the company. we won a contest last spring where we successfully put two new board members on the board to improve the pace of change. and that paved the way for somebody like ryan cohen to come in and effectively get control of the board without running

street bets it was there that the idea of buying gamestop went viral, as the stock soared, the financial world was left stunned. >> we are seeing a phenomenon that i have never seen >> there's nothing nothing about what you're seeing when it comes to this stock right now. >> reporter: that's because gamestop which sells video games and consoles is not doing well their sales are plummeting and their stores are shuttering, most analysts say profitability is still years away, so why did the reddit group by? well, it started this spring when a user pointed out that gamestop had a massive amount of short interest, bets, essentially, that the stock would decline. as long as the stock fell, short sellers would make money the redditers found out if they collectively bought a bunchover gamestop, they could force a surge, they would have to buy back higher, creating what's known as a squeeze it worked. gamestop skyrocketed going from $3 in april to nearly 350 today. several large hedge funds were severely wounded in the process. >> you have basically the david pack of wolfes beating the goliath pack of wolfes, that is retail investors winning against

as you know we've been fascinated by the phenomenon of gamestop and spacs with the markets and valuations quarter at your firm and what tell says about where we are in this economy right now. >> good morning, andrew. it is great to be here again yes, it's a challenging economic climate. but we had the best quarter in our firm's 35-year history as you noted, we had report distributable earnings record fee-related earnings, up 36%. we had record appreciation across our portfolio which is what really matters for our clients. we had 30-plus billion dollars of inflows nearly $100 billion for the year it was a great quarter on every metric for us. why it happened, one, was obviously the strength of markets in the fourth quarter. secondly, i would say it's where we've positioned our portfolio the last few years big exposure in things like life sciences, digital payments, enterprise software and then finally for us what i'd say is we're seeing incredible growth in what we call perpetual capital. things like core plus real estate direct lending infrastructure, insurance. this provides a tremendous

gamestop rebellion is so important. >> thank you. it is the same phenomenonout about detached political elites in brussels and in london not listening to ordinary people. the donald trump phenomenon, very much the same thing, the beltway, big businesses, big banks, not in touch with ordinary peoples lives, not in touch with reality. whether people were buying gamestop shares, order snarery folk in the street, whether they were getting good value or not isn't the point. they made a decision is what is supposed to be a free market, that they will buy these shares. of course some of the big cynical, you know, wall street hedge funds were shorting this stock, have been bleeding, have been losing money but hey, you know, all fair in love and war, all fair in financial markets. then suddenly, these millions of people who already have a perception that wall street looks after itself, that they always get dumped upon, suddenly in the middle of all of this, the biggest brokers in the usa, robinhood and others without warning, without reason, suspend, completely the bu

gamestop, has now fallen back but has grown hugely in recent days. linette lopez from business insider has been helping me unpick the story. this is completely unheard of. but we are witnessing is a phenomenonthe pandemic, people are stuck at home and they're not spending money the same way they used to and so money they would usually spend going out for dinners, they have put in the stock market. you have no free trading apps they give you instant trade. —— new free. and you have a kind of popular sentiment in the united states that whoever is leading this group of traders has created a narrative that by trading with these not financially some companies making their price go up, you are hurting the fat cats mostly which is not necessarily the case. a lot of the people trading, the ringleaders in these rated forums who are running this thing seem to be experienced trader themselves and they know exactly how to specifically trade the derivative of the stock to make the stock kind of korean around wall street and have all sorts of institutions around wall street by the stock in order to get out of the way of these traders coming in or buying in and the fundamentals of the business look good.

phenomenon that has been going on for more than a year. that is this retail interest on reddit and robinhood really driving the stock shares. i want to take gamestopan example. starting with the initial fundamental story, one of a short, it is a videogame retailer. short interest is driving up this interest ratio. at the same time, this interesting narrative emerging on reddit, essentially pitting short-sellers at the establishment. reddit uses mostly call options. we see a record amount of call options being traded on gamestop. that surpassed the traded volume for tesla, which also has a lot of call interest. people were also publishing sort of the equivalent of research touting the fundamental of the company even though they used more colorful language than we probably see in a report. what you get is dealers who are hedging this call option exposure. to do so, they need to buy the underlying stock. then you get short-sellers who are squeezed out of their position so they start to buy as well. you get the snowballing effect added with reddit users doing this kind of yolo trade and buying it. i think a great way to describe it is that this shows

about the gamestop stock, doing a deep dive on youtube, justifying why i decided to buy it and it snowballing and snowballing. it's something now that has become clearly a deeply personal phenomenon kind of equate it to folks voting with their dollars in order to get back out or make a statement toward big finance. what we've seen today is pretty shocking, robinhood shutting down the ability to buy stock. this feels like the very thing all these people are railing against. emily: so do you think we are entering a new phase of internet activism? could this start the next occupy wall street? alexis: i think very much, just even seeing the sentiment, the comments, very personal stories of people who been crushed and felt like no one was looking out for them. i think this is very much the drum circle having gotten much bigger thanks to the connective internet, and more effective, frankly. because every one of us now has access to buy and sell stocks. we have access to the same data everyone else does. to the same processing power these funds do. people saw an opportunity where somehow, hedge were able to extend shorts on more than 100% of the actual shares available for the company.

phenomenon. >> well, david, reddit's design has amplified the attention on stocks like gamestop and hled to conversationsl. here's how reddit works. it's an open discussion forum where people can post and up vote or like people, other people's posts the posts that received the most up votes are featured more prominently, and then the most up voted posts are included in the r/popular reddit feed. th that goes on the home page once a conversation starts to gain traction, it can reach a much broader audience. while conversations on reddit have driven short-lived rallies in the past and died down, the rally in gamestop was so meaningful in just a couple of days that the conversation on the wall street bets reddit feed made to reddit's home page then there is reached many more casual investors, people who might not have been following or looking for information on stocks or trading. now, the reason we've blurred out this video, i want to say, is because foul language is frequently used on the platform. reddit co-founder who is no longer involved in the company weighed in on reddit's trading phenomenon on cnbc

phenomenon. individuals are in before the experts. take for example, tesla, obviously the best example. shares are up again today. the investor class, the professionals hated it for years. gamestopat keeps powering higher after a high-profile investor got involved. blackberry, they won a big legal battle. bed, bath & beyond, believe it or not got a upgrade today, new target 30. disclosure, i took profits on my blackberry. it was in my personal account. bed, bath & beyond was in the hotline portfolio. i talked about it also on twitter and we sent an alert to take profits. there are is pay back for individual investors see so many high-risk stocks they owned in their own personal accounts crushed year after year by the shorts. these stocks were easy prey. they were simply too small for wall street to care about so there was no support for them. now there is an army of support and they are fighting back. i love this, but i also want to make sure this army doesn't get too focused on stuff like revenge, instead continues to use its collective knowledge to beat wall street to the punch. on that note i would like to bring in michelle snyder and along with simpler trading director of op

phenomenon some weeks back. charles payne, if you look at the catalyst initially for attention going to gamestop it was, you know, a guy was going to take it to the internet level, joining the board, finding a way to be more than just a brick-and-mortar concern. it looked promising. enough for bank of america all right, this is an issue maybe worth 10, $15 more a share. nothing like this. so what happened? >> right. neil, first of all i got to say i recommended many of these stocks on january 11th or before. i've got the report in my hand that i sent out to my subscribers and here's the list. the shorts, first of all, all this nonsense, all of this noise, all this whining by wall street is making me sick! 140% of gamestop was short. i didn't hear one person on tv complaining about wall street trying to crush gamestop claim. 140% short! i told my subscribers, buy this stock and they made a fortune. i told them to buy virgin space, we took profits on that today. physician, that is up huge. tank gears is up huge. neil, you can't allah wall street to short 75% of the stock nobody says anything. crush these companies

about this phenomenon that we can add, maybe some of the others recently, whether it's spacs, ipos, bitcoin, whatever you want to look at. are you troubled by what we're seeing with gamestoped, joe, because it is enabled by very distorted financial conditions look, there's four levels to this element you've been covering them. one is the pure hedge fund versus retail, antiestablishment. the second one is a change in market structure the third one is the interest of regulators and politicians and then the fourth one is the one that really has a lot of market implication is this the beginning of the accident we were worried about because of overleverage, over excessive risk taking or is this simply another buy the dip opportunity for market participants as hedge funds degross. that is the key element for your 401k the other stuff is really interesting, but the bottom line is do you believe this is the canary in the coal mine or is this another buy the dip opportunity? >> right it wouldn't be a causal effect -- it wouldn't be causation, it's just symptomatic of what we've seen i certainly think -- i mean, i can blame the fed on the front end and the back end i blame them on