The stocks of a local mining company from Australia skyrocketed this week because its name on the stock exchange is similar to that of a major US retail chain, reports say.
GME Resources is a small nickel and cobalt exploration company in Western Australia. Its shares suddenly jumped more than 50 percent to 12 cents on Thursday, which is their highest level since 2018, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
The paper explained that the sudden surge apparently occurred because the company’s ticker on the stock market is similar to that of GameStop, a US video game and electronics retail giant operating more than 5,000 stores across 10 countries.
According to CNN, GameStop’s stock has recently skyrocketed thanks to young traders who coordinated their efforts on Reddit. This reportedly led groups of investors to buy thousands of shares in the locally listed GME by mistake.
James Sullivan, GME’s managing director, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he was baffled after seeing the firm’s share price rise by over 50 percent.
“When I opened my share tracking app and saw it was at 9.4 cents, I was stunned,” he said. “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,” Kyle Rodda, market analyst of brokerage IG Markets in Melbourne, Australia told Reuters.
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