Data shows institutional investors as drivers of some of the wild price action in GameStop last week.
Scooped by
Richard Platt
onto Crowd Funding, Micro-funding, New Approach for Investors - Alternatives to Wall Street February 6, 2021 2:32 AM
|
Several signs are pointing to institutional investors as big drivers of the wild price action on the way up. “Although retail buying was portrayed as the main driver of the extreme price rally experienced by some stocks, the actual picture may be much more nuanced,” JPMorgan’s quant team uses a proprietary methodology to identify which flows are from retail traders. GameStop was number 15 on the firm’s retail buying list for January. The rookie investor “vigilantes” grabbed the most attention by being all over social media, posting screenshots of their positions and crucifying Robinhood and other brokers when the firms were forced to limit trading. However, it’s possible the noise from this crowd caused most to overlook Wall Street co-opting this trade to make a fast buck as well, data shows. “Maybe it’s not as much of just the little guy versus the big guy,” “I think that it’s reasonable to say that institutional investors were also very active in those stocks last week because there are institutional investors that participate in names that have elevated volume. I think most likely that was also expressed in some of the options activity last week as well.” Retail investors were actually net sellers of GameStop from Tuesday through Thursday last week, according to data from Citadel Securities.