GameStop: US lawmakers to quiz key players from Robinhood, Reddit and finance

GameStop: US lawmakers to quiz key players from Robinhood, Reddit and finance

Frenzied trading in the shares of GameStop and other companies will be the subject of what is expected to be a fiery hearing in Congress on Thursday, when US politicians get their first chance to quiz executives from the trading app Robinhood, Reddit and other players in the saga.The House financial services committee will hold a hearing at noon in a first step to untangling the furore surrounding trading in GameStop, AMC cinemas and other companies whose share values soared to astronomical levels as small investors piled into the stocks.The hearing, titled Game Stopped? Who Wins and Loses When Short Sellers, Social Media, and Retail Investors Collide, is expected to be fractious.Shares in GameStop, a troubled video games chain store, soared 1,600% in January, as an army of small investors, many using the trading app Robinhood, appeared to have bet that Wall Street hedge funds had overplayed their hand when betting the stock price would collapse – a practice known as short-selling.Spurred on by meme-toting members of the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, investors kept buying the shares, driving up the price and triggering huge losses for some hedge funds.Robinhood briefly suspended trading in GameStop and other hot stocks at the end