Robinhood, Reddit App Downloads Surge as Investors Take on Wall Street

Robinhood, Reddit App Downloads Surge as Investors Take on Wall Street

The mobile apps for stock trading service Robinhood and the messageboard website Reddit surged this week as amateur investors on the platforms shook Wall Street by pouring money into companies in the crosshairs of short sellers.As U.S. hedge funds continued to face an army of Redditors from the r/WallStreetBets community on Thursday, statistics released by Apptopia, Inc. suggested that at least some companies at the center of the storm were benefiting from the attention.On January 27, GameStop closed at $347.51 per share, which was up 134 percent from the day prior. Late last December, the stock price was around $18.According to Apptopia's analysis, January 27 was also notable for both Robinhood and Reddit breaking records for daily active users (DAUs) and overall downloads.Robinhood, which has since been widely criticized by investors for its limiting of trades, shot to the top of the U.S. iOS App Store and had about 120,000 single day downloads, its most ever. It also recorded its highest number of DAUs, roughly 2.6 million.According to The Information reporter Kate Clark, Robinhood has attracted 2.2 million downloads in January so far, compared to 1.2 million total last December.Reddit reached second place on the U.S. iOS App Store on