#GameStop trading craze lifts shares of mining firm with same ticker

A tiny West Australian mining company has been caught up in the GameStop investing craze — thanks to a ticker symbol that matches that of the video game retailer.

GME Resources, which trades on the Australian equities trading platform (ASX) under ticker symbol GME, saw its shares soar more than 50 percent to 12 cents Thursday, as investors mistook the stock for GameStop, which trades as GME on the New York Stock Exchange. The run-up marked GME’s highest level since 2018.

GME, which has market capitalization of just $40 million, is a mining company focused on nickel and cobalt extraction. The company’s skyrocketing price had nothing to do with its business update last Friday, nor the rising price of nickel.

Instead, members of stock-trading groups on Reddit and Facebook bought the stock as a joke due to its ticker’s similarity to the popular US stock GameStop.

GME’s managing director James Sullivan told the Sydney Morning Herald that he was “stunned” after waking up to see the firm’s share price up 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?”

The 15-year vet of GME said his nephew clued him into the fact that the stock run-up had to do with GameStop and the ticker symbol.

“I was hoping to be able to say it was more to do with our world-class nickel projects,” he said before adding: “What goes up comes down usually, if there’s nothing to substantiate it.”

Shares of GameStop have jumped over 1,500 percent in the past month to $350 a share, thanks to the same-day traders on the Reddit forum Wallstreetbets, who continue to promote the stock and other heavily short-sold companies in perceived revenge against major US hedge funds.