Fox Business host Charles Payne gave Wall Street investors a piece of his mind Tuesday, lambasting hedge funds facing financial ruin because a group of Reddit users made GameStop’s stock price skyrocket.
GameStop saw its stock price surge over the past week by more than 600% due to amateur investors coordinating online over a subreddit known as “WallstreetBets” (WSB). The retail company had its share price jump from $43 on Jan. 21 to $330 less than a week later. (RELATED: How A Rabble Of Anonymous Redditors Stuck A Thumb In Wall Street’s Eye)
“The shorts, first of all, all this nonsense, all of this noise, all this whining by Wall Street, it’s making me sick!” Payne told Neil Cavuto. “One hundred forty percent of GameStop was short. I didn’t hear one person on TV complaining about Wall Street trying to crush GameStop! 140% short!”
“I told my subscribers, ‘buy this stock,’ and they made a fortune,” Payne exclaimed.
“Neil, you can’t allow Wall Street to short 75% of a stock and nobody says anything, crush these companies into the dirt, and then when the individual investor makes money, everyone is up in arms,” Payne continued. “‘Oh, they’re going to lose their shirt? Don’t you think people are trading, traded 80 billion shares today? People are ringing the register.”
He added, “I have a kid who bought a house. He made $50,000 and bought a house. So yeah, some people are going to lose, some are going to win. But if they want to change the rules of the game now because the general public is making money after decades of the shorts crushing thousands of stocks into the dirt, I watched stocks being crushed completely to zero, and no one ever whispered anything because those stocks didn’t have Wall Street sponsorship.”
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Short sellers on Wall Street have lost more than $5 billion amid GameStop’s rally, including $2.5 billion from last Friday to Monday, according to CNBC. The hedge fund Melvin Capital Melvin closed out its short position in GameStop Tuesday after suffering huge losses.