Earlier this year the US video game retailer GameStop became the subject of a spectacular stock market frenzy.
The shares in the ailing firm, which still mostly sells games through a network of bricks-and-mortar stores, exploded in value, from just $80m (£57.7m) in April 2020 to a peak of $24bn in January 2021.
There was no compelling real world business-related reason for the soaring valuation. Rather the stock was being pumped up by a community of non-professional traders, egging each other on online chat forums with amusing memes to push the share price ever higher.
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