GameStop mania drives jump in Aussie miner with similar stock code

Shares in small Australian nickel and cobalt explorer GME Resources jumped as much as 53% on Thursday, apparently driven by the similarity of the company's stock ticker to U.S. retail investor darling GameStop .

Shares in small Australian nickel and cobalt explorer GME Resources jumped as much as 53% on Thursday, apparently driven by the similarity of the company's stock ticker to U.S. retail investor darling GameStop . GME Resources stock rose as much as four Australian cents to A$0.115 ($0.0878) in early trade, before falling back to around $0.09 by lunchtime.

"There are people buying the stock for shits and giggles, just because of the ticker symbol," said market analyst Kyle Rodda of brokerage IG Markets in Melbourne. "It's all caught up in this GameStop dynamic," he said.

"It's got nothing to do with the company and entirely to do with this mad phenomenon that we're seeing at the moment where these Redditers looking to swarm into these stocks and play around with the market a little bit for their own amusement." Shares of U.S. videogame retailer GameStop have soared about 17-fold since Jan. 12 as small investors, organising on social media, have piled in and forced professional short-sellers to abandon their positions with heavy losses.

A spokesman for GME Resources was not immediately available for comment. ($1 = 1.3091 Australian dollars)

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