This has felt like a long year in financial markets, studded with events that offered insight in to the rapidly changing nature of trading and investment. From across the Financial Times’ markets team, here is our pick of the standout moments of 2021.
GameStop: revenge of the nerds
In January, US stock markets were transfixed by the outsized trading volumes and surging share prices of unremarkable established companies such as consoles retailer GameStop and cinema chain AMC.
What began as a discussion on untapped value at GameStop on the Reddit website months earlier morphed into a crowdsourced effort to squeeze out the short position held by a hedge fund, Melvin Capital. The momentum, fuelled by social media memes, flooded through the retail market. Some brokers were forced to curb trading. Robinhood, a popular broker for day traders, required a cash injection from shareholders to withstand the demands placed on it by its clearing house.