(Bloomberg) -- Investors betting against retail trader favorites GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. were dealt a serious blow on Wednesday to the tune of about $673 million, according to data from financial analytics firm S3 Partners.
GameStop and AMC, two wildly popular meme stocks among members of Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, soared more than 16% and 19% respectively as speculative assets picked up steam. Those gains pushed mark-to-market losses for short-sellers to roughly $8.1 billion for the year, according to S3 Partners data.
The video-game retailer and movie-theater chain have recaptured Wall Street’s attention as analysts speculate retail traders in particular are driving the action. The hashtag #AMC500k continued to trend on Twitter, while mentions on social trading platforms like StockTwits surged.
GameStop short-sellers were dealt mark-to-market losses of nearly $383 million on Wednesday, Ihor Dusaniwsky, S3 Partners’ managing director of predictive analytics, said by email, pushing year-to-date losses to $6.7 billion. For AMC shorts, the day’s loss came in at $291 million, meaning short-sellers are down more than $1.3 billion this year.
Bearish bets have remained steady with roughly one-fifth of available GameStop and AMC shares currently sold short, according to data compiled by S3 Partners. A group of 37 so-called mime stocks tracked by Bloomberg rose 7.7% Wednesday for the best session since March.
