Over a quarter of American adults say they bought GameStop (GME) or another viral stock in January, according to a new survey from Yahoo Finance and The Harris Poll.
The GameStop frenzy, kicked off by the subreddit r/wallstreetbets, struck a chord with many retail investors and individuals who resented what they viewed as the Wall Street establishment, a few hedge funds that had shorted the stock, betting it would go down.
The survey data speaks to the scope of the tug of war between short-sellers and retail investors flooding the market with money.
Despite recent losses, GameStop is up more than 150% year-to-date. It’s now worth around 10% of its all-time intraday high, when it was trading at $483 for a moment at the end of January.
Using a representative sample size of 1,089 Americans, the survey found that GameStop wasn’t actually the most popular stock from a “how many people bought it” standpoint. While 9% of Americans bought at least one share of GameStop, according to the poll, 10% bought a share of AMC Entertainment (AMC). Other popular stocks of the Reddit frenzy included BlackBerry (BB) at 6%, Nokia (NOK) at 5%, Castor Maritime (CTRM) at 4%, and about a dozen other "meme stocks."
Around 7% of people who bought viral stocks invested between $1,001 and $5,000 and 8% invested over $5,000. This drove up the average investment to $8,533.
In relative terms, 35% of people who bought one of these stocks bought AMC, 33% bought GameStop, and 23% bought BlackBerry.
The Yahoo Finance-Harris Poll survey found the demographic breakdown of the GameStop mania is what most people might expect: the group that put the most money in was men between 18 to 44, at 40%. Only 17% of women in this age range invested in these stocks.