Investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown is cashing in on the recent Gamestop trading frenzy in the US.
The company said it has seen ‘elevated volumes of share dealing’ since the end of January ‘driven by interest in US stocks from existing clients’.
Much of the interest was sparked by a rush to buy Gamestop shares as users of the Reddit website drove a 1,500 per cent increase in the video game retailer’s value in just two weeks.
Hargreaves cashed in from the rush to buy Gamestop shares as users of the Reddit website drove a 1,500 per cent increase in the video game retailer’s value in just two weeks
Further fuel was poured on the fire when Elon Musk founder of electric car maker Tesla posted a message saying ‘Gamestonk’ to his 49m followers on Twitter.
This was followed by rapid rises in the price of other ‘fad’ stocks touted by Reddit users, such as cannabis producers, which saw share prices rise many hundreds of per cent before dropping back.
Hargreaves said that the top three most popular overseas stocks among its customers were Gamestop, AMC Entertainment and Tesla.
Also in the top ten were Apple, cannabis growers Sundial Growers and Tilray, Palantir Technologies, a big data company, and bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain.
Hargreaves said the jump in trading would push its pre-tax profits for the year to June to be ‘modestly above’ analyst predictions of £334million to £360million.
The platform makes money from customers by charging fees each time they trade, on top of a charge based on how much money they have in their account.
Shares rose 1.5 per cent, or 22.5p, to 1572p yesterday.
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