Douglas Perry
oregonlive.com
How crazy is the stock market right now? The penny stock that represents the smoldering remains of the bankrupt Blockbuster Video empire surged more than 700% on Tuesday.
BB Liquidating Inc. has continued its run Wednesday, up as much as 302%, Bloomberg reports. The stock’s volume, writes the business news outlet, “was 70 times the three-month average, showing that even the most retrograde of old-technology stocks isn’t immune to the ebullience of retail investors and day traders.”
The Blockbuster blitz, coming on the heels of the Reddit-driven GameStop stock surge, has left even seasoned market watchers scratching their heads.
“Who exactly is buying shares of Blockbuster’s liquidation holding company is unclear,” writes the financial-markets content service Seeking Alpha.
The surge in BB Liquidating’s stock is eye-popping enough that the news has jumped beyond the market’s players and begun to make waves on social media.
“Prior to being a legislator, I worked as an associate general counsel at a financial services company,” California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu wrote on Twitter, commenting on a thread about the Blockbuster stock. “I have concluded that investing in stocks is virtually indistinguishable from gambling.”
(Various Twitter users responded to Lieu’s tweet, pointing out that there’s a big difference between maintaining a diversified investment portfolio and day trading.)
Blockbuster Video used to be a staple of towns and cities across the country, with more than 9,000 stores in 2004. The rise of streaming services quickly overwhelmed the business, and Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in 2010. Now only one Blockbuster store remains: in Bend.
lmfaooooooooooooo yooooooooooo
— finallyjames (@finallyjames_) January 27, 2021
we’re going to be reading about this in school textbooks years from now https://t.co/JXYK0idqHy
— Douglas Perry
dperry@oregonian.com
@douglasmperry
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