On Jan. 28, the day after GameStop Corp. mania hit its crescendo on the back of a short squeeze for the record books, about $359 million worth of shares were caught in limbo, Bloomberg News reported. More than 1 million shares were deemed failed-to-deliver that day due either to buyers lacking cash to complete purchases or sellers not having the shares to settle trades, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission data. The SEC report, which covers trading from Jan. 15 through the end of the month, is just one more indication of the dislocation in the market for the video game retailer’s shares. GameStop stock, for months among the most heavily shorted on the New York Stock Exchange, surged more than 1,700% from Jan. 1 through Jan. 27 as a legion of Reddit users piled on, forcing bearish traders to scramble for shares and brokers to take the highly unusual step of curbing trading.
