The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a long-awaited report yesterday on the decision by many stock brokers to restrict customers’ ability to purchase shares of GameStop Corp. and other meme stocks in January, but the document offers few clues about how the agency might change market-structure rules to prevent such incidents in the future and came to no definitive conclusions as to why those restrictions were made, MarketWatch.com reported. “January’s events gave us an opportunity to consider how we can further our efforts to make the equity markets as fair, orderly and efficient as possible,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a statement. “Making markets work for everyday investors gets to the heart of the SEC’s mission.” The report offers an account of the rapid increase in the price of GameStop shares in January of this year, noting that the videogame retailer’s stock increased in value by 2,700% from January 8 to its intraday high on January 28 of $483. It notes that the price volatility came against the backdrop of growing interest in the company on social media, where investors argued that the company was undervalued for fundamental reasons and ripe for a so-called short-squeeze, because statistics showed that more than 100% of the shares in the company outstanding were on loan to investors seeking to bet that the price of the stock would fall.
