GME Resources Limited, a fairly obscure Australian mining company, saw its share price soar by 50 percent yesterday because people were mistaking it for video game retailer and current object of media fascination Gamestop, which has the ticker symbol GME, according to News.com.au. While investors seemed to eventually realize their mistake, leading to a tapering off in price as the day went on, the stock still ended the trading session 20 percent higher than before. It is similar to what happened when eccentric billionaire Elon Musk tweeted about the secure communications app called Signal, which led investors to then pile into a different company also named Signal.

Gamestop, an aging video game retailer still attached to the cartridge and disc era, became a batteground over the last week or so between Wall Street short sellers who were betting it would likely fail and Reddit's r/WallStreetBets community, who began countering the shorts with options, forcing the Wall Street firms to take massive losses, eventually forcing them to abandon their positions. While some have made handsome profits on the deals, most others were participating mainly because driving Gamestop's stock price higher hurt the short sellers, and users were happy to pay a premium to ruin their days or even careers.

Shortly after the short sellers abandoned their positions, trading app Robinhood, which the majority of Reddit investors were using to buy the stocks, halted buys, ostensibly in the interest of protecting customers from market volatility. Outraged, Robinhood users have now filed a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming that they suffered losses from the restrictions, though corporate lawyers say that the plaintiffs have an uphill battle, as platforms generally have broad discretion over the activity that goes on them.