WINNIPEG -- A band of investors on social media are driving up the price of U.S. video game retailer GameStop.

A fixture of suburban shopping malls for years, GameStop Corp.’s stock price – at $20 USD in early January – surged hundreds of dollars higher in recent weeks, sending shockwaves through financial markets.

“We've never seen a short squeeze of this magnitude in the history of investing,” said Rob Tétrault, senior vice president, portfolio manager and head of Tetrault Wealth Advisory Group, based in Winnipeg.

“They’re trying to squeeze the short sellers and force them to pay more and more money each and every day,” he said.

A “short” is when you borrow a stock from a stockbroker and sell it off right away.

The hope is the price falls and one can buy back the stock at a lower price. You return the stock to the broker you got it from and pocket some money off the difference.

That is what some Wall Street hedge fund managers were doing with GameStop Corp.

A community on Reddit, using the thread “r/wallstreetbets,” caught wind of what the short sellers were doing and decided to put the squeeze on them by buying up GameStop Corp. stock, driving up the price.

“They must put up more capital and more capital,” said Tétrault, explaining what happens to the short sellers when the stock price goes up instead of down.

Tétrault also warns that GameStop’s stock value could hit unforeseen highs because it is not being traded on a “rational basis” and advises against purchasing shares at this time.

Still, the strategy seemingly worked and some short-selling hedge funds have lost billions already.

Many of the investing Redditors, known as “retail investors,” are using online brokerage sites to facilitate trading.

“I think that’s the power of technology, the accessibility and ability for the retail investor or consumer who can go and access products that are usually reserved for larger institutions,” said Andrew Chau, CEO of NeoFinancial, a Canadian financial technology company.

Online brokerage sites, like Robinhood, have responded by limiting trading on their platform in GameStop Corp. stocks along with other companies targeted by the r/wallstreetbets community, such as Blackberry or the movie theatre chain AMC.

But while some see this as a story of the little guy taking on Wall Street, the reality may be less ideal.

“Depending on your point of view maybe it’s David and Goliath fighting the evil hedge fund managers, or maybe it’s a handful of people on the web trying to make money off of regular innocent people,” said Shiu-Yik Au, assistant professor of finance at the University of Manitoba.

“All this seems to be doing is transferring wealth from one group to another.”

GameStop’s surge in stock price may benefit the early adopters leading the r/wallstreetbets subreddit who can cash out big, says Au, but less so for people only just jumping on the bandwagon.

The company itself may not benefit from all of this, either.

GameStop Corp.’s stock was incredibly volatile, even in the last twenty-four hours alone, opening at $265 USD, hitting a high of $483 USD, a low of $112.25 USD, then finally closing at $193.6 USD.

“By having this volatility it makes it a lot harder for the executives there to actually make good decisions,” said Au.