Penny stock Reddit thread cracks down on shills as users surge
Sarah Ponczek, Bloomberg News
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, via Bloomberg
The explosion in penny stock trading has been so abrupt that a Reddit thread devoted to it has been forced to update regulations to curb user shilling.
âTHE RULES HAVE BEEN UPDATED! TAKE NOTE!,â blared a post in r/pennystocks Wednesday night. Among the tweaks were changes to the type of content permitted in the thread and the official banning of cryptocurrency-related chatter.
Social media platforms and websites such as Reddit have become must-reads for the Wall Street stock set these days. A forum called r/wallstreetbets, which boasts 1.9 million users, has shown an astonishing ability to move prices. In less than a year, 1 million new users have joined. Now, with penny stocks surging -- last month, more than 1 trillion shares of tiny, off-exchange shares traded -- forums like r/pennystocks, which has 391,000 members, are growing too.