Number Crunch

At Peak ‘GameStonk,’ 1 Million GameStop Shares Were Stuck in Limbo

$359 million worth of GameStop shares failed to deliver because buyers didn’t have the cash or sellers didn’t have the shares

$359 million: That’s the value of more than one million GameStop shares that failed to deliver on January 28 at the height of the “GameStonk” frenzy and on the day Robinhood halted users from buying the stock, according to data from the Securities and Exchanges Commission, per Bloomberg. The shares were stuck in limbo because buyers either didn’t have the money to complete purchases or sellers didn’t have the shares to settle trades.

Last week’s congressional hearings about the GameStop and Robinhood fiasco have illuminated some of the complex dynamics behind the rally that shot GameStop’s share price from $19 to $480 in the span of a few weeks. Driven by enthusiasm from retail investors on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, the spike was arrested when Robinhood and other trading apps temporarily stopped their users from buying GameStop shares. The fact that a million shares of GameStop stock could simply get stuck in limbo at the height of trading didn’t simplify matters.