- Fidelity incorrectly listed millions of GameStop shares available to short Tuesday.
- Reddit retail traders, who have long backed GameStop stock, were fuming over the matter.
- "This was a $2.2 BILLION 'whoopsie,'" one Redditor wrote in response to Fidelity.
Reddit day traders were fuming after Fidelity incorrectly listed millions of GameStop shares available to short Tuesday.
According to a post on Fidelity's Reddit page, "our trade ticket reflected an incorrect number of GME shares available to short," the company said. "After researching the volume with our lending services team, we were able to identify that the root cause was an incorrect entry of the number of shares available to short by one of our external counterparties."
The issue was resolved by 12:10 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the company said. Fidelity did not immediately respond to Insider's question on how many shares were in discrepancy or request for comment.
On Reddit, one post about the matter in the r/Superstonk thread received about 10,000 upvotes. The post suggested the company had mis-listed an additional 11 million shares and connected it to GameStop stock's 3% drop on Tuesday. "Must be another coincidence," the post read.
In Fidelity's original post, it said the number of shares borrowed never exceeded the amount available. It added that the company was working to figure out how the error happened.
In response to Fidelity's post, one Redditor said, "This was a $2.2 BILLION 'whoopsie." Another said, "How do you accidentally put 13,000,000 instead or 2,000,000?" One asked who the counterparty was that entered the incorrect number.
In January, millions of retail traders who had gathered on Reddit drove up the price of GameStop stock to squeeze short sellers. At one point, more shares of GameStop were shorted than available, which can happen when shares are lent out again and again.
On Wednesday morning, the stock rose 1.5% to $199.09, adding to the company's more than 1,000% rally so far this year.