Australian stock surges after being mistaken for GameStop

A little-known Australian mining company saw its share price soar as much as 50 percent yesterday, after investors appeared to mistake it for the similarly named cult United States stock GameStop.

GME Resources — listed as “GME” on the Australian Securities Exchange — surged in early trading, with the market taking an unexpected interest in the tiny Western Australia-based nickel miner.

Trading volume in the company was at more than 20 times the normal average, leading some to believe that GME had been mistaken for GameStop, which has the ticker “GME” on the New York Stock Exchange.

GameStop, a struggling US video game retailer, has seen its stock surge about 1,000 percent in two weeks after a group of amateur investors active on the online forum Reddit banded together to fight the Wall Street funds that had pushed its price lower.

Close to the end of trade yesterday, the Australian company was still trading up 19 percent for the day, beating the country’s top listed firms, which were down more than 2 percent.