A surge of retail stock trading over the last year lit the fuse that sent shares of GameStop rocketing higher without a clear business reason, market watchers say, squeezing hedge funds that had bet against the retailer and other companies that were out of favor on Wall Street

What is going on? Here are some answers 👇

More individuals have invested in stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts cite a number of reasons, including lockdowns boosted savings, stimulus putting cash into people’s pockets and extremely low interest rates

Also, a proliferation of trading apps allowed anyone with a smartphone to buy or sell stocks for free. Retail investors’ participation in U.S. equity order flows increased to nearly 20% in 2020 from 15% in 2019, data from Swiss bank UBS showed

What has been the impact of this surge in retail trading?

Big U.S. technology companies were among the beneficiaries last year. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google saw record inflows as their businesses benefited from lockdowns and their stocks soared

💵 With unprecedented stimulus and easy money policies from central banks, investors then shifted to smaller stocks, especially ones that got beaten down during the pandemic

Trump may be best remembered for his use of Twitter as a bully pulpit to stoke controversy or browbeat opponents, but the noise his tweets generated often distracted from the big policy changes he made over his four-year term https://t.co/shNVNMoDfg

During his rollercoaster presidency, the focus was often on what Trump was saying and not on what he was doing. But a review of his policies shows that he had a real effect on people’s lives. Here's a closer look 👇

➖ China:

The Trump administration put China’s rise in the spotlight and helped forge a bipartisan and increasingly adversarial U.S. view of the world’s second-largest economy

From a raft of tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese imports to sanctions against top officials and a muscular use of penalties against top Chinese companies like Huawei, ZTE, SMIC and TikTok owner ByteDance, Trump hit Beijing on a variety of fronts

Tensions have risen especially over the past year with Trump repeatedly blaming China for the coronavirus, which originated in the city of Wuhan. The two global powers are increasingly at odds over a range of other issues, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea