Editor’s note for Friday, January 29, 2021

My thoughts today: 

The GameStop phenomenon is spreading: In Malaysia today, retail investors “joined forces on social media and pushed up stocks of under-pressure rubber glove makers.” 

Could this type of social media share pump event happen in China? Probably not: The internet is too censored, and the markets are too heavily regulated. But some Chinese retail investors dream: “Oh, the woes of a smaller player…I hope the small investors win” reads a plaintive comment from a Weibo user (in Chinese).

For more on GameStop and the Chinese grassroots investors egging on their American peers, see our top story today.  

Perhaps Britain’s most effective solution to post-Brexit doldrums would be to import a large group of industrious Hongkongers to stimulate the economy. Westminster appears to be planning exactly that, with a new policy to allow as many as 5 million residents of Hong Kong to apply for immigration visas. See our second story for more. 

Our word of the day is Chinese chives or leeks (韭菜 jiǔcài), the term that self-deprecating small-time Chinese stock market traders use to describe their feeling of being played for suckers, because just like the green vegetable, they can be harvested repeatedly, and are grown, cut, and tied into bunches by forces beyond their control. 

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief