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TORONTO — Canadian stock market activity soared in February as an investor frenzy for stocks such as BlackBerry Ltd.'s was accelerated by surplus cash from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Total volume on all TMX equity markets — The Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange, TSX Alpha Exchange and Montreal Exchange — rose to 26.2 billion in February, up from 20.6 billion in January and 12 billion in February 2020.

The value of transactions increased 10.9 per cent to $251.8 billion compared with January and the number of transactions in February climbed 15.6 per cent compared with the first month of the year to nearly 35.9 million.

'In parallel with our peer exchanges in the U.S., there has been an increase in overall activity from the retail segment of our client base, with a particular interest in companies in technology and life sciences,' a TMX spokesperson wrote in an email.

The average daily volume in February was 1.38 billion, with nearly 1.9 million transactions valued at a total of nearly $13.3 billion.

Total volumes in the first two months of 2021 doubled to 46.8 billion compared with the same period in 2020 while the number of transactions increased 46 per cent to over 66.8 million. The value of transactions totalled nearly $478.8 billion, up 34 per cent.

The fear of missing out is driving investor action, says Allan Small, senior investment adviser at HollisWealth.

'I can't tell you how many investors right now are chasing stocks,' he said in an interview.

'They're looking for any name that they think is undervalued, that will do well as economies, markets and countries start to come out of COVID (and) people start to re-enter into a normal world again.'

Belief that people will want to travel once restrictions are lifted has propelled investors to buy Air Canada, for example, whose shares have surged 23 per cent so far this year after suffering deep declines during the worst of the pandemic.

'Anything that trades on the TSX that makes sense from a reopening standpoint, people are going to get involved in,' Small said.

'It's one of those points in time where many people, and I'm included, believe that there's really nothing holding us back other than ourselves right now and once these restrictions are removed these stocks are going to reflect this pent-up demand.'

The sentiment has caused many investors to be 'greedy,' Small said.

'We're all being greedy. We're trying to chase the high flyers and sometimes it doesn't end well.'

Interest goes beyond quality, large-cap stocks to penny stocks, cannabis names or whatever else is the flavour of the day, week or month.

That includes the Reddit crowd, which spawned a social media-based movement that sent shares of companies like BlackBerry Ltd. and GameStop in the U.S. soaring.

'They're going in heavy and they're getting in and out quick.'

Small said Canadians who have remained employed through the pandemic are investing from the mountains of cash they're sitting on by not having to commute to work.

Canada's largest stock market, the TSX, accounted for 79 per cent of the total transactions in February and 87 per cent of the total value.

There were an average of 1.5 million transactions a day, valued at a total of $11.5 billion, up from 1.26 million in January worth nearly $10 billion.

TSX volumes gained 44.4 per cent in January and February from the year-ago numbers as the value of transactions was up 29.4 per cent to $418.6 billion as the number of transactions rose 35 per cent to 53.6 million.

The TSX Venture Exchange had 4.16 million transactions in February valued at $7.69 billion, up from 633,740 transactions and $1.25 billion in February 2020.

TSX Alpha Exchange had 3.4 million transactions valued at $25 billion, up from 2.5 million and $16.9 billion in February 2020.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 3, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BB)

Ross Marowits, The Canadian Press

The Reddit trader who claimed he made tens of millions of dollars leading an army of amateur investors to snap up shares of GameStop — a campaign framed as pitting Main Street versus Wall Street — lost $13 million on Tuesday as shares of the struggling video game retailer retreated.

Keith Gill, who goes by the name 'DeepF***ingValue' on Reddit and 'Roaring Kitty' on YouTube, revealed in a post on the WallStreetBets discussion board that the value of his GameStop holdings had sunk to $7.6 million. That was down from nearly $21 million the previous day and as much as $50 million from last week, when GameStop's shares peaked at $483 each.

On Tuesday, Gill tweeted an image of a kitten with a shocked look raising a paw to its face.

Cash Frenzy Reddit Free

Gill still appears to be solidly in the black on his GameStop investment. The brokerage statement that the former MassMutual financial adviser posted on Tuesday night on Reddit showed a cash balance of nearly $13 million. He first publicly disclosed that he was buying shares of GameStop in mid-2019. At the time, the stock traded for just over $4 a share, while options to buy the shares cost around $50,000.

Many average investors who rushed into GameStop's stock and cheered each other on in the WallStreetBets Reddit forum are unlikely to have notched such outsized profits. GameStop shares were up slightly on Wednesday to just over $93 as of midday. But the retailer's stock price has plunged in the past week, losing more than 80% of its value and erasing nearly $30 billion from the accounts of GameStop investors.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet with other top regulators later this week to discuss the volatile trading in GameStop, as well as the shares of other so-called 'meme stock' companies and even the price of silver, all seemingly caught up in the recent trading frenzy stoked by social media.

Shares of movie theater chain AMC Entertainment were also rebounding slightly on Wednesday, up to nearly $8.50, after plunging 40% on Tuesday. Shares of the former mobile device maker BlackBerry, another stock that was heavily mentioned in WallStreetBets, were up just 14 cents on Wednesday to just under $12. Shares of that company had been as high as $28 last week.

The stock-price moves come amid growing evidence that some hedge funds have been playing both sides of the GameStop drama. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Mudrick Capital, a $3 billion hedge fund, made nearly $200 million betting the shares of AMC and GameStop would rise last month. It has been previously reported that a number of hedge funds had been shorting, or betting against, GameStop and other shares, contributing to the spikes in those companies' shares.

Cash Frenzy Reddit Download

There are also concerns that discussion on WallStreetBets is being disrupted by bots. CBS MoneyWatch reported on Monday that the moderators of the discussion board had recently detected a 'large amount' of bot activity in the stock-recommendation content being posted to its group.