GameStop leads another day of nostalgia trading

The best-performing stocks this week are brands familiar to anyone who used to hang out in malls as a kid in the mid-2000s.

Why it matters: Some stocks — GameStop foremost among them — have been on fire to the point that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the SEC are taking notice.

Context: The pandemic hit suburban retail chains hard. But memories linger, and this is a market in which day traders love nothing more than to pile on to beaten-down stocks with a lot of short interest — especially if they carry instantly recognizable brand names.

By the numbers: GameStop is getting most of the press and attention, but Express, the fashion retailer, is up just as much, albeit from a lower starting point.

• AMC Entertainment, which runs the eponymous movie-theater chain, has risen more than 400% in the past five trading sessions.