This story has it all. A few people who seemed to see the future, A group of regular people band together with common beliefs. Insiders and billionaires aiming to keep their wealth. Sleeping referees. Politicians being politicians.
The stock goes up and down. The story is unfinished and no one knows what will happen next. Is it possible we'll see the largest transfer or wealth from the top 1% to the middle class? Will regulators step in on the side of the billionaire class? Is the whole story overblown and nothing will happen?
Learn how it started and where it stands today. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. This is hopefully an accurate telling of fascinating events. Nothing more.
Gamestop stock is GME. Gamestop is a video game retailer. In Sep 2019 the stock was trading below $5. The future was uncertain. Comparisons to Blockbuster seemed reasonable.
Keith Gill is a value investor. He goes by deepf***ingvalue (called DFV onward) on Reddit and roaringkitty on YouTube. He posted in the group WallStreetBets (WSB). (🚨🚨Warning: WSB is full of swearing, slang, and serious unsavoriness. If you've ever been offended, it's not for you.) He showed his trade activity in GME stock.
People told him he was going to lose money.
When asked about his reasoning, he responded with "A variety of factors. I can go into greater detail when/if the trade works out."
Side note, he referenced Dr. Michael Burry in the title of his post. Dr. Burry was a key figure in the book & movie, The Big Short. He saw the housing crisis coming way before others and made $800 million for himself and his company. Dr. Burry and his company would come to own over 5% of GME before selling in Dec 2020.
Definitions
Value Investor - Value investing is an investment strategy that involves picking stocks that appear to be trading for less than their intrinsic or book value. Value investors actively seek stocks they think the stock market is underestimating.
Keith Gill = DFV = Roaringkitty
No one knows Keith Gill is DFV until much later.
July 2020 Price: $3-4 range
Short squeeze mentions start 🍋
On Youtube Roaringkitty mentions the possibility of a short squeeze. He says it's not important to him (at this point). He likes the company and thinks other people are too negative on the future of GME.
The same month DFV posts on WSBs and shows a $61k loss. The top response mentions the shorts too.
"I've been accumulating GME, too. Been painfully boring so far lol. Market makers have pinned at $4.00 for like 5 of the last 10 weeks. At 100% short float, restructured debt and new gaming cycle something has got to give" - Floridabuds
Definitions
Shorting, or short-selling, is when an investor borrows shares and immediately sells them, hoping he or she can scoop them up later at a lower price, return them to the lender and pocket the difference.
A short squeeze is an unusual condition that triggers rapidly rising prices in a stock or other tradeable security. For a short squeeze to occur the security must have an unusual degree of short sellers holding positions in it. The short squeeze begins when the price jumps higher unexpectedly.
A market maker is a firm that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the bid–ask spread, or turn.
Citadel Securities is a market maker.
Stock pinning happens when a stock price stays at or near an option strike price on the day the option is due to expire. Stock market experts have noticed that stocks with heavily traded options close near the option price on the third Friday of the month, which is when most stock options are set to expire.
Aug 2020 Price $4-6
Ryan Cohen purchases 9% of GME 👋💰
Ryan Cohen is the Cofounder of Chewy.com. His investment firm RC Ventures bought 5.8 million shares of GME on Aug 31, 2020.
He has serious strategic and operational qualifications in building and running a company in the digital era. Chewy was sold to PetSmart in 2017 for $3.35B
Sep-Oct 2020 Price: $7-10
$1M profit on paper for DFV 👀
DFV posts on WSBs start to gain more attention. Opinion is still very mixed about whether his investment in GME will continue to grow.
A short squeeze is an unusual condition that triggers rapidly rising prices in a stock or other tradeable security. For a short squeeze to occur the security must have an unusual degree of short sellers holding positions in it. The short squeeze begins when the price jumps higher unexpectedly.
The term float refers to the regular shares a company has issued to the public that are available for investors to trade. This figure is derived by taking a company's outstanding shares and subtracting any restricted stock, which is stock that is under some sort of sales restriction.
Who do you relate to?
The major players have wildly different goals and perspectives.
Nov 2020 Price: $10-16
Attention is growing slowly
💥 Ryan Cohen writes a formal letter to Gamestop, basically telling them to modernize and run the company better.
DFV posts to WSB a few times each month since Sep. He's now up $1-2M on paper depending on the day. People call him the king and a god (that's the clean version). Until he sells, he won't lock in the profit. And if the price goes down he could lose it all still. By not selling people are impressed with his "diamond hands."
WSB members are now mentioning their own GME purchases. Others are questioning if it's too late to still get in. Another mentioned it could go to up to $100 with Ryan Cohen and a new ecommerce strategy.
🚨 On Nov. 30 the number of GME shares that are shorted is 67.98 million shares or about 128% of trading shares.
Things are about to get interesting.
Definitions
Diamond Hands💎 🙌 are when you don't sell even when it would be tempting to lock in a profit and sell. The opposite of diamond hands are paper hands. Paper hands fold easily.
💎🙌 WILL THE APES HODL? IS IT A HOUSE OF CARDS?
Dec 2020 Price: $12-19
People are making money 💎🙌
Now the readers at WSB are paying attention and participating. DFV made a $1M unrealized profit on a single day. They want in too. Some want to just follower the leader. The tone of the conversation changes dramatically. People are IN. They are now talking about the short squeeze. And they start saying "buy and HODL."
📢 RC Ventures reports a 12.98% stake in GME. Some people are very positive about Ryan Cohen and his company's purchases of GME. After this announcement. The price rises 20+% to over $18 the same day.
Even mainstream media (MSM) sites are now mentioning that the stock is ripe for the short squeeze.
🤮 Some posts in WSB appear to be from a shill in order to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
Definitions
An unrealized profit occurs when an asset is purchased and then rises in value, but hasn't been sold.
HODL is slang for hold. It started with Bitcoin community.
Shill is someone who is paid to post or someone posting to protect the interest of hedge funds, essentially an outsider trying to influence the group for their gain. In WSB they are surprisingly ineffective and easily outed as outsiders.