Just curious if anyone else is following/riding the Gamestop (GME) stock craziness?

I don't have a lot -- just threw in $500 to buy 2 shares just to watch how it goes.

It is a very interesting situation. A bunch of low-end/retail traders (including one "whale" of a trader that started with $30,000) are basically forcing a Short Squeeze on a $2.5 Billion Hedge Fund.

That guy's $30,000 investment is currently worth $25,000,000. He's still holding...

- John...

Yeah, I've been watching it.

I'd buy puts on it if I could get a decent expiration date.

Yes, However not as someone that knows much about it. The story caught my attention and I listened to it.

Fascinating to me.

As Brad would scold......(not really scold but I'm trying to make the point). I was pulling my tools out of the trunk of the Chevy Nova and doing some silly repair, meanwhile people were buying the Gamestop stock......and this didn't happen years ago....this is happening now.

Don't worry Smokowna. A lot of people are going to get burned by the time this is over.

Interesting how a group of small investors have apparently joined together to do this. I thought stock market manipulation was only for the "inside" players.

Still though, where ever there is a lot of money some people are willing to do whatever it takes to get the money. Housing is not exempt from this either.

I've been watching this but I'm not going to get involved.

My current feeling is that now that it's been brought to the attention of everybody, either trading in this stock will be stopped/halted or the stock will fall in price a lot. For these small investors, if they now short the stock, they will make money going the other way also.

It's Tulipmania.

Can't wait for the music to stop.

I wouldn't count the Hedges out yet. My guess is that they are continuing to short or writing options contracts to reduce risk.

My question is who will run out of money first.

I see that Melvin Capital supposedly closed out its position at a loss.

Maybe we have an answer.

TD Ameritrade has halted trading of GME for now. Interesting...

Uh, what?

So, yeah. I just opened your post out of curiosity.

Gamestop used to be owned by Amazon back in early 2000s. Then they spun it off. That spun off 18 shares for me. Which I kept because they were worth like ten dollars, and it used to cost like ten dollars to trade so I just left them there, for like twenty years.

I don't know what's going on, but they're like worth $5K now.

Congratulations !

James, I'm with you.

Feel good story. Small investors pushing the hedge funds around. Something like this happened to VW around 2008. It could hit $1k/share.

The laugher, this company sucks, but they won't go bk because of this crazyness!!

Feel good story. Small investors pushing the hedge funds around. Something like this happened to VW around 2008. It could hit $1k/share.

The laugher, this company sucks, but they won't go bk because of this crazyness!!

To be very clear: Gamestop is a fairly worthless company that I think may go under soon. They were doing horribly and will continue to do so. This absolutely is NOT sustainable nor at all tied to their actual value AT ALL.

This is because a very large hedge fund that normally shorts stocks like this did their normal thing and shorted Gamestop -- expecting to to DROP like it SHOULD. Then a smaller retail investor started buying up Calls (which expire April 2021). He has been posting about it for 2+ years. Then others started jumping on that bandwagon. This has created a very special "Short Squeeze" situation that cost the hedge fund a TON of money.

But, again, the main thing to remember is that this has VERY LITTLE to do with the real value of Gamestop -- and this is NOT sustainable. It very likely WILL drop to near-worthless in the very near future. This is not a "buy and hold" situation. This is a "take a gamble with fun money and see what happens over the next few days" situation only.

- John...

Taylor: If you REALLY do have GME shares lying around that you've let sit forever, I strongly suggest that you DO pay attention and likely sell them sometime soon (whether that be right now or a few days from now no one can really say for certain).

But please do not just "leave the stock there like I did before." This is a one-time pump situation. Even if Gamestop continues on as a company, the stock is going to be WELL under $100. A WEEK ago it was at $40. 3 months ago it was at like $20. It is VERY likely that it will be back to somewhere in there very soon. Please don't ignore this opportunity if you really have shares.

Heck, at least sell half/some of them or something to hedge your bets! Just don't ignore this fluke!

- John...

(Again: This is not investment device. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Don't listen to me with your money.)

Ha! I typo'ed and then copy and pasted the typo!

I clearly meant: "This is not investment advice." My fingers apparently auto-corrected. :)

- John...

They are doing ok lately because of all of the new hardware (PS5 and XBox Series X/S). The problem is that there is very little GAME sales done for physical copies any more. Most of it is downloaded -- so you don't need a physical store any more. Heck, both the new PS5 and Xbox come in a version that doesn't even support physical media where EVERYTHING is download-only. So, it is just a matter of time for Gamestop, IMO.

That being said, yes, if I were Gamestop, I'd be doing whatever I could right now to take advantage of this incredibly high and temporary price. And if I were an employee or ex-employee that had stock options, I'd be selling them all over the next few days! :)

- John...

That's the hilarity of this whole situation (that I tried to convey with the multiple use of the word "like"). I really do have 18 shares through no fault of my own. I, too, have never set foot in a store. I never bought them, they were spun off, and so the shares just appeared in my account one day. I've never read their annual report. But I read this board all the time and I've been to plenty of Mr. Landlord conventions though.

I guess I'll login to my account tomorrow and figure out how to execute a sell.

Small potatos, I think this is a little more than just day traders. I watched a few videos on it last night and it appears to be a coordinated effort on the part of some techies.

Rip off hedge funds? That may be out slick them. They were the ones playing with fire on a regular basis.

Hej Ally, You are correct that people who own older machines will still buy discs etc. As we read, it currently still goes on with VHS tapes. Only it should be noted that I can donate all the VHS tapes I can find to thrift store owners, who have customers waiting to pay twenty five cents each for them.

The demand is mostly out in the country, small towns, but there is very little money involved and no fancy store fronts any longer.

Don't you love it David and Goliath. What is amazing is how David put all this together supposedly in a chat room - think about the execution - Go David.

But wait - maybe the Left politicians - that group that always wants to save people from themselves - will tell the bureaucrats at the SEC to go fix it.

J, one of the videos I watched was talking about the fall out of the past "occupy wallstreet" movement finding a place where they can actually make a difference.

There are a ton of really cool videos out there covering this story.

My completely uneducated guess is that chatrooms will be watching shorted stocks from here on out and in an instant worldwide, informing other people in that chat room via social media to scarf up the stock in question to screw over whoever shorted it. This very well may become incredibly crazy and cause the markets to go nuts.

A few comments I read on the podcasts were things like, "the serfs are in the castle" & "The normies finally located the covid relief." Pretty friggin funny if you ask me!

PG: The "whale" I was referring to is just a guy on Reddit that made a $30,000 gamble a long time ago and has been nurturing that with some more purchases along the way. I can't actually post his username here because it happens to contain a expletive. :)

I think he really is "just some guy" that thought things through and then rode it.

It was up to $52,000,000 worth at one point and sold 25% yesterday -- so he's sitting on $13,000,000 for his efforts no matter what happens now. :)

- John...

J [FL]: Again, you're missing the situation here. The buyers are NOT people interested in Gamestop at all. It has nothing to do with "old school gamers" or anything similar to that. It could have been ANY stock at all. The people buying it are people hoping that it will contineu to skyrocket tomorrow because a bunch of Calls are coming due that Short Sellers will have to buy real stock to fill. It literally could have been ANY company.

Note that there are other companies being looked at in similar ways -- Blackberry, Tootsie Roll, AMC Movie theaters, Bed Bath & Beyond, and others.

So, these aren't people that really love Blackberry or only buy their sheets from BB&Beyond. It has nothing to do with who the company is or what they do. It is all about huge hedge funds shorting these companies and hoping they go down/under (and, in some cases, actually encouraging them to through media).

- John...

AllyM: Once again you have a tiny piece of truth and have misunderstood it and have little idea of what you're talking about.

Reddit did NOT pull anyone's accounts. The WallStreetBets section of Reddit went "private" for a brief period. They've done that many times in the past. It was closed for a few hours and then opened to the public again and is open to the public even now. (Note that the moderators of that section decided to temporarily make it private -- NOT Reddit itself as some oversight measure. It is a group of Reddit users who make that decision.)

As for the rest of your gibberish... Reddit was founded by 3 guys from the University of Virginia -- one of whom is now married to Serena Williams, yes. He sold it in 2006. It is now owned by Advance Publications (Conde Nast's parent company).

And I can't even tell what you're trying to say with the rest of your post... Sheesh.

- John...

Eh, I'm not sure that the hedges were a direct target.

With 138% short interest showing it had to be a juicy target anyway.

I'm more interested in the restrictions that Robinhood and others put on GME trading today.

Helping the hedges? Shoring up their own balance sheet? Restoring order to the market? Just the big money putting their boot on the neck of the little guy?

Down 152.00 today. I hope the little guys were smart enough to do this via options rather than direct holdings.

AllyM: First, you said that their ACCOUNTS were shut down. Did the news say that or did you just re-state it incorrectly here? Because that didn't happen -- and I don't think any news said it did.

Second, if the news said that the WallStreetBets portion of Reddit was "shut down", then they were wrong on that too -- or, again, maybe you misunderstood. What happened was that it went PRIVATE for a FEW HOURS and opened back up -- which it has been since then.

You can believe your news over me all you want -- but doing it because they are "smarter" when I WAS THERE IN THE FORUM doesn't really make much sense. You can check it yourself by heading over to reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets -- you'll see that it is right there and working fine for the public to see.

Sorry, Ally, you were simply wrong -- once again. This is easy for anyone to verify themselves if they don't want to believe me at my word. It is right there open to the public and has been for pretty much all day except for a few hours when it was private temporarily. And, again, even that had nothing to do with Reddit owners doing anything.

- John...

J: I wasn't trying to argue with you at all. You seemed to be asking why people were buying Gamestop stock as if it was related to gamers or nostalgia. I simply explained it is because of a Short Squeeze going on with a large hedge fund (or two) and had nothing to do with who the company actually is. It could have been any company and the result would be the same. It has little to do with it being Gamestop.

- John...

And AOC wants to bring the hammer down on Robinhood! Who'd a thunk it??

hubba hubba: I think they were likely helping the hedges. Note that the big hedge fund is Citadel -- who already bailed out Melvin (who had most of the Shorts). And, imagine that, Citadel apparently gets 40% of their income from, who else? Robinhood!

Robinhood has announced that they will open up buying again tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

Why would you expect it to go DOWN tomorrow due to those options expiring? The whole point is that it will hopefully go UP tomorrow because the hedge funds are going to be forced to fill a bunch of Calls that expire tomorrow. They are trying to force the hedge funds to have to buy the shares at any price -- so the whole intent here is that it gets pushed up tomorrow because of everyone with expiring Calls executing them and the hedge funds having to buy at any price.

Yes, it could all come crashing down at any time -- and will at some point -- but I don't see the logic behind it doing that tomorrow when the hedge funds will be forced to buy tons of shares because of those expiring options being cashed in.

- John...

Sorry, I wrote one part of that backwards, of course...

It is believed that Robinhood gets 40% of its revenue from Citadel (or similar funds). So, a big chunk of RH's income is likely directly from Citadel. So, Citadel likely has a lot of influence over them...

- John...

Depends if they wrote naked calls...

My timing is off but the result is the same. $64 now.

Of course -- this was pretty much expected. What didn't go as planned was the hedge fund basically being able to push things back further and/or obtain enough shares due to all of the restrictions made on buying additional shares (like via Robinhood).

Some will hold long and still hope -- but we'll see how it goes. I have a few shares just for grins. :)

Any losses I currently have I already made up with ETH and DOGE cryptos in the last week. :)

- John...