GameStop Corp. GME shares dropped 44% on Thursday after Robinhood and other major trading platforms restricted users from buying the stock, outraging the retail trading community and triggering at least one lawsuit.
It remains to be seen what's next, but plenty of investors have already made a fortune off of the big move.
The legion of GameStop millionaires is led by WallStreetBets and YouTube poster Roaring Kitty, who made a $56,000 bet on GameStop by buying call options. According to screenshots of his account, those all options were worth more than $16 million as of this week.
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Chewy Inc CHWY co-founder Ryan Cohen took a 10% stake in GameStop back in August. At the time, that investment cost him $75 million, but it was worth as much as $1.3 billion this week.
Michigan billionaire and founder of subprime auto lender Credit Acceptance Corp. CACC Donald Foss took a 5.3% stake in GameStop back in February 2020. At the time, that position cost him about $12.5 million, but at GameStop’s peak this week it was worth about $1.5 billion.
GameStop company insiders have also made a killing. CEO George Sherman owns 2.36 million shares of stock. The value of those shares has risen from $45 million a month ago to as high as $1.13 billion this week.
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GameStop CFO James Bell also owns 511,905 shares of the company’s stock. The value of his stake has climbed from $9.9 million to as high as $247.2 million in the past month.
Michael Burry, who was depicted by Christian Bale in 2015's "The Big Short," is also a big GameStop investor. Burry’s fund owned more than 1.7 million shares as of the end of September. Assuming he hasn’t sold, that stake in the company reached a peak value of $821 million this week.
Lee Ainslie, value investor and head of hedge fund Maverick Capital, was also a major GameStop investor as of the most recent 13-F filings. Maverick’s 1.76 million-share stake hit a peak valuation of $850 million this week.
Benzinga’s Take: Traders can bet the saga of brokers banning GameStop buying is only just getting started. Expect more headlines, more drama and more extreme volatility from the stock in the coming days.
(Photo by Chronis Yan on Unsplash)
See Also: How to buy GameStop Stocks
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