I sincerely hope this comment ages well, but I doubt it will. A scenario where a majority of the retail traders in GME right now come out ahead would be surprising.
Agreed. There's a good reason why so many of these hedge funds held short positions -- $GME is a business facing significant headwinds beyond what you'd see from the pandemic and a typical P&L statement:
- Their primary product is used game sales, and the biggest players in that sector are making active moves against such sales (see: the disc-less PS5 and Xbox Series S consoles).
- Digital storefronts make purchasing new games much, much easier (and a borderline impulse purchase).
- Free-to-play multiplayer games cut Gamestop out of the customer acquisition loop. The most $GME gets is a cut of any prepaid cards, but those cards are commonplace nowadays (my local chain drugstore has an end-cap with dozens of prepaid cards of various types).
- Their primary model is to lease space in malls. With the pandemic, malls are either closed or seeing substantially less foot traffic.
- Consoles are typically a big driver of purchases, but their limited availability also limits $GME's potential. That said, that can be counterbalanced by very profitable bundles made more attractive by the limited availability of unbundled consoles.
I don't play the stock market, but even if I did, $GME wouldn't be something I'd look at in a buy-and-hold strategy.
The stock will resettle at something far lower than it is now, most people realize this. They are trying to ride this thing until the margin calls come in and a substantial number of short positions are closed. If that happens there will be blood in the water and big money for anyone able to sell during the frenzy. After that, it's everyone for themselves.
I'd agree, although if https://www.highshortinterest.com/all/ is accurate, there's 69M shares of GME short sold at the moment, which is quite a lot of money potentially to be made by people holding the shares when those short positions are settled.
