GameStop stock soars after 'Roaring Kitty' reveals $175M bet | Hacker News Reader

GameStop stock soars after 'Roaring Kitty' reveals $175M bet

finance.yahoo.com

32 pointspaulpauper29 comments

I am confused. I thought he had only $40 million after the stock peaked in 2021. Where did he get these extra funds, especially given that GameStop had fallen 80% from the 2021 peak?

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/gamestop-sto...

Fast-forward to 2024 and he claims a net worth of $200 million at the time of the screenshot when GameStop was at $22 on Sunday. So presumably he would be worth $1 billion if GameStop were trading again at its 2021 highs.

Plus, he would have incurred a huge short-term capital gains tax bill from his 2021 profits, as he used options.

I suspect the whole thing is fake: either the screenshot is fabricated or he was loaned the money to hype the stock; the money is not his.

They're call options right? So this could be a leveraged play.

Edit: Looks like the position is 5,000,000 shares and 120,000 call options.

Margin trades are different from options.

If you believe the screenshot he paid $175mil for the options and shares.

I’d agree with others, no clue where he got the money from. It’s definitely not his, unless he somehow made an additional $150mil from someone or somewhere.

He also would of made a little money from movie deals and other trades that he may of made.

Its worth noting that a lot of the figures in the article are after the spike caused by his announcment, specificly the options position would be giving him a large boost.

> as he used options.

I don't know the exact positions he held but I am reasonably sure he had some long dated stuff. Not sure whether it was long enough to qualify for LTCG, but simply using options does not preclude LTCG.

Fuck my LIfe this is the second time I missed out on a GME pump and dump.

Well at least you also missed the dump part.

Right. it's easy to see the upside and think you missed out, but you also gotta realize you could've been the counterparty to the action going on.

never invest from a place of fomo.

I believe you haven't missed anything. The research on GME going up by thousands of dollars is compelling. You can wade through the cesspool that is the r/GME subreddit and read it all. I've come away believing the apes are right.

As of now, GME has 2 billion USD cash on hand. They wouldn't go bankrupt for over 350 months even if they didn't make a single penny. And they are making pennies! Lots of them! And they're making smart moves to make more pennies.

Throw a "little" (what you're happy with losing) money at GME, and don't touch it.

This is a good way of looking at it, thank you. I’ll probably put a few hundred dollars in it to test the waters!

Okay you've convinced me, I'm putting my entire life savings into this thing.

During this entire GME scam stock saga, the company has lost over $1b, is still not a profitable company, and has no foreseeable future being a profitable company selling physical game copies in a digital world. Their stores are closing left and right. If you've never looked at their balance sheet and don't even know how to read a balance sheet, then you don't know what you're doing. The fundamentals are garbage and your only hope is to be in the pump rather than the dump. Good luck playing wheel of money.

There is a world in which EU digital markets regulations force platform holders to sell (far more than they do now) codes for digital games through GameStop and they become an online-only retailer.

economists, educate me please.

people buy shares, the company sells shares, pay the ceo and skeleton staff, and then what? how anyone make money on that besides pump and dump?

Board decides each quarter on behalf of the stockholders whether to pay dividends or reinvest profits to increase the potential of future dividends.

Brokerages, exchanges, and market makers make money when customers are trading. Doesn't make a lot of difference what they're trading or at what price. Although, when there's a huge amount of volatility, there's maybe more risk and at least more collateral required. (Although the recent change to T+1 settlement will likely reduce that)

It's valuable for the company to sell shares when the price is high. If they don't have anything specific to do with the money, they can always do stock buy backs when the price comes down to earth.

For unrelated shareholders, yeah, it'a pretty much pump and dump, but if the company dumps while the stock is pumped, that helps your book value per share, right?

we're trended towards being able to monetize attention and popularity in the last couple years.

memestocks are just a manifestation of this. you buy because you have faith in x. you sell because you lost faith.

so you're betting on a casino who takes from your betting pool to pay rent and staff for "the chips"?

If the company is actually being valued correctly, the company makes a profit using the capital off of the share sales, then re-distributes that to shareholders with dividends or share buybacks, everyone wins. If not, then the company executives and employees get their salaries and bonuses for a bit longer, and anyone in the market who rides the wave correctly wins at the expense of anyone who does not.

yes yes, that's common knowledge. but in this case, gamestop is nothing. nada. you're buying a company that just hold rent to unprofitable stores. so... what's the angle here? mass hysteria?

How on earth isn’t this blatant stock manipulation at this point.

He's just posting his position, didn't say a word, its just a screenshot of a spreadsheet. The surge is happening because now everyone knows that (amazingly) he didn't cash out 4 years ago and instead increased his position x5

Not accurate. He bought a bunch of calls and then started posting as reported by wsj. https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/e-trade-considers-kic...

How does not saying a word mean it’s not market manipulation? That’s not a requirement, you can manipulate the market just fine just posting images if you’re the right person

Exactly, The mere fact he is posting is showing clear intent to manipulate the market.

Just as one example, given that Elon has blatantly lied about capabilities of Tesla to deliver promises. I think it’s adequately clear to everyone at this point that nobody cares.

It is

As someone not from US what's the difference between this and Jim Cramer? The fact that his advises are shit?

I don't want to be combative, I really want to understand the laws and logic behind this.

Intent matters.

A doctor prescribing you drug X because they think it's the best treatment for you is different than a doctor prescribing drug X because they get a kickback for doing so or have a lot of stock in the company.

A car crash because a driver made an honest mistake is different from a road raging driver intentionally ramming another car.

The difference between first degree murder, 2nd degree, manslaughter etc mostly comes down to intent and planning.

A person writing about a stock for Bloomberg because Bloomberg pays their salary to do stock analysis is different from a person buying call options and then pumping the stock so they can profit from the buying behavior of the people they manipulated.

And of course, all of these are full of subjective assessments. Most people looking at the "meme stocks" and corresponding subreddits, discords, tweets etc are going to come to the conclusion that there is intentional manipulation happening. But maybe somebody with autism or who speaks English as as second language or comes from a very different cultural context wouldn't be able to differentiate, and would come to a different subjective understanding.

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