After a two-year cat and mouse chase, the Chairman of GameStop and Manager of RC Ventures has joined Joe Fonicello of GMEdd.com for his first extended interview.

When I invested in GameStop just over two years ago, the mainstream media considered the brick-and-mortar retailer the next Blockbuster, with the company valued for an inevitable bankruptcy. In October 2020, I shared the GameStop thesis in my University’s Stock Pitch competition and was told to “pick a company with strong long-term prospects.”

Myself and a small group of other passionate retail investors believed the retailer was misunderstood and took it upon ourselves to create GMEdd.coma platform to share the research that Wall Street analysts and media pundits were missing.

Once Ryan Cohen, the founder of Chewy and Manager of RC Ventures, reached an agreement to join the company board in January 2021, we published a research report with a view on how GameStop might evolve under his influence.

Within two weeks, the share price far exceeded even our most bullish case. Since then, GMEdd.com has followed the company’s progress through crowdsourced investigative research.

The investigations

With Cohen at the helm, video game retailer GameStop worked in silence, undergoing a tech-centric transformation with the development of a premium NFT marketplace marking this transition. The company’s newfound commitment was initially exposed when we stumbled upon job postings alluding to blockchain talent at the company in April of 2021, a year before the NFT marketplace would be publicly announced.

Investors began to speculate what GameStop NFT would entail. Curious to find out, we dug deep—on October 22nd 2021 we published clues that Loopring would be GameStop’s partner in a premium NFT Marketplace.

Just five days later GMEdd.com discovered Loopring’s source code, confirming our speculation and revealing Loopring was partnered with the video game retailer on an NFT Marketplace built on Ethereum Layer-2 technology.

The news shook the blockchain community, as the underdog coin became the most talked about cryptocurrency on Reddit. Loopring’s market cap shot from $565M to over $4.27B.

Our contributors tracked GameStop’s every hire, over 420 of them, using LinkedIn data to determine where the company was poaching their talent from.

The team identified that GameStop.com order numbers were sequentially numbered and could form the basis for a highly accurate estimate of performance. The crowdsourcing of order numbers fueled a financial model we freely shared online.

GMEdd.com was also first to note GameStop’s corporate expansion to South Florida, Seattle, and Boston.

the conclusion

It has been a privilege to write for such enthusiastic readers. There was rarely a dull moment over the past two years, as our community was always working to predict GameStop’s next move. GMEdd.com uncovered the power of crowdsourcing research.

After writing over two hundred stories for the platform, it is with great honor to conclude GMEdd.com’s investigations into GameStop by conducting Ryan Cohen’s first extended interview. 

I want to thank Rod Alzmann, ‘AlphaHound’, Chris Silvestro, and Jenna Dauzat for their voluntary contributions to GMEdd.com.

Cheers.


Join the discussion on Discord at GMEdd.com/discord and follow @GMEdd on Twitter.

While GMEdd usually publishes fundamental research and corporate news, a reader offered to share their thoughts after attending GameStop’s 2021 Annual Shareholder Meeting. We decided it would be valuable for all investors to hear about the experience.

GameStop, the video game retailer from our childhoods, had become an unlikely pivotal part of so many lives in 2021, including my own. 

For myself, what had started off as a ~$5,000 bet on call options was raised to a $30,000 investment following my review of the original Research Report published by GMEdd.com in January. This was the entirety of my savings at the time.

When I found out that the company invited stockholders to attend The Annual Meeting at the company’s corporate headquarters in Grapevine, Texas I couldn’t miss it.

I booked flights for my significant other and I, as we are both GameStop investors, and began preparing for the meeting. We booked a few extra nights to enjoy the food, art, music, and history while in town.

On Tuesday morning we departed Southern California and couldn’t have been more excited. As we were preparing to board our flight we crossed a symbolic moment in our financial freedom. For the first time, the value of my portfolio surpassed $1,000,000.

Watching that figure appear on my screen immediately brought me to tears as the seemingly impossible was right there in my hands; a moment I’ll never forget.

The day of the Meeting

We arrived at GameStop HQ via Uber where a GameStop employee in a safety vest was on duty and kindly escorted us to the entrance of the meeting. The walk was several minutes long and we had the opportunity to discuss my experience as a shareholder and how much this meeting meant to so many. Our escort was very friendly and expressed his enthusiastic support for us as shareholders before going on to recommend some of his favorite local barbecue joints and entertainment.

One thing was clear, GameStop made it a point to share with their employees what this meeting was truly about given the current circumstances — expressing their gratitude and support for shareholders.

We checked in and entered the meeting chamber with half an hour till 10. Despite being early, the room was already packed, although we did manage to score a pair of seats in the second row; I counted approximately 120 attendees.

It wasn’t until later that I found out GameStop had established an overflow room to accommodate even more attendees. Based on a conversation with one of those shareholders later that afternoon, GameStop staff was continuously bringing out more and more chairs to accommodate the shareholders in overflow as they arrived.

  A warehouse room was being repurposed for overflow attendees, where a monitor was set up to view the main room.

Before the meeting began, GameStop passed out gift bags: GameStop branded drawstring backpacks containing mixed contents including a GameStop tee shirt, bottle, pen, etc.

When Sherman took the floor, he announced that they prepared 200 of these gift bags and made a joke about them running out a lot sooner than they thought they would.

Sherman’s attitude was very personable and he made several comments that kept the attendees laughing prior to beginning the meeting. Unlike the presentations stockholders are used to during ER conferences, it was unscripted, kind, relatable and filled with gratitude.

Prior to the start of the meeting, we were presented with short live clips of both Larry Cheng and Ryan Cohen on the large screen sitting ahead of us. As the incoming Chairman virtually checked in with us via zoom, absent of any comments, the crowd of shareholders clapped with enthusiasm; the energy in the room was surreal.

The meeting began with an announcement from Dan Reed, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary,

There are present at this meeting, in person or by proxy, more than the majority of all shares that are entitled to cast votes.

Shareholders may have overlooked the true meaning of this statement and got carried away upon hearing this. The room was flowing with excitement as the crowd began standing up to clap at the news; Dan smiled with content to see the investor enthusiasm.

Shortly thereafter, GameStop announced the preliminary results of various votes including Election of Directors, Advisory Non-binding Vote on Executive Compensation, and Ratification of the Appointment of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm.

Then, we were presented with what in my opinion was the biggest part of the meeting, a few heartfelt statements from Ryan Cohen, GameStop’s new chairman.

The following are a few statements that were made:

We’re trying to do something that nobody in the retail space has ever done.

We continue to be blown away by your passion and support. You guys inspire us to think bigger and fight harder. 

You won’t find us talking a big game, making a bunch of lofty promises, or telegraphing our strategy to our competition… moving forward we want you to judge GameStop based on our actions and not our words.

As my dad would say, “buckle up.”

You can read Ryan Cohen’s full speech here on GMEdd’s June 9th AGM post.

Hearing Cohen make these statements was heartfelt. They felt genuine, and as if he was filled with just as much joy as the rest of the shareholders that attended.

While many of us are constantly seeking catalysts to extend our already well-justified confirmation bias, I believe these statements are just as good as any and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the presentation GameStop Corp. and Cohen put on for shareholders.

At any rate, the message was clear: GameStop is doing something that’s never been done before, buckle up and trust the process.

After the meeting

After the meeting I rushed to the door to pass out red headbands that I adorned with the $GME ticker, diamond hand emojis, and a stenciled decal of  The Roaring Kitty’s famous cat, a roaring kitty.

The headbands were accompanied by a letter I wrote to express my gratitude to the $GME investor base and share my vision of paying it forward and making a true impact within our communities. I brought a little over 200 headbands and ran out before being able to provide them to all attendees.

Post-Meeting Meetup

A large amount of shareholders reconvened at Boomerjack’s Grill & Bar, a local spot where we celebrated the successful meeting with drinks, food and comradery.

The diversity in shareholders — be it location, occupation, or age — was outstanding. One shareholder drove over 30 hours, from Rhode Island to Texas, to attend. The only thing we all had in common was love for the GameStop investor community and enthusiasm towards the future of the company.

We drank and laughed, celebrated and cried. So many shareholders expressed sincere gratitude for the words I shared. One shareholder even offered my significant other and I a place to stay, stating that his home was our home. The love received from this community was out of this world, true, sincere appreciation and gratitude. It was a day we’ll never forget.

Closing words

As an investor and an individual looking to break the financial chains that have bound my family for generations, I couldn’t have asked for more from the company and the thriving investor base. It is a blessing to have been afforded the opportunity to take part in this monumental day in company history and to meet so many stockholders that share the same passion, love, and support for the movement that is GME and the transformation of the retail giant.

During our flight, we saw a mountain peak extending through a thick layer of clouds, and the following thought came and stuck with me:

As the peaks of powerful mountains pierce through the clouds and into the great vastness of clear blue skies, so too shall our diligence pierce through and beyond the false, fragile and manufactured veil of greed leading us into the vastness and clarity of the great unknown.

sandwich guest wrote this article exclusively for GMEdd, Toast edited

Photo sources: AndBolos on Twitter, YouTube a4SicgRYTmk, MrRager1989, sandwich

As the Chewification of GameStop continues, perhaps investors should take a closer look at the other Chewy co-founder Michael “Blake” Day and the potential for him to be involved, alongside Volition Capital.

Since reaching an agreement between RC Ventures and GameStop in January, Ryan Cohen has worked almost entirely behind-the-scenes on transforming the retailer, with investors uncertain as to who he consults with towards strategic moves. By looking at Cohen’s past, and the breadcrumbs along the way, GMEdd is able to make a few educated guesses.

Chewy’s “Other” Co-Founder

Chewy.com was founded in 2011 by Ryan Cohen and Michael “Blake” Day, hereby referred to as Blake. We know enough about Ryan’s past from the various interviews he has given recalling his time at the pet-focused E-commerce giant, however, we don’t know much about the other founder, Blake. Could he also be involved in the GameStop story?

Blake does not leave much of a trail on the internet. He has a Facebook page, but it doesn’t have a public profile picture. It doesn’t look like he’s on Twitter or Instagram. He does have a LinkedIn page.

Blake’s LinkedIn shows that he was Co-Founder & CTO of Chewy until April 2018, just a month after it was announced Ryan Cohen would be stepping down as CEO. Both Blake and Ryan remained with the company for a year after a $3B payday from PetSmart in 2017.

From past interviews with Ryan Cohen, we know the founders first met through an online Java chat room and shared similar visions for a groundbreaking e-commerce business before starting Chewy.com together, but insight on Blake remains limited beyond this.

In a TechCrunch interview in 2019, Ryan Cohen was asked,

Would you partner again with Michael on a different e-commerce business or maybe a venture outfit?

to which Ryan Cohen responded,

We’re really close. It needs to be the right opportunity obviously, and we need to be picky. But I have no plans to sit in retirement, that’s for sure. I’m 33 and I’m competitive and I like consumer businesses and I like to win.

Ryan is arguably in the midst of his biggest venture yet, so you have to wonder what his former business partner is up to these days.

Back to Blake’s LinkedIn page: The last activity on his account was a liked post from 4 years ago, when Blake still worked for Chewy… until 4 months ago when Blake liked a post sharing a Forbes article about Chewy’s exceptional customer service, dated none other than January 29th, 2021.

Interestingly enough, January 28th was the day buying of NYSE:GME was restricted across several major brokerages including Robinhood. During this time, GameStop was all over the news. Blake knows how to lay low, as indicated by so little out there on the internet about him, but if anything, this recent activity shows he is still using LinkedIn, and coincidentally while one of his former cohorts is at the center of a historical financial market controversy.

Despite Chewy’s headquarters being based in Florida, the company established a small team based in Boston, beginning in temporary spaces before leasing their own 20,000 square foot space in 2017. According to Cohen, Boston was an attractive location to poach tech talent:

Boston is an amazing technology hub and startup hub, with dozens of universities. There’s just a ton of talent. We looked at all of the major US cities when we were planning this office, and Boston was the most competitive — either equal to or better than anywhere else.

Blake Day, serving as the CTO, ran the Boston location. He gave an interview to VentureFizz about the move to Boston, and one might say he sounds a lot like Cohen:

Samantha Rassner served as Chewy’s Vice President of Software Development from September 2015 to February 2018. In a LinkedIn blog post on her exit of the company, Samantha Rassner recounts Blake’s visionary speech. Blake and Ryan sound one and the same here as well.

Chewy’s First Investor

Larry Cheng, co-founder and managing partner of Volition Capital, was the first major investor to back Chewy after the company was turned down numerous times by other firms.

Larry’s investment through Volition was key to the growth and expansion of the company, and as a result, Larry and Ryan remain “fast friends.” While GameStop is a different story than Chewy,  it’s not crazy to think that Volition Capital and Larry Cheng have long been involved in mentoring the turnaround based on these facts alone.

In fact, when Ryan Cohen tweeted a picture of an ice cream cone on February 24, 2021, some drew the connection that it could refer to Volition Capital’s website citing Chewy’s first official board meeting including McDonald’s soft serve. 

Who else would have been present at the first official board meeting? The Co-Founder of course, Blake Day.

Timelines Suggest Volition was Clued in on Ryan’s Plans

Ryan Cohen filed his first 13D for GameStop via RC Ventures LLC on August 28, 2020, disclosing an initial 9% stake. This sparked waves, particularly within value investor circles, as many pondered the E-commerce guru’s investment motives.

What few realize is that Cohen didn’t initially invest in August 2020, but much earlier in April 2019. This can be deduced from the initial 13D, through share counts and averages based on implied price. Rod Alzmann of GMEdd.com states that when he inquired with GameStop last year, investor relations confirmed that Cohen had held $GME since April 2019. 

Just one week after Ryan’s public disclosure, on September 4th, 2020, Volition Capital published an insight piece titled Gaming as a Service and Why it Matters, authored by one of the firm’s associates, Claude de Jocas. This also appears to be the first piece of gaming related research the firm has released.

Over the next few weeks, Ryan added to his position twice more until reaching a 9.98% stake, disclosed September 21. Weeks later, on October 9, Volition released a video where Claude de Jocas discusses the future of internet gaming and its growth potential.

Skip ahead just one month, and on November 17, Ryan filed an amendment to his 13D with an attached letter to the GameStop board urging the company to share a credible plan for seizing opportunities in the rapidly growing gaming sector.

PR Blitz

Ryan Cohen was far from being a household name in August of 2020 when he filed his initial stake in GameStop, so many investors started researching him to get a feel for what his plan was. At the time, Ryan had established a website, ryan-cohen.com, that embedded various media appearances and formal interviews the Chewy co-founder had given, but it has since been shut down in December of 2020.

Had the website done its job? 

Retail investing icon Roaring Kitty first stumbles upon Ryan Cohen’s rudimentary homepage during an August 28th, 2020 livestream.  At the time, the deep value investor was merely trying to learn more about the Chewy founder. Most of the content was posted on the site between mid-2019, around Chewy’s IPO and Cohen’s initial GameStop investment, and mid-2020.

Investors could speculate that this may have been a coordinated PR blitz campaign before revealing a large stake in a public company, one that he had already been discreetly acquiring.

Each interview Cohen conducted provided valuable insight into his business strategy, and much of how he described Chewy’s story and his vision could also be applied to GameStop. Was this intentional? In one September 2019 post on Medium, when asked about what’s next, Ryan hinted at something being on the horizon.

I’m only 34, so I certainly haven’t peaked as an entrepreneur yet. Stay tuned.

For more, check out GMEdd.com/report-model for a compiled model featuring all of Ryan Cohen’s known media appearances and formal interviews.

Okay, where were we? Ryan Cohen started buying into GameStop in April of 2019, with a disclosure following increased holdings in August 2020. It’s unknown as to when he made the decision and how much time was spent beforehand figuring out activist investor logistics coinciding with a PR blitz, but it is reasonable to assume he was strategically building public-facing credibility for himself before revealing his high-stakes investment.

Fast-forward to 2021 and Ryan Cohen now owns 12.9% of GameStop, joins the board, a proclaimed short squeeze event arises national coverage on the retailer prompting a series of congressional hearings, and suddenly everyone knows about r/wallstreetbets.

Amid all of this attention, the company remains quiet but starts undergoing rapid transformation, which was initially visible from the Investor Relations page, but now only seen through activity on LinkedIn — there have been over 30 new hires in tech and E-commerce positions starting in February, just a month after Cohen joined the GameStop board.

Strategic Advisory

On March 2nd, 2021, Volition Capital launched a new Strategic Advisory Board that, “will provide focused guidance to the firm and its portfolio companies regarding strategic direction, investments, executive hiring and development, due-diligence, network and operational strategy, among other areas.” Volition states that the firm had been working on assembling this board for almost a year.

So a venture firm launched a strategic advisory board. Who cares?

Wait, that name is familiar…

That’s right. As of March 2021, Blake is now at the helm of Volition’s Strategic Advisory Board. Blake has largely laid low since his Chewy departure and still lives in Fort Lauderdale according to his Volition Capital bio.

This appears to be the first public role he has taken since leaving Chewy in 2018. Cohencidence?

Volition’s second listed Strategic Advisory Board Member is Raul Fernandez, who serves as Vice Chairman and Owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which is a private partnership of Washington DC’s major sports franchises including eSports teams.

Early GameStop investors will recognize Raul’s name, because they will have seen it before as well.

GameStop’s May 2020 “Driving Value For All Stockholders” notes that Raul Fernandez serves on GameStop’s board to provide insight into the world of professional eSports on slide 32. 

GameStop claims that Raul Fernandez was appointed to the board  under an agreement with Hestia Capital Partners, L.P. (“Hestia Capital”) and Permit Capital Enterprise Fund, L.P.  (“Permit Capital”), lead by currently outgoing GameStop director and atypical shareholder activist Kurt Wolf.

Hestia Capital and Permit Capital, together with their affiliates, beneficially owned approximately 1.3% of GameStop at this point, and Kurt Wolf, as their Managing Partner, had just sent a letter to GameStop’s board calling for a corporate refresh.

Wolf had been advocating for GameStop’s board to adapt to the times and transform from an underperforming retailer into a forward-thinking company that emphasized long-term growth. He later insists that Raul was placed on the board without any involvement or communication with Permit/Hestia in a May 2020 Restore GameStop presentation deck.

While the GameStop board claimed they began to cooperate with Hestia/Permit in April of 2019, Ryan Cohen began purchasing his initial position in the gaming retailer.

Fernandez still currently serves on GameStop’s board, and filings reveal he will be stepping down at the Annual General Meeting on June 9th, as Ryan Cohen takes the reigns as incoming Chairman of the Board. 

On April 8th, 2021, just one month after Blake and Raul’s appointment to Volition’s Strategic Advisory Board, GameStop announced Larry Cheng from Volition Capital as a candidate for its board of directors for the company’s upcoming annual meeting .

What now?

There’s no denying that GameStop and Volition could be tied together in some way. Larry Cheng, Volition’s Managing Partner, will likely be granted his seat on GameStop’s board in June, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Blake come out of secrecy in the future as well. 

The big question remains: What are these guys planning?

Jenna guest wrote this article exclusively for GMEdd, Toast edited and contributed

Sources: Chewy on Crunchbase, Michael Day on LinkedIn, Vox, TechCrunch, Forbes, BostonGlobe, VentureFizz, inc.com, Samantha Rassner on LinkedIn, Larry Cheng Profile at Volition Capital, Chewy’s Portfolio at Volition Capital, Ryan Cohen on Twitter, Volition Capital Vimeo, Wayback MachineSEC Report, Volition Capital Vimeo, RC Ventures Letter to the Board, Medium, Volition Capital, Investor.GameStop.com, GameStop News Release, GameStop News Release

The “hiring frenzy” first coined by GameStop VP, Marketing Evan Smith in a Feb 2021 LinkedIn post highlighted by GMEdd.com has progressed, revealing GameStop’s success in acquiring new talent at a rate that can be compared to the likes of the hottest new startup.

According to LinkedIn data, since the appointment of GameStop CTO Matt Francis in February, we count over 30 new hires who bring experience from a cross section of high growth e-commerce stars Chewy, Amazon, Zulily and Arteza.

The rate appears to be accelerating, with new ex-tech hires in May so far exceeding April and March.

An opportunity too good to pass up

Digging deeper, we can discover some motivations as to what would compel someone to make such a career move. Skyler Ramirez, an Amazon veteran of 8 years, left his most recent Data Engineering Leader position at Facebook after just 9 months to jump ship to GameStop.

In a post via LinkedIn the Vice President informed his connections that it was extremely hard to say goodbye to Facebook, but “sometimes a new opportunity comes along that is too good to pass up.” Ramirez also shared he will be hiring several roles on his team as soon as next week.

Ramirez’s new role of VP, Instock at GameStop is not yet defined on his profile, but his personal About section provides some insight as to his experience and skillset.

A versatile leader with over a decade of post-graduate experience leading business, product, and technical (including big data) teamsA problem-solver who takes on work others view as too hard or too risky, and drives hundreds of millions of dollars in growth and savings. A builder who uses high judgement and analytics to take products and initiatives from concept to execution and set them up for long-term success.

For ex-Amazon turned GameStop Chief Growth Officer Elliott Wilke, part of the appeal of working at GameStop was revealed commenting that he has put his corporate blazer “back in the closet for good” while posing in a snappy new GameStop branded hoodie in a recently updated LinkedIn profile photo.

The changing of the guard is not limited to new appointments, with departures going beyond the high profile Executive Vice President group. GameStop Chief Digital Officer, Dhritiman Saha left in April after just over a year in the role further suggesting GameStop’s new direction in this area.

Proprietary Brands to fuel further growth

As well as the developments taking place in E-Commerce, Logistics and Customer Service, this new direction seems to include a focus on Private Label with GameStop Vice President of Private Label and Global Sourcing, Kevin Kennedy leaving Chewy in April to take on this new role.

Chewy revealed in their Q4 and Fiscal Year 2020 Letter to Shareholders they achieved gross margin improvements driven by greater penetration rates into higher-margin verticals such as proprietary brands which doubled year over year.

We can infer that GameStop intends to follow a similar path of Chewy and develop in-house brands with higher margins and less dependencies on third parties as just one more contributing part to their ongoing transformation.

What to make of it all

Tech and E-Commerce executives looking to be a part of something are leaving blue-chips in droves to fulfill Cohen’s vision. The public has not yet been made informed exactly what the roadmap entails, but this level of excitement amongst new hires is unmatched. 

GameStop is gearing up for a transformation that will be studied in universities for years to come.

The Data

When Ryan Cohen was asked how he finds his management teams during a 2018 Miami Herald interview, he gave his endorsement for LinkedIn.

We use a special proprietary tool called LinkedIn and we look for people with very relevant experience at companies we respect and we shoot them a message. … We hand-picked these people. They are the best of the best, the Navy Seals of management teams.

While Amazon and Chewy may be household names, Arteza is the leading direct to consumer arts & crafts supplies brand offering art enthusiasts and hobbyists high quality supplies at affordable price points across a variety of categories. Larry Cheng, one of GameStop’s incoming board members, invested in the startup, just as he did Chewy when Ryan Cohen approached him.

It appears that GameStop has replaced Arteza as a destination of choice, with many who moved from Chewy to Arteza to join Kelli Durkin, GameStop’s Senior Vice President, Customer Service and former Arteza CXO, following her yet again from Arteza to GameStop.

GMEdd has sourced the employment information using the very techniques Ryan Cohen is known to use in his own headhunting. Check out our data below and visit our Report and Models page for the latest updates.

vestro guest wrote this article exclusively for GMEdd, Toast contributed

Sources: GameStop Corp. on LinkedIn, Volition Capital, Chewy Investor Relations


June 1st 2021 Editorial Update: Visit GMEdd.com/report-model  to view a continuously updated model for GameStop Corp.’s LinkedIn hires. 

Ryan Cohen has tweeted once again.

He’s starting to tweet so much that we should probably stop covering each post. But alas, here’s our understanding of it.

At 12:02 PM EST, Ryan Cohen sent out a red heart to his over 161k Twitter followers. 

Ryan Cohen’s tweet on May 19th, 2021.

The surface-level meaning here is that Cohen is sharing some love for his loyal fans and investors. Thanks Cohen! ❤️

On the other hand, at 10:42 AM EST Elon Musk tweeted an implication that Tesla had “diamond hands” on their Bitcoin, amid rumors that it had offloaded the digital gold.

This is after Ryan Cohen had unfollowed the Technoking just 6 days ago.

When Roaring Kitty doubled down his GameStop position in April, Ryan Cohen seemingly responded with a simple one emoji tweet: a fist bump.

Ryan Cohen had also followed and unfollowed Roaring Kitty at one time.

While Elon Musk acknowledges the r/WallstreetBets community (the same community that famously picked up on Ryan Cohen’s GameStop investment while the majority of the mainstream media ignored it) through the use of the diamond hands emojis, Ryan Cohen could be responding to his support of both cryptocurrency and WSB.

GameStop has also expressed interest in crypto as early as April, revealed through a job posting on the company’s official career listings page.

Ryan Cohen has not re-followed Elon Musk at this time, and it is likely this is all just a coincidence, but what are investors if not speculators?

Source: Ryan Cohen on Twitter, Elon Musk on Twitter

Keith “DeepFuckingValue” Gill has posted his much anticipated April 16th 2021 update on Reddit at 4:20PM, fueling 4/20 tinfoil hat conspiracies. Gill claims this will be his final update.

The deep value investor, who is not a cat, first opened his 4/16/21 call options at the $12 strike back in December of 2019 when $GME was trading at ~$6/share.

Prior to today, the Kitty had disclosed ownership of 100,000 shares, when he doubled down in February

After sending out 20 tweets today encompassing movie references and cat gifs hinting towards his move, the retail trading icon executed his 500 remaining 4/16 calls, acquiring an additional 50,000 shares to add to his YOLO portfolio. He has also purchased an additional 50,000 shares, on top of the calls, creating a position of 200,000 shares.

Roaring Kitty’s cost basis has increased to $55.17/share.

Source: DeepFuckingValue on Reddit

On April 15th, GMEdd.com Co-Proprietor Rod Alzmann spoke with Hedgeye Retail’s Jeremy McLean for a Hedgeye TV talk. Jeremy and Brian McGough over at Hedgeye Retail had placed $GME as their best idea long on December 17th, 2020

The retail investor duo shared their thoughts on GMEdd, Ryan Cohen, and GameStop’s path moving forward.