GameStop short-sellers have lost $5 billion this year as Reddit’s day-trader army squeezed their bearish bets.
GameStop stock equal to 139% of its available shares has been borrowed and sold short, a bearish position showing mark-to-market losses of over $6 billion year-to-date, according to data from financial analytics firm S3 Partners. That figure is little changed since last Thursday’s 141% short-interest reading, even though GameStop shares have surged roughly 78% in the past two days alone.
The GameStop saga all started when the WallStreetBets subreddit rushed into Gamestop stock on January 13, praising an activist letter written by Chewy’s co-founder Ryan Cohen and calling on each other to squeeze short-sellers.
The stock closed 57% higher that day and by the time markets closed on January 14, GameStop share price had doubled.
On Tuesday, Dusaniwsky said GameStop still has $5.51 billion in short interest. After adjusting for “synthetic” long positions, Dusaniwsky estimates GameStop’s short percent of float at 58.2%, higher than any other stock in the market. Less than a month into 2021, Dusaniwsky said GameStop short sellers have already endured more than $5 billion in mark-to-market losses.
GameStop has rallied more than 680% in January alone as an army of retail investors marshaled against short sellers in online chat rooms, encouraging each other to pile on and keep pushing the stock higher. Short sellers have amassed a mark-to-market loss of more than $5 billion year to date in the stock, including a loss of $917 million on Monday and $1.6 billion on Friday, according to data from S3 Partners.
