I’m Markus Heitkoetter and I’ve been an active trader for over 20 years.
I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails.
They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way.
The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically.
Real money…real trades.
Let’s talk about GameStop
GME
because the stock’s gone absolutely crazy.
I mean, yesterday, January 25th, it was up 144% before swinging into negative territory. Then it reversed again and closed up more than 18%.
And today, it’s up another 22% to trade at $93.50.
One month ago, it was trading around $20!
So, today, I want to look at exactly what’s happening with GME, and let you know if it looks like a good time to buy the stock.
What is Happening with GME?
GME
made its first big move in mid-January after adding Ryan Cohen to its board.
This guy is the co-founder and former CEO of Chewy
GME
— the online pet supplies store — so he knows a lot about retail.
The stock jumped from $20 to above $40 when that news hit, and this caught a lot of short-sellers off-guard.
In fact, according to one CNBC article I read, GME is the most heavily shorted U.S. stock. The article states,
“GameStop has been a popular short target on Wall Street. In fact, more than 138% of its float shares had been borrowed and sold short, the single most shorted name in the U.S. stock market.”
What’s a Short Squeeze?
For those that don’t know, short interest is when a trader bets against the stock, meaning they want it to go lower.
To do this, they’ll borrow shares from their broker at one price.
If the stock price falls, they can buy the shares back at a lower price to repay their broker and keep the difference as profit.
But if the stock rallies, short sellers will have to buy back the shares at a higher price to limit losses.
For stocks that are heavily shorted, this can create a sort of ripple effect:
Because how do you close a “short trade”? Well, you SOLD the stock earlier so now you have to BUY it back.
So when more shorts start covering, i.e. BUYING, the stock climbs higher and higher.
This is the short squeeze.
And in GME’s situation, as the stock rallied on good fundamental news, shorts started to cover.
Then the Reddit crowd got involved.
There’s a forum on Reddit called “WallStreetBets”, and their purpose is to,
“make money and being amused while doing it.”
Their words, not mine.
As
GME
was rallying, online traders on Reddit began posting about the stock and buying it to manipulate the shorts.
And as they bought the stock, the price soared, forcing more shorts to cover their positions, and again:
This means that more people are BUYING.
It’s not surprising there are a lot of traders upset about this manipulation.
Famous short-seller Citron Research is one of them and said it would no longer comment on GME because of the “angry mob” on Reddit.
Is GME a Buy or a Sell?
Now, you could make an argument for
GME
stock to keep going higher.
There are probably some shorts still hanging on. And fundamentally, the company did report solid holiday same-store sales and digital sales growth a few weeks back.
But in reality, it’s dangerous to trade
GME
right now.
For starters, look how overbought this stock is.
And a lot of times, when these stocks fall, they fall fast.
Remember Eastman Kodak
GME
last summer when it went from $2 to $60 in two days.
And then back down to $6 a month later.
And implied volatility is all over the place.
This means options premiums are crazy high right now for options buyers.
But it’s not a good time to sell options, either, because it’s hard to pinpoint levels of support or resistance.
So, yes, you could have made a lot of money trying to trade
GME
stock, but you could’ve lost a lot of money, too.
And whenever I see a parabolic move as we’ve seen in
GME
, I leave it alone.
The risk is simply not worth it.
Because at some point, the Reddit traders might lose interest in this stock.
So they would just sell it and move on to the next stock, and that could make the stock crash.
After all, there are 2.3MM people in this group!
More Stocks to Watch
Before we go, I just want to check out some more of these “short squeeze” stocks that have been volatile this week.
The first is Palantir
GME
, which ran from $26 to almost $40 in two days.
Today, the stock is down 3% at $35.12.
Another is BlackBerry
GME
.
GME
stock ran from $7.50 in mid-January to above $20 yesterday — its highest level since 2011.
Today, the stock is up 3.6% at $18.60.
And here’s Bed Bath & Beyond
GME
, which was trading around $18 earlier this month, but hit a three-year high near $48 yesterday. Today,
GME
is up 0.1% at $30.68.
Finally, there’s AMC
GME
.
It was trading below $2 at the start of the month and hit a high of $5.19 earlier today.
While I’m not going to be trading these stocks because of the risk involved, I’ll certainly be keeping my eye on them.
I often see people who start trading and expect their accounts to explode, based on promises and hype they see in ads and e-mails.
They start trading and realize it doesn’t work this way.
The purpose of these articles is to show you the trading strategies and tools that I personally use to trade my own account so that you can grow your own account systematically.
Real money…real trades.
Let’s talk about GameStop
GME
because the stock’s gone absolutely crazy. I mean, yesterday, January 25th, it was up 144% before swinging into negative territory. Then it reversed again and closed up more than 18%.
And today, it’s up another 22% to trade at $93.50.
One month ago, it was trading around $20!
So, today, I want to look at exactly what’s happening with GME, and let you know if it looks like a good time to buy the stock.
What is Happening with GME?
GME
made its first big move in mid-January after adding Ryan Cohen to its board. This guy is the co-founder and former CEO of Chewy
GME
— the online pet supplies store — so he knows a lot about retail. The stock jumped from $20 to above $40 when that news hit, and this caught a lot of short-sellers off-guard.
In fact, according to one CNBC article I read, GME is the most heavily shorted U.S. stock. The article states,
“GameStop has been a popular short target on Wall Street. In fact, more than 138% of its float shares had been borrowed and sold short, the single most shorted name in the U.S. stock market.”
What’s a Short Squeeze?
For those that don’t know, short interest is when a trader bets against the stock, meaning they want it to go lower.
To do this, they’ll borrow shares from their broker at one price.
If the stock price falls, they can buy the shares back at a lower price to repay their broker and keep the difference as profit.
But if the stock rallies, short sellers will have to buy back the shares at a higher price to limit losses.
For stocks that are heavily shorted, this can create a sort of ripple effect:
Because how do you close a “short trade”? Well, you SOLD the stock earlier so now you have to BUY it back.
So when more shorts start covering, i.e. BUYING, the stock climbs higher and higher.
This is the short squeeze.
And in GME’s situation, as the stock rallied on good fundamental news, shorts started to cover.
Then the Reddit crowd got involved.
There’s a forum on Reddit called “WallStreetBets”, and their purpose is to,
“make money and being amused while doing it.”
Their words, not mine.
As
GME
was rallying, online traders on Reddit began posting about the stock and buying it to manipulate the shorts. And as they bought the stock, the price soared, forcing more shorts to cover their positions, and again:
This means that more people are BUYING.
It’s not surprising there are a lot of traders upset about this manipulation.
Famous short-seller Citron Research is one of them and said it would no longer comment on GME because of the “angry mob” on Reddit.
Is GME a Buy or a Sell?
Now, you could make an argument for
GME
stock to keep going higher. There are probably some shorts still hanging on. And fundamentally, the company did report solid holiday same-store sales and digital sales growth a few weeks back.
But in reality, it’s dangerous to trade
GME
right now. For starters, look how overbought this stock is.
And a lot of times, when these stocks fall, they fall fast.
Remember Eastman Kodak
GME
last summer when it went from $2 to $60 in two days. And then back down to $6 a month later.
And implied volatility is all over the place.
This means options premiums are crazy high right now for options buyers.
But it’s not a good time to sell options, either, because it’s hard to pinpoint levels of support or resistance.
So, yes, you could have made a lot of money trying to trade
GME
stock, but you could’ve lost a lot of money, too. And whenever I see a parabolic move as we’ve seen in
GME
, I leave it alone. The risk is simply not worth it.
Because at some point, the Reddit traders might lose interest in this stock.
So they would just sell it and move on to the next stock, and that could make the stock crash.
After all, there are 2.3MM people in this group!
More Stocks to Watch
Before we go, I just want to check out some more of these “short squeeze” stocks that have been volatile this week.
The first is Palantir
GME
, which ran from $26 to almost $40 in two days. Today, the stock is down 3% at $35.12.
Another is BlackBerry
GME
.
GME
stock ran from $7.50 in mid-January to above $20 yesterday — its highest level since 2011. Today, the stock is up 3.6% at $18.60.
And here’s Bed Bath & Beyond
GME
, which was trading around $18 earlier this month, but hit a three-year high near $48 yesterday. Today,
GME
is up 0.1% at $30.68. Finally, there’s AMC
GME
. It was trading below $2 at the start of the month and hit a high of $5.19 earlier today.
While I’m not going to be trading these stocks because of the risk involved, I’ll certainly be keeping my eye on them.
