A YouTuber reportedly discovered a way to generate infinite money via a strange trade-in deal glitch at GameStop. After making a video about it, the company figured out what was going on and has now claimed to have “patched” the bug. Or maybe this is all some odd marketing stunt. Or somehow both things are true. It’s hard to say anymore.
On January 20, video game retailer, Bitcoin investor, and Funko Pop graveyard GameStop posted a lengthy comment to Twitter about a so-called “Infinite Money Glitch” that was recently discovered by YouTube content creator RJCmedia. How the glitch worked, apparently, was that if you bought a Nintendo Switch 2 for $415 and then immediately traded it back in along with the purchase of any pre-owned game, a promo would be triggered that increased the value of the trade-in to $472. Repeat this a few times, and you could rack up a few hundred bucks in trade-in credit.
Here’s why this glitch happened and how it worked, according to GameStop:
“In short, our system briefly valued the pre-owned trade more than the new retail cost of the console itself, creating a narrow window where customers could repeat this transaction over and over again to amass infinite trade credit,” said GameStop on social media.
GameStop’s response to the infinite money glitch
GameStop says that “effective immediately, the glitch has been patched.” It further added that “trade promotions have been updated to ensure customers can no longer convert basic arithmetic into an endless revenue stream, and balance has been restored.”
GameStop, a company that has become famous for memes, shitposting, spinning dumb mistakes into marketing material, and also for reportedly treating its employees poorly, ended its lengthy statement by reminding people that it remains “committed to offering promotions that reward” its customers. However, it “gently” reminded people that its stores are “not designed to function as infinite money printers.”
GAMESTOP ISSUES STATEMENT ON INFINITE MONEY GLITCH
GameStop is aware of the “GameStop Infinite Money Glitch,” exposed by YouTuber RJCmedia.
By purchasing a Nintendo Switch 2 for $414.99 and then immediately trading it back in along with the purchase of a pre-owned game, a… pic.twitter.com/F2D2v41IeQ
So now the big question: Is this real? The video from RJCmedia seems real enough, with the creator visiting different stores and filming the process of trading in each console. There is also a bit where he is surprised to see a GameStop store closing soon and isn’t able to pull off the trade glitch there. Alluding to the news that many GameStop stores will be shutting down due to greed would likely be something the company wouldn’t want in a piece of viral marketing. There’s also nothing in the video disclosing it as a paid ad, and the creator isn’t massive, so it doesn’t seem like a person the company would partner with to do some weird guerrilla marketing. If it seems odd that I’m spending this much time dissecting whether or not this is real, it’s because GameStop is a very weirdcompany these days, and yougotta be careful out there.
Anyway, I think this is all real, though the statement from GameStop is clearly trying to make this a fun situation, which reminds me of the stapler incident from last year. I hope others out there got to take advantage of this strange bug. Power to the players and all that, you know?
Your neighborhood GameStop might be on the chopping block, along with more than 400 other retail locations across the US. As first reported by Polygon, the retailer is pursuing a severe cost-saving measure by closing up several hundred physical locations. According to a blog that keeps track of GameStop closures, there are 410 locations that are confirmed to be closing or are already closed, along with another 11 that are reportedly also on their way, as of January 10.
As Polygon indicated, these closings aren’t much of a surprise considering GameStop’s SEC filing for December 2025 indicated that it would “anticipate closing a significant number of additional stores in fiscal 2025,” which ends on January 31, 2026. The same filing detailed that the company’s board would pay out the GameStop CEO, Ryan Cohen, up to $35 billion in stock options, given that he increases the retailer’s market cap to $100 billion.
While the blog covers only closures in the US, the SEC filing also noted that GameStop is planning to reduce its presence in several other European countries and Canada. Even though GameStop saw a historic spike in market value in 2021, it has struggled with the brand’s direction, as seen with failed attempts at offering a crypto locker and an NFT marketplace.
GameStop has been in hot water for some time now. But the company’s CEO, Ryan Cohen, should come away relatively unscathed, because, thanks toCNN,we now know he will score a $35 billion payout if the storefront hits a $100 billion market cap. One small issue: that’s about 10 times its current value.
How is Cohen planning on getting it there? Thanks to aPolygon report, we know that he intends to close hundreds of stores and to offer customers a 20 percent trade-in bonus via a QR code. Although we don’t have concrete numbers on exactly how many stores have been shut down, apost on a blog that tracks GameStop closures reports that close to 400 stores have either already been closed this month or are set to be closed before the month is over.
The trade coupon, meanwhile, was shared on the official GameStop Reddit page by a user who posted their frustration about the closure of their local store, saying “GameStop really put a trade coupon on my local stores closing sign?” In that same thread, the original poster voiced their frustrations by calling it “a fucking joke,” while others stated that they have begun canceling pre-orders.
It’s also worth noting that GameStop closed 590 stores in 2024, according to aDecember 2025 SEC filing. The filing goes on to state that the company plans on “closing a significant number of additional stores in fiscal 2025.” This is important because the 2025 fiscal year ends on January 31, 2026, which means more stores could close sooner rather than later. GameStop has also been closing stories across various countries worldwide. The same SEC Filing states that the company has already “exited” operations in Austria, Ireland, and Switzerland. In 2024, it also closed down store operations in Germany while selling off its Italian subsidiary.
Even as it shuts down stores en masse, GameStop has been doing everything it can to get attention back on the storefront over the last few months, partnering with popular influencers such as Casey Neistat and Mega64, and even withRilie Huntley, a popular e-girl who originally went viral over a Best Buy ad. Just recently, the company had a “trade anything day“ which saw people bringing in all sorts of things, including sex toys. Just a few days earlier, theGameStop card loot program led to a record-breaking $30,000 trade-in.
If it sounds like an April Fool’s Day joke, guess again!
GameStop, the video game retail giant, is hosting a “Trade Anything Day” on Saturday, Dec. 6, where people can bring in almost anything to trade in for a store credit.
There are a few ground rules, however.
For one, the company says the item must fit in a 20-by-20-by-20 box.
So, if you were hoping to trade in your retro Sony Trinitron CRT TV from the ’90s, you’re out of luck (although you may find another customer willing to buy it).
GameStop also says you can only receive store credit on one traded item.
It’s not yet clear how the approximate trade value of each item will be determined… but consider us intrigued, and willing to give just about “anything” a try!
Wondering what is on the table for GameStop’s Trade Anything Day? See what you can and can’t trade.
GameStop, a retailer best known for turning used video games into a form of alternative currency, is leaning all the way into the joke—and the marketing opportunity—with its newly launched Trade Anything Day. The concept is as simple as it is amusing: bring in almost anything, and GameStop will give you store credit for it. Yes, really….so what’s on the table for GameStop’s Trade in day?
The company has encouraged customers to dig deep into junk drawers, forgotten closets, and emotional baggage. And based on early reports, people certainly are.
While GameStop still gives the most value for electronics and games, the store’s guidelines indicate Trade Anything Day truly stretches the imagination. Here are some examples of what is eligible:
✔ Old phones Have a Samsung Galaxy from 2013 sitting in a sock drawer like a retired pet? Bring it in.
✔ Floppy disks Finally—your stash of Windows 95 startup disks can serve a purpose other than confusing Gen Z.
✔ Things your ex left at your house That hoodie, that DVD they never picked up, that mug they insisted was “decorative”—GameStop will take it. Unsurprisingly, they do not provide emotional compensation.
✔ Old board games Dusty Monopoly sets, incomplete Trivial Pursuit boxes, and that Risk board missing half the armies are all fair game.
✔ Taxidermy Yes, you read that right. GameStop’s quirky trade-in policy has reportedly welcomed the occasional mounted deer head or a scene of dancing mice —because one person’s trophy is another person’s store credit.
✔ DVDs, CDs, gadgets, cables, controllers If it once plugged in, lit up, or made a noise, odds are they’ll consider it.
✔ Random household items Reports include kitchen utensils, lava lamps, garden gnomes, and at least one singing fish plaque. The company says the item simply needs “resale or recycling potential,” which is corporate for “we’ll figure something out.”
Items You Cannot Trade—No Matter How Hard You Try
Yes, there are limits. GameStop specifically excludes anything that could cause legal, sanitary, or moral dilemmas. For example:
✘ Weapons – No swords, no nunchucks, and definitely no crossbows. ✘ Food or perishables – Even if it’s “collectible cereal.” ✘ Live animals – This includes but is not limited to snakes, hamsters, or that goldfish you won at a carnival. ✘ Hazardous materials – Batteries are fine; uranium is not. ✘ Anything illegal – If you need to ask if it’s allowed, the answer is no.
The promotion is clearly designed to drive foot traffic and social buzz, jumping off GameStop’s reputation for quirky customer interactions. It’s also a clever recycling and re-use initiative: one person’s abandoned Walkman is another person’s retro treasure.
GameStop hasn’t released data on the most common or strangest accepted items yet, but judging by social media, the competition is fierce. If you’ve ever wanted to trade your way into a new game using only the contents of your junk drawer, this is your moment.
Underpinning Trade Anything Day is more than just marketing bravado — it’s part of a broader effort led by Ryan Cohen, GameStop’s executive chairman-turned-CEO, to completely reinvent the company. Since taking the helm, Cohen has driven a ruthless cost-cutting strategy, shutting hundreds of underperforming stores and tightening the company’s expense structure around “extreme frugality.”
Simultaneously, he has pivoted GameStop’s core business toward high-margin collectibles and trading cards, striking a partnership with PSA to grade cards in stores — a move that has helped fuel a significant boost in the company’s profitability. GameStop has also made bold capital allocation decisions: under Cohen’s direction, the company now has the authority to use its cash stockpile to invest in public markets, including buying Bitcoin as a treasury asset. The overall goal, Cohen says, is to transform GameStop from a declining brick-and-mortar video game retailer into a lean, liquid, and digitally savvy business — one that can survive long term, even in the fast-moving world of gaming and collectibles.
Bring what you can, don’t bring what crawls, and may the store credit gods be ever in your favor.
The strength of the nation will be measured, President Trump bellowed inside the Capitol Rotunda during his second inaugural, not just by battles won, “but also by the wars that we end.” True to his word, Trump has pursued peace the world over. Ever eager for credit, he keeps a list of every conflict concluded.
Trump mediated Serbia-Kosovo tensions. The president de-escalated border clashes between nuclear-powered India and Pakistan. He negotiated a ceasefire to the war in Gaza. The official list is up to eight.
Even ardent critics have praised those efforts, but now Trump earns the adulation of a different, often overlooked, demographic: the gamers. The president just took credit for ending “the console wars.”
Then the White House posted a picture of the president in cartoon power armor on the South Lawn during an extended back-and-forth over the weekend that drew tens of millions of views online with the beloved video game retailer GameStop.
“It’s one of these moments that you never think could happen, and it does happen in this crazy timeline we live in,” a source familiar with GameStop social media told RealClearPolitics. “But no matter the administration, you’re going to be excited for the White House to acknowledge your brand.”
“MGGA,” the company said in a statement to RCP, an abbreviation for “Make Gaming Great Again” and a play on Trump’s MAGA slogan. “Video games and shitposting,” the company said, “bring us all together.”
It is the latest unexpected development in the second Trump season, the continuation of an unprecedented political-cultural moment. The conflict in question has not led to real bloodshed, but it has divided friend groups across basements and dorm rooms since the turn of the millennium. The often caffeine-addled, sometimes juvenile, combatants: Team Xbox and Team PlayStation. The casus belli? The first-person shooting game “Halo.”
The cartoon super-soldier known as “Master Chief” could only protect humanity from alien threats on an Xbox. And while players without that gaming system were left out of the fun for two decades, keeping the wildly popular sci-fi franchise exclusive was a savvy business decision that generated billions of dollars for Microsoft on the back of Xbox sales. But then that company went and did something unexpected.
They announced that they would re-release un updated version of the original Halo, and for the first time, they would make it available on the Sony PlayStation, Microsoft’s biggest competitor. The news rocked the industry with the New York Times likening the move to “letting Mickey Mouse roam Universal Studios.” In this way the Berlin Wall of video games came down.
Enter GameStop.
“For the past two decades, the global gaming community has been engaged in an ongoing and increasingly petty feud known as The Console Wars. Said conflict originated in the early 2000s with the release of Halo: Combat Evolved as an Xbox-exclusive title. Halo: Campaign Evolved is officially coming to PlayStation in 2026 with cross-platform play,” the retailer, akin to a Blockbuster but for video games, wrote in a tongue-in-cheek press release, declaring its stores would continue to operate as “demilitarized zones.”
Enter the White House.
The Trump rapid response account then shared the Game Stop post, writing “NUMBER 9: President Trump presides over the end of the 20-year Console Wars,” a reference to the very real wars that Trump has helped end or prevent.
Enter GameStop … again.
Gamestop
Sensing an opportunity, the company’s social media team then shared a grainy image of Master Chief shaking Trump’s hand in what appears to be the Oval Office (a good-natured source close to the gaming retailer jokingly cautioned that the photo may be AI-generated). After the White House shared an image of Trump as Master Chief on the South Lawn, complete with an energy sword, from their official account, the GameStop social media team pulled out all the stops.
“I made sure to give Vance a more masculine presence,” a GameStop source involved in the memes told RCP, adding that they hope the VP will find the photo-shop funny “like everyone else.”
A spokesman for Vance did not return RCP’s request for comment. The White House, meanwhile, enjoyed the moment. “Yet another war ended under President Trump’s watch – only one leader is fully committed to giving power to the players and that leader is Donald J. Trump,” said Kush Desai, a spokesman for the president.
All of it may be a fleeting moment in the digital ether, but video game sales in the last decade have outpaced sales in the film, television, and music industries. And while that demographic may not vote on the strength of memes alone, the majority seem to be in on the joke. Just like the White House.
Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.
GameStop‘s share price is rising again. It’s up more than 6 percent since Friday, and up over 22 percent from six months ago. You may remember GameStop (GME on the New York Stock Exchange) as the meme stock that rose from less than $20 to more than $460 per share in less than three weeks back in 2021 before falling back to more reasonable levels. It had a similar but even briefer rally last summer.
As of this writing, it’s trading at a less stratospheric $27.28. But with the share price going up despite falling sales and a downgraded rating, the last sell-side analyst to rate GameStop has thrown in the towel. Alicia Reese of Wedbush Securities, who most recently set the company’s target price at a lowly $13.50, announced she will no longer rate GameStop due to “reallocation of analyst resources.”
It’s a stark admission of something every smart entrepreneur knows. The correct price for anything—from a sandwich to a house to an equity—is always whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. You might think that in a data-driven business such as investing, buying decisions would result from careful calculations. They usually don’t. They usually result from emotion, sometimes rationalized with data after the fact. Whatever you may tell yourself about how you decide what to buy, emotion is almost always part of the equation.
The reverse is also true. Win over a customer’s emotions and they will be likely to buy what you’re selling, whatever the data might say.
An Inc.com Featured Presentation
A Reddit group changes everything.
There is certainly a lot of emotion around GameStop. Its price surge in 2021 was caused by the Reddit group r/wallstreetbets, whose members embraced the stock at the behest of investor and financial analyst Keith Gill. These small-time investors drove the stock price up quickly. Elon Musk stepped into the fray with a couple of tweets to his 41 million followers, sending GameStop’s share price dramatically higher.
The result was a “short squeeze.” Hedge funds that had shorted GameStop, betting big that its price would fall, wound up losing billions. That likely pleased Musk, who’d had his own run-in with hedge funds short selling Tesla.
Unfortunately, many small investors who bought GameStop near its peak lost a lot of their savings. There were lawsuits, in particular against the trading platform Robin Hood, which temporarily suspended trading in GameStop and helped precipitate its rapid fall toward pre-meme prices. There was also a congressional investigation and then a couple of movies about the whole affair.
GameStop has nostalgia appeal.
Of course, most of this had little to do with GameStop’s underlying value or its business outlook. The company is perfectly positioned to capture people’s emotions. It comes from a simpler time, before digital downloads. Back then, shopping in a physical store for video games was a normal thing to do.
In addition to GameStop’s nostalgic appeal, there was the short squeeze. Most of the time in the markets, small investors operate at a disadvantage, and hedge fund managers often profit off their losses. But GameStop investors flipped that narrative on its head. People were enchanted by the David and Goliath quality of that event. More recently, GameStop captured people’s imaginations again by announcing a big investment in bitcoin, though the details aren’t known.
Meanwhile, though, there was a stock analyst making thoughtful buy or sell recommendations that no one listened to, after carefully parsing data no one seemed to care about. The finance site seeking Alpha put it tactfully: Since the short squeeze, “GME has always been a tricky proposition for traditional Wall Street analysis,” writes news editor Kim Khan. “The stock just does not trade on any fundamentals.” No wonder Wedbush decided to reallocate Reese’s time to other work where investors might actually listen to her opinion.
The price of everything will always be whatever people are willing to pay for it at any given moment. It’s more obvious with GameStop, since its share price has deviated mightily from what conventional wisdom would suggest. But it’s true of every product and service, including yours.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Jim Cramer hired a bodyguard after threats from retail investors during the 2021 meme stock rally.
Cramer says he believed the stock never should have passed $400.
GameStop shares have been volatile since the meme craze. The stock is down 15% in 2025.
Jim Cramer‘s take on the meme stock mania of 2021 drew the ire of a powerful group that was swaying markets during the pandemic: retail traders.
The “Mad Money” host recounted that he had to hire a bodyguard after he angered some retail investors in 2021 at the peak of the pandemic’s bout of meme stock mania that boosted GameStop and other stocks to dizzying heights.
Cramer, who was in the hospital recovering from a back surgery at the time, said he thought he was hallucinating when he saw shares of GameStop rip higher, he said during an episode of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast on Monday.
After shares of the gaming retailer quadrupled, Cramer said he ripped out his catheter and phoned Carl Quintana and David Faber, two of his fellow hosts at CNBC.
“[I] said, ‘This is ridiculous. Everybody has to sell.’ After that, it was 24/7 bodyguard,” Cramer said.
In January 2021, Cramer called into CNBC from the hospital and urged GameStop investors to sell.
“Take the home run. Don’t go for the grand slam. Take the home run. You’ve already won. You’ve won the game. You’re done,” Cramer said on the network’s “Squawk on the Street” program.
Cramer told retail investors to sell GameStop when he called into CNBC from the hospital.Noam Galai/Getty Images
Cramer, a former hedge fund manager known for his bold stock calls on the air, said he believed GameStop stock shouldn’t have been valued above $400, which it briefly soared beyond as shares ascended to their peak during the pandemic.
The stock ended up plummeting to around $10 a share in mid-February as hype for the struggling retailer finally died out.
GameStop stock has been on a rollercoaster ever since its short-squeeze in 2021, but it retains a dedicated following among some retail investors, who periodically reignite fresh meme-like rallies.
GameStop shares traded around $27 on Monday. The stock is down about 15% year-to-date.
Global markets are on edge as traders weigh geopolitical risks, easing inflation signals, and possible U.S. interest rate cuts next week.
The turbulence has spilled into crypto, where GameStop’s pivot, Linea’s dramatic price drop, and Solana’s technical momentum are dominating discussion across trading desks and social media.
Breaking Down the Social Buzz
The resurgence of GameStop in crypto conversations is particularly noteworthy. According to data from market intelligence provider Santiment, the buzz stems from the company’s recent special dividend issuance through warrants and a stronger-than-anticipated Q2 2025 earnings report.
Earlier in the year, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen confirmed the retailer is exploring crypto payments for trading cards and collectibles following a substantial $500 million Bitcoin (BTC) acquisition.
Cohen characterized the BTC purchase as a hedge against inflation, signaling a cautious but serious corporate interest in digital assets. This pivot follows the company’s earlier, less successful forays into NFTs and wallets, which were shuttered due to a challenging regulatory environment.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum layer-2 project Linea is facing its own drama. In the spotlight following the launch of its native LINEA token and listings on Binance and CoinEx, among other major exchanges, it plunged nearly 35% in the past week, hitting a new all-time low of $0.02265 on September 10.
Altcoin Performance and Market Outlook
Solana (SOL) is also making waves on the back of its frequent appearance “in the context of liquidity and market cap values” of various assets on the network. In the market, it has demonstrated notable stability, consolidating around the $222 mark with a 24-hour trading volume exceeding $9.4 billion, and a nearly 8% jump in price in the last seven days.
However, there’s a stark difference in the social sentiment and on-chain performance of another trending asset, ApeCoin (APE). While it has caught a buzz following its launch and expansion onto the Solana blockchain, APE has struggled in the market, slipping 7.4% in the past week to $0.606. It also remains down 24% over the past year and almost 98% below its 2022 peak.
In contrast, Avalanche (AVAX) is attempting to build headway. The world’s 21st-largest crypto by market cap is a hot topic due to its “bullish momentum, breakout price activity, and strong technical indicators.” Priced at $28.80 at the time of this writing, it has oscillated between $23.93 and $29.45 in the last week, and is up almost 17% in that period.
Over the past 24 hours, the asset gained 7.3% on its price, with analysts suggesting that since it has now broken above $27, the door could be open for a run to $40, with rising network activity, amounting to 35.8 million transactions on its C-Chain last month, providing a favorable backdrop.
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Everyone saw this coming but it was still disappointing to see. Fans were salivating over the 30th Anniversary PlayStation 5 collection, a one-two punch of nostalgia and neat aesthetics, when it was revealed earlier this month. Today many of them stared blankly at PlayStation Direct pre-order screens as they watched them sellout while they waited in confusing online queues and battled glitched website buttons.
This Cool New Retro Console Is A Great Gift For Atari Fans
The 30th Anniversary collection went up for pre-order earlier today and it turns out the limited edition PS5 Pro bundle, only 12,300 of which were manufactured, wasn’t the only thing that felt impossible to get. Pre-orders for the PS1-style PS5 slim bundle, PS Portal, and DualSense controller also disappeared almost immediately, begging the eternal question of why Sony doesn’t just manufacture as many of these items as people want.
Panic began overnight when anecdotes began pouring in from Australia and the UK that pre-orders, which became available at 10:00 a.m. local time in each region, began to immediately disappear followed by reseller listings popping up on eBay for anywhere from five to 10 times the suggested retail price. As the 30th Anniversary pre-order hour approached in the U.S., people tried to load the PlayStation Direct page early only to be thrown into a queue with estimated wait times of over an hour.
The initial confusion was compounded by the fact that Sony never really gave fans a clear idea of what to expect from the pre-order process. After unveiling the 30th Anniversary PS5 collection it just said they would be available to buy starting September 26 with no advance notice of an official start time or even the prices. Essentially how it worked is that people who tried to order from PlayStation Direct were put in a waiting room to get a random spot in line at which point they could order whatever was still left, which for most people, including myself, seemed to be nothing.
Was that because I didn’t get into the waiting room sooner? Or did I just get a bad place in the queue? Was there a better way to go about this whole thing? There were anecdotal reports of people getting to the store only to be tossed back into the waiting room. Once they were in the store, it was still confusing trying to buy stuff. Even items that didn’t show as sold out, like the PS1 DualSense controller, couldn’t be purchased when clicking “add to cart.”
It seems like people who just wanted the $80 controller actually had more luck going through retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop, whose pre-orders for the PS5 controllers when up at the same time as PlayStation Direct. Those sold out fairly quickly as well, however. It’s possible that additional stock will be released in waves, as Sony did when demand blew supply out of the water with the original launch of the PS5. But I’m also not sure why Sony doesn’t just try to sell as many of the PS1-style controllers as possible, at least for those who order in the next couple of months.
It’s the cheapest option for fans wanting to be a part of the anniversary hype, or just really love the idea of channeling all those nights they spent in front of their original PS1 in the modern era. Maybe Sony was just testing the initial demand and will come back later with a bottomless Santa Claus bag of 30th Anniversary PS5 stuff come the holiday. If not, 30th Anniversary PS5 DualSense controllers are already going for up to $200 on eBay.
Gamestop Corp. Chief Executive Officer Ryan Cohen will pay almost a $1 million penalty over allegations that he violated antitrust law with his acquisition of shares in Wells Fargo & Co.
Cohen failed to file a form he was required to submit to antitrust agencies under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act after his Wells Fargo share purchases exceeded a certain threshold, according to a statement Wednesday from the Federal Trade Commission.
As he amassed those shares, Cohen periodically emailed Wells Fargo’s leadership — including its chief executive officer — with suggestions to improve its business and to seek a board seat. That effort to “influence Wells Fargo’s business decisions” meant he couldn’t claim an “investment-only” exemption under the HSR, according to the FTC.
“When acquiring the Wells Fargo shares Cohen intended to influence Wells Fargo’s business decisions as evidenced by Cohen’s emails when he advocated for a board seat,” the FTC said in its statement.
Cohen agreed to the settlement with the FTC without admitting any wrong doing. The settlement isn’t final until a federal judge approves it.
A representative for Wells Fargo declined to comment. Cohen couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Cohen, who is also the managing partner of RC Ventures LLC and co- founder of Chewy Inc., began buying Wells Fargo shares in 2016, according to the complaint filed by the Department of Justice on the FTC’s behalf in US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Cohen emailed Wells Fargo’s CEO in February 2018 “to advise him of the contributions he could make” should he become a member of the bank’s board, according to the complaint. Cohen also made suggestions on how Wells Fargo could improve operations like its technology and mobile app. Cohen continued such communications with the bank’s leadership until at least April 2020, it said.
In March 2018, Cohen acquired more than 562,000 of Wells Fargo shares, resulting in his aggregate holdings surpassing the HSR’s threshold, which at that time was $168.8 million on an adjusted basis. He will pay a $985,320 civil penalty for failing to file the HSR form.
“Cohen’s intent when he made the March 22, 2018, acquisitions of Wells Fargo voting securities was to participate ‘in the formulation, determination, or direction of the basic business decisions”’ of Wells Fargo, according to the complaint.
Cohen continued to buy shares through September 2020. He made a corrective HSR filing in January 2021 for his March, 2018 purchases, according to the complaint.
Microsoft shutdown the Xbox 360’s marketplace this week and nearly two decades after the console first launched it feels like the final nail in the coffin for a particular era of gaming we’ll probably never see again.
The Best Reveals From The Game Awards 2023
The Xbox 360 came out a year earlier than the competition and $100 cheaper than the base PlayStation 3. It seemed to make all the right moves, using Halo, Gears of War, and Call of Duty to jump start online multiplayer into the soon-to-be dominant form of gaming, while investing it all back into indie curation, big exclusives, and marketing deal that made the console feel like the place everyone had to be.
In some ways it felt like the best of all worlds, and by the end of the generation you could pick up an Xbox 360 for just $100 and play dozens of the best games ever made. The culture was far from healthy, and some of the places making everything were a mess to work for. But it was also a fun time, and a weird one. Here’s what we’ll miss about it and why the Xbox 360 still feels so special to us.
Carolyn Petit: The first E3 I ever attended was in 2005, with the Xbox 360’s launch still some months out and I have to say, the games I saw on the show floor looked amazing. It’s hilarious to me now considering I haven’t even thought about this game in probably 15 years, but at that time, the game that blew me away the most was probably GRAW. Interestingly, though, despite my initial excitement about the console being rooted in its graphical power and my lust for next-gen spectacle, now, when I think back on what made the console so special to me, it’s not really about that aspect of it at all. What about you Alyssa?
Alyssa Mercante: I’ve told mine on Kotaku.com more than once, but I had borrowed my high school sweetheart’s original Xbox to play Halo 2 when he went away to college, but not long after that Halo 3 came out, which wasn’t backwards compat. So I went out during my free period in high school (we had an open campus for seniors, you could take your car and leave if you didn’t have class), and drove to a Target where I spent my summer job savings on a 360, Halo 3, and Xbox Live.
Ethan: I have zero recollection of the Xbox 360’s launch. What was I even doing at the time? 2005. Hmm. I was going into my senior year in high school, barely playing anything except for the occasional late-stage PS2 game—Shadow of the Colossus and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, followed eventually by Okami and Final Fantasy XII. My only real memory of the beginning of that console cycle is my brother getting a PS3 and me having almost no interest in it. It wasn’t until my girlfriend’s roommate’s boyfriend in college got me hooked on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that I finally picked up a super cheap used Xbox 360 arcade edition for like $150. That four years after the console launched but still somehow only the mid-way point.
Carolyn: Yeah, I don’t remember exactly when I finally got one myself—I certainly couldn’t afford one at launch, and my memories of the time around release have a lot to do with playing Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (lol) at GameStop kiosks.
Moises Taveras: The first time I ever played an Xbox 360 also had to do with Call of Duty: MW2. It was all the rage with the kids in my middle school, but I was largely looking from the outside in as a) a PlayStation kid since my youth and b) someone who came from a family too poor to afford more than one console. But eventually, I made friends who had 360s and I remember us all cramming onto a couch in the smallest bedroom imaginable at our friend Howard’s house and playing local multiplayer matches till we lost our voices from shouting. I learned really quickly then that the 360 was synonymous with multiplayer and socializing with folks and it made me want one so bad. Little did I know I wouldn’t get a 360 till the very end of the console generation!
Carolyn: I think part of the Xbox 360’s dominance in that era can be attributed to the fact that it offered the best online experience for folks wanting to play Call of Duty, but it also did something incredible that totally won over people like me. I’m not saying I didn’t have an amazing time playing Gears of War co-op, I absolutely did, and huge credit to Microsoft for putting out a steady stream of banger exclusives that really made Xbox Live feel essential. But for me, when I think about the Xbox 360, what still gets me excited most is Xbox Live Arcade, and particularly amazing games like Pac-Man Championship Edition. Games like this took the arcade leaderboard competition of my childhood and absolutely exploded it. Suddenly I was staying up nights pouring everything I had into beating my friends’ high scores on online leaderboards for all the world to see. Man, it was incredible.
Moises: Supergiant Games’ Bastion absolutely blew my mind as far as what I thought games could be. It being a console exclusive to the 360 through XBLA broke my heart and kept me from the portfolio of what’d become my favorite studio, and then Xbox just kept pumping out indie titles like it. Honestly, my working definition of an indie game was largely informed by this era of XBLA games.
Xbox Dashboard Evolution 2001-2019 (Xbox Original, Xbox 360, One)
Kenneth Shepard: The Xbox 360 was the first console launch I was really tuned into the industry for. I was full-blown sicko mode for that thing as a kid, and was counting down the days. I was a huge Rare fan at the time and Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero were a huge deal to me. But broadly, I think I fell off video games for a bit because the system just didn’t speak to my tendencies. As Moises said, the 360 became the multiplayer system and I preferred gaming in solitude, and eventually pivoted to the PS3 in the final years of that generation. But I played the Mass Effect trilogy on the 360, so I ended up keeping an old 360 in my home longer than any other system. I had to replace the household 360 more times than probably any other system my family owned.
We got a launch window system that died by the time Halo 3 came out, so we had to replace it swiftly. Then I got my own 360 for Christmas 2009, just before the launch of Mass Effect 2. That sucker lasted over a decade. It gathered dust for large swaths of the time, but since I didn’t own an Xbox One, it was the only way for me to go back to my old Mass Effect trilogy saves until the Legendary Edition came out in 2021. So while I had mostly abandoned the system by the end of the generation, the 360 is still a defining system in my life because it gave me one of the most important video game experiences of my life. I’ll always be grateful for it, even if I think the Microsoft was a trailblazer for some of the industry’s worst modern tendencies with it.
Ethan: That was the other thing that I think tipped me in the direction of the Xbox 360 besides the price and walled multiplayer gardens. As someone coming from the PS1 and PS2, it just had more of the RPGs I was craving earlier or in better condition. I came to the original Mass Effect late but it blew my mind. I got to catch up on Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was synonymous with retro and couch-coop indie games for me like Castle Crashers and Super Meat Boy. It really did just nail a lot of the same things that the PS4 did a generation later and which ultimately helped Sony to reverse the tide.
Moises: it’s so weird to think about now given Xbox’s current situation and catalog, but the 360 was where all the games were!
Carolyn: Another thing that was a big factor for me, I have to admit, is that I was totally cheevo-pilled. The Xbox 360 brought about the advent of achievements and I got extremely excited about pulling off absurd things like beating Call of Duty campaigns on Veteran to get all the achievements. I no longer put much stock in achievements or trophies, but to this day I greatly prefer the at-a-glance number that reflects your achievements compared to all the trophies of PlayStation’s system. And on top of that, the whole interface on Xbox just felt so much more inviting to me than that on Sony. I think avatars were really smart of them to introduce in that era. I loved signing on and seeing little cartoon versions of all my good friends online, playing games of their own. In comparison to that, the whole interface of the PS3 just felt cold and impersonal to me, and that console would end up gathering dust in my entertainment center.
Ethan: The Xbox 360 home screen definitely felt a lot more inviting and hit that sweet spot of clutter to chill. The controller was also very solid. Have any of you gone back and tried to hold a PS3 DualShock? It feels like you’re being pranked. I take it none of you ever had an issue with red-ringing or other hardware failures?
Photo: Mark Davis (Getty Images)
Moises: Nope! Correct me if I’m wrong but those issues got ironed out with later iterations of the console, so by the time one of my best friends let me indefinitely borrow his 360, it was smooth sailing for me.
Carolyn: I did have to send mine back for repairs once, and for a while there at least, it felt like everyone I knew who owned one was hitting the red ring. There was a period there, at least in my circle of friends, where there was real disbelief and anger that Microsoft had sold us all a product that was so prone to failure. I think it speaks to just how fond people were overall of the console—its library, its interface, its online features—that today, when you bring it up, you’re far more likely to get fond recollections than bitter complaints. It was so good that even the considerable irritations so many of us experienced with it are now just a footnote in our memories.
Ethan: My console ended up red-ringing in like, 2012? But then I read that you can just put it in the oven and bake it at a low temperature to loosen up the glue. Has worked like a charm ever since.
Carolyn: Wow, I never knew that!
Ethan: I think one of the reasons people look back so fondly on the Xbox 360 is that, in retrospect, it felt like the last time you could contain the entirety of what was going on, coming out, and being talked about in your head at any given time. It was still very intimate and physical, with midnight launches and stacks of controllers in the split-screen coop session. There was spectacle with E3 but also the feeling you alone were discovering these incredible hidden treasures on Xbox Live Arcade, which was like a return to finding the internet for the first time again.
Carolyn: I agree. And they just had so many games that became sensations for a time, from Braid to Geometry Wars. The curation was exceptional, and it was an era in which it still felt like the whole culture, or much of it at least, could still come together for a few weeks around some exciting new downloadable game.
Moises: Yeah. By comparison, when the PS4 really started to pivot to those smaller more intimate games early in its lifetime, it wasn’t that those games were lesser, but it did feel like they were being more haphazardly thrown on the platform to fill gaps between big exclusives. Meanwhile XBLA had these clearly thought out rollouts and events that made a big deal of Arcade titles. Also everything was less shitty. Xbox Live Gold was the original multiplayer subscription, and the only one for quite some time, but it at least seemed to provide value with great deals and a platform that produced rock solid multiplayer hits. It also wasn’t as expensive as anything is nowadays.
Carolyn: Before we wrap things up here, I think we can’t talk about what an amazing console the 360 was without saying a little more about its games. Are there any games y’all want to shout out as particular favorites that really helped make that library great or were emblematic of what the console was doing? When I think about the 360, I think about how the grittiness of Gears of War coexisted harmoniously alongside the whimsy of Viva Pinata, and I’ll never forget the dozens of hours my friends and I spent driving around doing challenges together in Burnout Paradise. It really did feel, more than a lot of other consoles, like it offered something for everyone, and like the people behind it thought deeply about how to bring people together to share in the experiences it offered.
And even though some of its games were also on PlayStation, at least everyone in my friend group, won over by the cheevos and online features of Xbox, always bought multiplatform games there, which perpetuated the console’s dominance in that generation. It’s a little wild to think how this generation it feels somewhat the opposite for me, like most people I know play most multiplatform games on PlayStation. Wild how the tables have turned. But yeah, any other 360 shoutouts?
Moises: I cannot separate the 360 from the stunning role it did in promoting so many smaller studios to the mainstream. I already invoked Bastion from Supergiant Games, but I can’t not shoutout Limbo and Playdead, which has now delivered two absolutely singular game experiences in a row. Oh and Shadow Complex does still own.
Ethan: Limbo was incredible. While the indie darling backlash was fair and warranted, it was really an incredible run of curation there for several years. The Dishwasher games were great, and really spoke to that sense of Newgrounds 2.0 animating the grungy vibe of XBLA. It’s also wild how much Microsoft tried to court Japanese RPG fans with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. For me personally, Dungeon Defenders is still an all-time great. One of the last times I was able to rope friends into playing something for hours with me on a couch.
I was trying to think of my top five favorite 360 games, exclusive or no, and couldn’t stop listing stuff. The end of that console generation was so strong, on both 360 and PS3, maybe there’s hope that the Series X/S and PS5 pick up in their final years. But with massive budgets, long development times, and so much risk-averse consolidation, I’m not hopeful.
Carolyn: Whether it picks up to some degree or not, I think it’s safe to say that there will never be an era quite like that exemplified by the 360 again. The console was just perfectly poised to take advantage of a given moment in gaming culture and technology, employing exciting new ideas like achievements to build a sense of both community and friendly competition around games in ways that its library and online service leveraged brilliantly. Also, Sneak King was great.
Ethan: Any parting thoughts since you vanished, Alyssa?
Alyssa: LMAO. The time my 360 red ringed right before I went up for senior year of college. The day before. And I went out and bought another because not having one wasn’t an option. That or the time my mother heard me cursing out misogynists in Italian?
Ethan: Was it on the $3 phone bank operator Xbox 360 headset?
Prominent short seller Andrew Left, the founder of Citron Research, has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with multiple counts of securities fraud for a $16 million stock market manipulation scheme.
The Department of Justice said in a statement on Friday that Left is charged with one count of engaging in a securities fraud scheme, 17 counts of securities fraud and one count of making false statements to federal investigators.
Separately, the SEC charged Left on Friday with a $20 million scheme to defraud his followers by publishing false and misleading statements about his stock trading recommendations. Short sellers like Left make bets stocks will decline in value based on their analysis that a business may have underlying financial problems or simply because they believe the shares are overvalued.
Left, an investor who was a frequent guest commentator on television channels including CNBC and Fox Business, built a following for his contrary calls on stocks such as GameStop — a darling of meme-stock followers — and Chinese property developer Evergrande. But securities regulators allege that after Left and Citron published opinions on 23 companies whose stock prices subsequently moved more than 12% on average, they quickly reversed their positions to profit from those stock moves.
“Left bought back stock immediately after telling his readers to sell, and he sold stock immediately after telling his readers to buy,” the SEC claimed in a Friday statement.
The alleged bait-and-switch scheme netted Left and his firm $20 million in profits, said Kate Zoladz, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles regional office, in a statement.
“Andrew Left took advantage of his readers. He built their trust and induced them to trade on false pretenses so that he could quickly reverse direction and profit from the price moves following his reports,” Zoladz added.
Citron didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
If convicted, Left faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison on the securities fraud scheme count, 20 years in prison on each securities fraud count, and five years in prison on the false statements count.
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
(Reuters) – Shares of headphone maker Koss Corp. (KOSS) soared for the second session in a row on Friday, closing at $13.35 a share, after trading as high as $18.50 early in the day, as social media posts speculated that a post by meme stock influencer Keith Gill indicated his interest in the company.
Some followers of Gill, known to his online followers as ‘Roaring Kitty’, on social media pointed to cryptic images he posted in May of a microphone posted against the backdrop of the U.S. flag. The image was shown as an emoji that scrolled across the end of a video.
That led to speculation on Reddit, such as Otherwise-Category42’s post on the sub-Reddit devoted to GameStop (GME) that has been tracking Gill’s return, that ‘Roaring Kitty’ would become a buyer of Koss shares on or around July 4, the U.S. Independence Day holiday. The poster also documented similarities between Koss and GameStop. Others on Reddit, however, were skeptical as the U.S. flag emoticon featured a microphone and not headphones.
Koss’ gain on Friday follows a 143.8% jump during Wednesday’s abbreviated trading session and brings its gains for the week to nearly 230%. In premarket trading on Friday, the stock briefly traded as much as 74% higher.
“There are absolutely no fundamental reasons why this company might be worth four times what it was at the beginning of the week,” said Steve Sosnick, market strategist at Interactive Brokers.
Nearly half of Koss’s 9.25 million shares are held by insiders and such a small public float means even small upticks in buying can result in exaggerated moves, Sosnick and other traders noted. By early afternoon Friday, trading volume had topped 47 million shares. Its average daily trading volume over the last 60 days is less than 2 million, traders noted.
Koss could not be reached for comment.
Gill, who did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment, has not made any public comments about Koss. In mid-June, he disclosed a position of 9 million shares in GameStop Corp. and most recently, revealed in a filing with U.S. regulators that he acquired a 6.6% stake in online pet food retailer Chewy Inc..
Prior to making the Chewy investment, Gill posted a series of images about a cartoon dog on X that followers believe foreshadowed that disclosure. The earlier video had also featured an emoji of a similar cartoon dog. That sent “Roaring Kitty” fans in search of any hidden meanings in other stocks.
(Reporting by Suzanne McGee; editing by Megan Davies and Josie Kao)
The 4th of July is a day for jingoistic mythmaking and summer merriment. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it than by grilling food, watching things explode, and ordering a bunch of cool stuff online that you totally don’t need but will still be really awesome to have.
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Commerce was a key driver of dissatisfaction with the crown when a bunch of American colonies originally told England to fuck off, so it makes sense that shopping remains a core ritual at the heart of celebrating the nation’s founding. Independence Day is a great time to buy a car or a refrigerator, but you’re not here for any of that. Instead, I’ve rounded up an eclectic mix of 4th of July gaming deals and culturally adjacent curios that happen to be discounted right now. Check them out. It’s what George Washington would have wanted.
Best Nintendo Switch Game Sales
The eShop is currently running a few sales through July 14, including the Recollection Collection Sale and Devolver Digital Summer Sale. Capcom also has a publisher sale running through July 7. There’s a wide-array of great games for cheap. Here are some of the highlights:
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy: $16 (60 percent off)
BioShock: The Collection: $10 (80 percent off)
Terra Nil: $15 (40 percent off)
Pepper Grinder: $10 (33 percent off)
Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection: $30 (50 percent off)
Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers: $20 (50 percent off)
Capcom Fighting Collection: $16 (60 percent off)
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: $10 (66 percent off)
The Messenger: $5 (75 percent off)
Best PS5 Game Sales
It’s been back-to-back-to-back sales on the PlayStation Store for a while now between Play Days and the Mid-Year sale. Now there’s another with the Essential Picks sale running through July 17. Many of the above Switch game deals are also available for the PlayStation versions, as well as these additional ones:
Dragon’s Dogma 2: $56 (20 percent off)
Persona 3 Reload: $49 (30 percent off)
System Shock: $28 (30 percent off)
Batman Arkham Collection: $6 (90 percent off)
Nier: Automata: $16 (60 percent off)
Castle Crashers Remastered: $3 (80 percent off)
Octopath Traveler II: $36 (40 percent off)
Like a Dragon: Ishin!: $24 (60 percent off)
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Deluxe: $45 (50 percent off)
Dead Space Deluxe: $28 (65 percent off)
Far Cry 6 Deluxe: $20 (75 percent off)
Diablo II: Resurrected: $13 (67 percent off)
Best Xbox Sales
Not to be left out, a bunch of Xbox games are currently discounted, too. Many of the Switch and PS5 game deals also apply to the Xbox versions, as well as these other cheap games worth a shout-out:
Hades: $12.50 (50 percent off)
Dead Rising 2: $5 (75 percent off)
Monster Hunter Rise: $25.50 (65 percent off)
Resident Evil Village: $20 (60 percent off)
Aragami 2: $10 (75 percent off)
Axiom Verge 1 & 2: $10.50 (70 percent off)
Flinthook: $7.50 (50 percent off)
Metro: Last Light Redux: $3 (85 percent off)
Wasteland 3: $8 (80 percent off)
Best PC Game Sales
If you haven’t already looked through our Steam Summer Sale overview you should do that, as there’s a lot of surprisingly steep discounts. So instead, I’ll take this opportunity to highlight a bunch of really good Steam Deck compatible game sales. The PC gaming handhelds themselves are 15 percent off right now. Here’s what you can play on them:
Elden Ring: $42 (30 percent off)
Cyberpunk 2077: $30 (50 percent off)
Stardew Valley: $9 (40 percent off)
Slay the Spire: $8.50 (66 percent off)
Dead Cells: $12.50 (50 percent off)
Hollow Knight: $7.50 (50 percent off)
Halo: The Master Chief Collection: $10 (75 percent off)
Marvel’s Midnight Suns: $15 (75 percent off)
Risk of Rain 2: $8.25 (67 percent off)
Vampire Survivors: $3.50 (25 percent off)
Balatro: $13.50 (10 percent off)
Best TV Sales
There are hundreds of cheap TVs to pick from, but I have two for you that should get the job done at either end of your price range. If you’re content to game and stream shows on a budget TV like I am, then Best Buy is currently selling 55-inch TCL Q5 series 4K displays for just $300 (33 percent off). If you want something more fancy, you’re also in luck. While you could spend thousands on a truly top-of the line TV with blacks as dark as an event horizon, you could also splurge on a 48-inch LG OLED. Best Buy is also selling those for just $800 (almost 50 percent off the sticker price).
Best Used Game Sales
GameStop is currently running a buy 2, get 1 free on all used games, including its (very limited) retro collection. It’s great way to catch up on bargain bin stuff you might have never gotten to (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Watch Dogs 2, GTA V) as well as more recent stuff that hasn’t dropped in value yet. For example, you could play some of 2024’s biggest games so far like Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Tekken 8 and save roughly $50 in the process. Have fun mixing and matching. Just make sure they actually have used copies of the games in stock.
The Best Of The Rest
Here’s where we have fun with a rapid-fire round of some other neat deals:
Meme-stock king Keith Gill—also known as ‘Roaring Kitty’—seems to be losing his golden touch. Shares of the viral stock picker’s newest target, the online pet retailer Chewy, fell more than 6.5% on Monday even after Securities and Exchange filings revealed his $245 million stake over the weekend. Chewy stock soared last Thursday after Gill simply posted a photo of a cartoon dog on social media, but they’re now 6.6% below Wednesday’s closing price. It was a similar story for Gill’s favorite stock, GameStop, which saw its shares plunge 5.4% on Monday.
This comes as the meme stock king faces a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York accusing him of committing securities fraud for a string of social media posts about GameStop.
Gill has made a name for himself by leading an army of retail traders into the unloved stocks of struggling companies in an effort to turn a quick profit. The goal of these meme stock traders, as they’ve become known, is to lift the share prices of floundering stocks enough to spark a short squeeze against the (mostly) professional traders that have big bets out against them. Rising share prices force short-sellers—those who’ve borrowed shares in order to bet against a company—to cover their positions by buying stock, thus forcing prices ever higher.
The short-squeeze tactic has proved incredibly effective over the past few years, at least in short bursts, but the rallying cry behind the meme stock trend is slowly waning.
Gill was able to marshall thousands of retail traders to follow him into stocks like GameStop during the pandemic based on the idea that they were profiting off the misery of Wall Street short-sellers. Many meme stock traders made a central villain out of Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin when surging prices of key meme stocks led some brokerages to pause trading due to extreme volatility in 2021. Citadel, a market maker, was even hit with a lawsuit at the time alleging that it colluded with brokerages to pause trading, but a U.S. district judge threw it out shortly after, citing lack of evidence.
Now, with the retail vs. Wall Street narrative fading, Gill’s ability to drive big moves in struggling stocks may be heading down a similar path. Of course meme stocks’ underperformance this year likely has multiple causes—the additional pressure of higher interest rates, the ailing financials of GameStop and other meme stock favorites, and the cooling of the U.S. economy and thus consumers’ willingness to invest in risky stocks could all be to blame.
The slowing of the meme stock trend could also be merely a temporary setback. The good news for Gill’s loyal fans is the latest lawsuit against the meme stock king is likely dead on arrival, at least according to Eric Rosen, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who works at the law firm Dynamis.
The plaintiff in the case, Martin Radev, alleges that Gill operated a “pump and dump” scheme that caused him material losses in May of this year. This is when a fraudster attempts to artificially inflate a stock’s price for a short-term gain knowing that the information they’ve shared to do so is false.
But Rosen explained in a June 28 article that this complaint is likely “doomed” for several key reasons. For one, the plaintiff would need to prove that he purchased GameStop’s stock based on false statements made by Gill. That’s difficult when the post the lawsuit is mainly based on is a meme of a man leaning forward to look at a TV.
“The tweets can hardly be described as false. Rather, posting a meme of a guy thinking about GME is not even a fact that can be proven or disproven,” Rosen argued.
Pomerantz LLP, the law firm representing Martin Radev, did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Gill did not immediately respond to an X message seeking comment.
Another important issue the plaintiff will need to overcome is the “reasonable investor” standard. In order to prove that the plaintiff was injured by Gill’s social media posts that boosted GameStop’s share prices (prior to a big drop), the prosecution will need to provide evidence that a reasonable investor would see Gill’s picture of a man leaning forward as investment advice. But Rosen argued that a social media post is clearly “not material to reasonable investors.”
“It is clear that the plaintiff here sought to profit simply because Gill tweeted, not because of the content of the tweets,” he wrote. “The tweets of a meme stock icon were not something that a ‘reasonable investor’— one who reads earnings reports and analyzes company news—would take into account when making a decision.”
The plaintiff’s will also need to prove that Gill both failed to disclose his intent to sell, and was required to disclose his intentions.
“They need to show that Roaring Kitty had a duty to disclose his intent to sell. And this is a high barrier. Generally, only financial advisors or fiduciaries have to disclose their positions or intent or things of that ilk,” Rosen noted.
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Chewy (CHWY) stock rose as much as 30% on Thursday after the X account linked to investor Keith Gill, also known as “Roaring Kitty,” posted a picture of a dog.
Posts on Gill’s account have been driving up shares of GameStop (GME) over the past month.
While that meme trade had largely gone quiet over the past week, the account’s tweet at 1 p.m. ET sent shares of Chewy rocketing higher. The stock quickly relinquished gains, though, and sat up just 2% more than an hour after the initial tweet.
Gill explained his large position in GameStop was a “bet on the management.”
“In particular, of course, Ryan f***ng Cohen. Ryan Cohen and his crew,” Gill said. “That’s what folks should be focused on,” Gill said.
Other pet stocks also caught a bid following the tweet, with shares of both Petco (WOOF) and PetMed Express (PETS) rising in afternoon trading.
Notably, GameStop, which had previously moved higher off Keith Gill’s reemergence, was up just 5% on the day, little changed after the tweet. The meme frenzy revival began last month, when GameStop rallied 180% over a span of two days after Keith Gill posted on X, formerly Twitter, for the first time since 2021. But since, shares have fallen as GameStop revealed a sales decline in the most recent quarter and issued more stock.
Logos for Chewy Inc. are displayed on the trading floor on the morning of the company’s IPO at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 14, 2019. (REUTERS/Andrew Kelly) (REUTERS / Reuters)
Josh Schafer is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X @_joshschafer.
GameStop received a $2.1 billion infusion of cash this week after selling 75 million new shares to eager investors.
The video game retailer, whose stock has been on a rollercoaster in recent weeks after being embraced by retail investors, disclosed in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it plans to use the new funding for general corporate purposes, including possible acquisitions.
GameStop sold the shares at an average price of $28.50 each, according to Wedbush Securities. The stock sale comes three weeks after the company sold an additional 45 million shares, raising $933 million.
The stock fell 60 cents, or 1.9%, to $29.90 in afternoon trading.
GameStop shares soared in May after Keith Gill, a popular trader who touts his results online under the monikers “Roaring Kitty” and “DeepF_Value,” resurfaced on social media after a long hiatus. Earlier this month, Gill posted a screenshot in a Reddit forum showing he owns roughly $116 million in GameStop shares.
Gill held a live video stream from his YouTube account last week and explained his rationale for backing GameStop. During the stream, Gill alluded to the company’s efforts to shift its business model from selling games in brick-and-mortar stores to streaming.
“Given that GameStop’s share price closed at $46 on June 6, we had assumed it would complete the sale at an average price of $40. Instead, the shares declined precipitously on June 7, reflecting news from Reddit following a rambling presentation by Roaring Kitty (Keith Gill), closing that day at $28,” Wedbush, which set a 12-month price target of $11 on GameStop’s stock, said of the new share offering.
GameStop didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite being a hot ticket among some investors, GameStop continues to lose money. Last week, the company reported a loss of $32.3 million on revenue of $882 million in its fiscal first quarter, with declining sales of hardware, software and collectibles. That compared with a loss of $50.5 million on revenue of $1.2 billion in the year-ago period.
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. He previously worked as a reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, Newsday and the Florida Times-Union. His reporting primarily focuses on the U.S. housing market, the business of sports and bankruptcy.
Citron Research founder Andrew Left is shorting GameStop again, arguing the stock is “extremely overvalued” after its latest meteoric rise. The veteran short seller was burned on his first bet against meme-stock traders’ favorite company in 2021, eventually closing out his short position at a 100% loss and halting the publication of short reports after he said an “angry mob” of fanatical GameStop shareholders harassed him.
But Left, who made his name with big bets against the pharmaceutical giant Valeant and China’s now-defunct property giant Evergrande, told the Wall Street Journal that he made a profit when he bet against GameStop again last month.
The video game retailer saw its shares surge from just over $10 at the start of May to an intraday peak of $64.83 by May 14 after Keith Gill—the trader, and de facto meme-stock leader, who goes by Roaring Kitty—referenced the company in social media posts, leading retail investors to pile in. After that initial surge, GameStop stock eventually fell to a low of $18.93 on May 23, and Left says he was able to close out his short position for a profit during this period, he says.
On Monday, the Citron Research founder doubled down on his bearish bet against GameStop after Gill posted a screenshot on Reddit that implied he owns over $100 million of the retailer’s stock. “When I saw it, I shorted it,” Left told Bloomberg of the Reddit post.
The surge in GameStop shares simply “makes no sense” and shows the U.S. has become a “nation of gamblers,” he said in his Wall Street Journal interview.
GameStop stock has risen more than 33% from its opening price on Monday, but fallen over 23% from that day’s intraday high. That means the potential profitability of Left’s current short position, at least at the moment, depends on the price at which he was able to secure shares for the bet.
Either way, the veteran short seller said that he did learn not to make large bets against “cult” stocks when he was burned shorting GameStop back in 2021, and his latest short compromises a small portion of his portfolio. “It’s a cult stock. You don’t do that on cult stocks,” he told the Journal. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
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Keith Gill better known as Roaring Kitty.Photo: STRMX (AP)
Keith Gill, the popular investor who sparked the skyrocketing of GameStop’s stock back in 2021 and appears to be back at it again, might have his E*Trade account shut down, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Monday. The stock trading platform and its owner Morgan Stanley reportedly have concerns about possible stock manipulation, sources familiar with the matter told the Journal.
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Gill, who’s known best as Roaring Kitty, began tweeting on his account on May 12 after almost three years of silence. Most of the posts consist of memes or video clips so it’s unconfirmed if Gill is the one in control of the account. His account on Reddit has also begun posting screenshots of his portfolio with E*Trade showing various bets on GameStop with a screenshot from Tuesday showing his assets valued at $289 million.
Morgan Stanley did not have a comment when asked for confirmation of the report. Gill didn’t immediately respond to a direct message sent over X.
Since the Roaring Kitty account restarted, GameStop stock has taken off, but not nearly the same as it did back in 2021. The video game retailer’s stock was trading at just over $17 on May 10 and shot up to almost $65 on May 14, two days after the May 12 post. Since then, the stock has been steadily losing value only to then jump in price again on Monday following another post from the Roaring Kitty account.
While Gill could be making hundreds of millions from his recent stock bets, it’s very unlikely we’ll see another instance of GameStop’s shares reaching $483 as it did in 2021. Back then, it was in the middle of the pandemic so people were at home paying where they could pay attention to finance moves like that and also were sitting on extra money thanks to various stimulus checks.
