It's pretty irresponsible to pretend that buying into GameStop was dumb luck. Sure, I am not the most educated investor, but there was a ton of good DD involved in this play. In fact, I'd posit that missing this play is plain blindness.
Gamestop is going digital.
Source:
www.gmedd.com
My intention is not to sound like a jerk or a smart-ass. What I'm trying to say is that buying into a pump (entering a bubble and leaving before it pops) requires luck. Most people are buying the frenzy and if the stocks rises considerably, they will sell and take a profit (unless they think they can make even more money). They're trying to convince us buying GME is about "screwing The Man" but that's just another pump. Just like Bitcoin, you don't see people talking about the tech (uncensored transactions, limited supply), only about price. I can show you my LocalBitcoins account from beginning of 2012. I could brag about a 900,000% increase and tell you I'm a wizard but that's not the whole picture.
Did you use 100% of your portfolio and made a whopping return? Did you invest a small amount you wouldn't mind losing? First one is not a wise move.
With a fast DuckDuckGo search I was able to look for some numbers:
-Steam holds 75% of the market (seems to be private equity). An article from 2018 said that 2017 was the sales record at 4.5 billion.
-GOG said to be around 14.3% in an article from 2013. Today might be way more than that.
-EPIC might be filling the gap.
So... GameStop is a losing business, that's why hedge funds were heavily betting against. They pay analysts (who are far from dumb) before putting money in such "bet". Even if it goes only digital, how much market share do you think they can get, 5-10%? Do you really think GME is correctly valued at 24 billion, or even +50 billion (since they want to pump even more)? That's why it's hard for me to believe buying GME is nothing more than a pump. Everybody buys into a pump thinking they can leave and take a profit before the next guy. We
all think we're better than average but mathematically, that's not possible.
Dave Portnoy was pumping Nokia, Blackberry, AMC among other failing businesses. He looked for shitty stocks that funds were likely shorting and thought he could make a fortune by pumping those stocks (forcing a short squeeze). I didn't follow the rest of the story but I heard he lost a million. And he's a poster-boy trader with influence.