Ryan Cohen, the activist investor of GameStop, is once again a billionaire just days following a major executive shakeup within the game retailer.
GameStop shares shot up 170% in a one day period and, with it, the worth of new board member Cohen has nearly doubled to about $1.5 billion, according to estimates done by Forbes.
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The stock that no one can fully understand got a major boost from something that few are understanding. The over-the-top turnaround of the Gamestop brand is puzzling at best. Following an 85% downturn, it suddenly surged by 100% less than two hours after Ryan tweeted a picture of a McDonald’s ice cream cone with a frog emoji.
As the kids say -that’s it. That’s the tweet. Cohen offered no additional context and, from there, GameStop shot through the roof.
The tweet sent many into a frenzy trying to determine its meaning. Some guessed it signaled a treat on the horizon. Others thought it could be a play on the old joke about McDonald’s ice cream machines notoriously being out of order. Yet, in the end, it might have been about nothing. That’s a big part of an internet culture – the same culture carried GameStop to new heights through it’s ironic love like it has for Nic Cage memes and the movie “The Room”. For those who “get it”, it could just be about the meme itself. The less sense it makes, the more sense it makes. It’s also just one of a number of cryptic posts that Ryan has given the world.
Cohen is more than a memelord. Last year, he purchased 9 million GameStop shares as New Year’s approached for a total of $76 million. Today, those same shares go for $1.3 billion in one of the most unexpected boomerangs in recent memory. The investment helped him grab three board seats on GameStop in January of this year. It allowed him to seat two other former executives he worked with while CEO of Chewy.com and, in another chewtastic victory, Gamestop hired another one of Cohen’s former executives, Kelli Durkin, as it vice president of customer care. If power, money, and influence go together to make success, Cohen is an incredibly successful path.
Thanks to websites and the ability to bring novelty investers together online, the rise of the meme stocks has been 2021’s big story so far. Aside from GameStop, others considered to be in its grouping are also moving up this year. Both Koss Corporation (up 13%) and AMC (up 56%), famous for their ironic support base, are shooting higher by the day. That’s a lot of unexpected money for a lot of unexpected investors.
This calls for some ice cream.
Sources: Forbes, Hype Beast, Dallas Morning News
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