[Interview file] Gamestop that yielded hedge funds... David's'success myth'?

● 1,500% vs.

-53%,'David' investment chat room that destroyed'Goliath' A

confrontation between short selling forces and individual investors over GameStop (listed item GME) listed on the New York Stock Exchange as a video game sales company Waves are spreading while shaking the stock market.

GameStop's stock price, which started to fluctuate from Monday last week, rose 134% on Wednesday, fell 44% on Thursday, and rose again by 67% on Friday.

Shares plunged on Thursday when Robinhood, a trading platform for private investors, banned buying and selling of GameStop stocks and rebounded on Friday as some trading restrictions were lifted.

GameStop recorded the largest trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange over the past week, increasing its share price by 400%.

In the month of January alone, the stock price rose at a record 1625%.

At the end of last month, the company's gamestop, which recorded a net loss of $4.18 per share over the past year, increased to $325 per share, and the market cap of Gamestop, which was listed with a total of 6975 million shares, increased to $22.6 billion (KRW 25 trillion).

Over the past 52 weeks, the lowest price was $2.57 and the highest price was $483, a 187 times difference between the highest and lowest prices.

The rise in Gamestop's stock price resulted in a number of investors who made millions or more of those who bought the stock, but the short-selling forces that borrowed Gamestop's stock suffered significant losses.

It is estimated that in the month of January, hedge funds suffered from short selling of GameStop amounting to $13.5 billion.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 31st of last month that the assets under management of Melvin Capital, a hedge fund that led GameStop's short sale, fell by 53% in the month of January.

Assets under management, which amounted to 12.5 billion dollars (14 trillion won), fell to 8 billion dollars (about 8.900 trillion won) at the end of last month.

US CNBC broadcast reported that another hedge fund, Maplelane Capital, also lost 45%.

According to CNBC, GameStop was a software store created in 1984 by Gary Kusin, who lived in Dallas, under the name'Babbage'.

After its establishment, Babbage also sold video games such as Atari and Nintendo.

US Barnes & Nobles acquired Babbage, renamed it “GameStop,” and listed it on the New York Stock Exchange under the name of GME in 2002. Gamestop, a

video game vendor, has spread from the beginning of last year. After being hit by Corona 19, the US Wall Street hedge funds began to borrow and sell GameStop's stocks. when the fall is one trying to get the profits as a way to pay off to buy cheaper stocks. these short sales backlog once GameStop reportedly reached 140% of the traded number of shares. it happened happened selling borrowed the free shares.

founder of GameStop Gary 'Short squeeze' operation on GameStop began last summer, said Ben Kusin, son of the daughter, who founded Chewy Pet Food Company, which received $3 billion in 2017. Investment activist Ryan Cohen, who is known to have sold, bought 13% of GameStop's stock last summer, and since then, a local video game sales company in WallStreetBets, an investment chat room on social media news site Reddit. It is said that there was a movement to grow the company into a multi-billion dollar company.

GameStop's'Short Squeeze Operation' culminated last week.

Wall Street Betz members, which had a membership number of 6.5 million, tripled in one week, began to buy stock against short selling forces, recording the highest trading volume among stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

If the stock price continues to rise, the power of short selling by lending stocks will not be able to bear the burden of losses and will have to buy and repay the same number of stocks, and hedge funds will start securing stocks in a situation where the sale is dry due to the purchase of individual investors. In this case, it is a collective action derived from the calculation that the stock price will have no choice but to jump.

On Tuesday of last week, Social Capital's CEO Chamas Palihapitiya joined in the share price by saying that he had bought GameStop's call option, and Tesla founder Elon Musk also said, The share price jumped even further by posting a Twitter message saying'Gamestonk'.

As GameStop's stock price soared, hedge fund Melvin Capital announced on Wednesday that it had cleared Gamestop's short selling balance and realized losses.

Melvin Capital is reportedly borrowing $3 billion from Citadel and Point72 to make up for the loss.

Robin Hood, which gained popularity as a trading platform for individual investors as stock prices plummeted and volatility increased, banned the buying position of some listed stocks, which had soared due to the'short squeeze' phenomenon, including GameStop last Thursday. Fell by 44%.

Private investors immediately protested that Robin Hood's ban on buying was beneficial only to institutional investors such as hedge funds, and criticism poured out in the US Congress.

Eventually, Robin Hood allowed some buy orders such as GameStop again, and GameStop's stock price rebounded 67% on Friday.

The short squeeze phenomenon in the US market is occurring not only in Game Stop, but also in several stocks such as AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Black Berry.

It is known that individual investors are intensively buying through social media investment chat rooms as institutional investors are known to have many short selling positions, mainly due to poor business performance and high stock prices compared to earnings.

GameStop's stock price fell 30.8% in the US market on the first Monday of February, closing at $225 per share.

However, individual investors say that buying silver and silver ETFs can damage large banks, as the government and financial sectors are suppressing the silver market, and silver prices surged to a peak in eight years after purchasing silver. The realm of rebellion against institutional investors is spreading.

In Korea, some individual investors, led by the Korea Equity Investors Association (Han Tu-yeon), are launching the Korean version of the'Short Squeeze Operation', declaring a war against the short selling forces.

The strategy is to raise the stock price by intensively buying stocks such as Celltrion and HLB, which have a large short selling balance of institutional investors, and inflict losses on institutional investors.

Like individual US investors engaged in a'short selling war' with a hedge fund centering on the community site Reddit's chat room'wallstreetbets' (WSB), they are saying that they will open a'kstreetbets (KSB) site' to respond.

The short squeeze rebellion by private investors begins with an antipathy against institutional investors on Wall Street that caused the 2008 financial crisis.

In addition, as it became possible to trade with little commission through the smartphone app, a large number of individual investors formed investment clubs using SNS, securing the same influence as institutional investors.

Market power is decentralized or democratized.

However, market experts believe that it is difficult for individual investors to win against institutional investors who have hundreds of trillion won in assets under management, and there is a limit to the stock price rise of companies that do not make profits.

The fact that short squeeze-focused companies are small and that their stock prices are relatively low suggests this.

Some point out that the purchase of certain stocks through SNS may lead to unfair trade due to a kind of collusion, and may harm the health of the market.

There are also concerns that somebody will suffer damage by investing that does not consider the intrinsic value of a company by investing in'turn towels' or'turn bombs'.

If GameStop's stock price surged due to the short squeeze phenomenon, Gamestop's management raises funds at low cost through issuance of new stocks to make investments, and it is the stock that returns more profits to investors by generating profits through investment It is a virtuous cycle in the market, and securities experts point out that it is a job for company executives to do.

Inflationary sentiment that the value of money will fall due to the lowest interest rate and the largest release of currency is spreading without knowing that the desire to invest in stocks or real estate with high risk of price fluctuation will be dampened.

It is time to come up with a sustainable alternative so that rising stock prices or rising real estate prices are not a social burden, but to improve the residential environment and activate investment for the future, thereby becoming a momentum for national development.