Who wins and who loses in the GameStop drama?

The retail emptying drama around GameStop seems to be nearing its end. GameStop shares, boosted by retail investors, have now fallen back to just over $50, leaving almost a leader from their previous high of $347.

In this war, there are hedge funds that have lost a lot of money, retail investors who have sold high and made a lot of money, and, of course, retail bulls who still hold on to it.

So who is the big winner?

Senvest Management, a hedge fund, studied GameStop as early as last year and finally started buying from January to September, and by the end of October, Senvest owned more than 5 per cent of GameStop shares, up from less than $10 a share.

After US stocks closed on January 26th, Tesla's Musk (Elon Musk) posted "GameStonk" on social media and was seen as a support for bulls. Senvest, which had long been slowly reducing its holdings, made the decision to sell all GameStop shares.

In other words, Senvest successfully escaped from the top.

As a result of the deal, Senvest made almost $700m and its total assets increased to $2.4 billion.

Musk's impact on the US stock market has become more and more obvious in recent years, and the fact that a word on social media can influence the performance of stocks will clearly become a concern for future regulation.

Senvest this time, the purchase can be regarded as inadvertently inserted willows, but the decision to sell is actually quite admirable. Closing in on the whole market at the time, it was thought that GameStop shares might actually rise to $1000. (even if there are still a lot of people who hold this view)

Of course, in this war, the winner is far more than Senvest.

Those retail investors who entered the forum early may have made a little more or less, at least several times as much as they did when they entered.

Hedge funds that have long entered the market early, such as Senvest. Funds that go short in high positions, such as Mudrick Capital Management, have also made a lot of money.

High-frequency traders, option market makers and brokers made a lot of money in this war, although they were under a lot of pressure for a time.

As for the losers, hedge funds that were heavily shorted in the first place, as well as retail investors and institutions that entered the market to be long at the top, suffered heavy losses.

After the market gradually calmed down, the outline of the story became clearer and clearer, but it was definitely not a "retail empty war institution" as the market thought, and the matter was obviously much more complicated.

Is it someone who deliberately muddles the waters and pushes up the stock price in order to make a profit out of it?

Are retail investors aggrieved by institutional shorting supported by fundamentals? Can GameStop's nostalgia really bring new hope to its revenue?

After the first wave rose, investors entered the market for fear of missing the opportunity.

The retail investors on the forum gave a correct analysis, made their own independent judgment, and then entered the market to do more.

There may be some of the above factors, gathered together, and finally fermented into the US stock market drama at the beginning of the year.

Generally speaking, if there is a large amount of money coming in, market sentiment can indeed be mobilized. When people want share prices to go up, they can push them up.

But as more and more people come in, in the end, there are always a small number of people who make a lot of money, a lot of people who lose a little, and some people who lose a lot.

So how will future regulation deal with a situation in which someone is likely to muddy the waters? How to deal with a lot of people who are still shouting "hold" directly on the forum?

It is reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating whether there is fraud in online forums around changes in stocks such as GameStop.