GameStop Short Selling Reduces By Over Half: Report

Short selling activity in the shares of GameStop Corp GME is slowing down as traders move to cover their bets, according to analytics company S3 Partners, Reuters reported Monday.

What Happened: The video game retailer’s 27.13 million shares were shorted in the week, which is 35 million lower than the number of shares shorted in the preceding week, as per Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners. 

See also: How‌ ‌to‌ ‌Buy‌ ‌GameStop‌ ‌(GME)‌ ‌Stock‌

Short interest in GameStop was $8.82 billion as of Friday, as per S3.

Why It Matters: As of early Monday, short-sellers incurred mark-to-market losses of $13.38 billion in GameStop on a year-to-date basis, according to S3.

Early Monday’s weakness in GameStop allowed short sellers to recoup some of their losses. Even so, the shares of the retailer have rallied 400% in the last week, thanks to Reddit investors.

The investors have also targeted other heavily shorted stocks such as AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc AMC, Nokia Oyj NOK, and Express, Inc EXPR.

See Also: GameStop's Power Surge: Will WallStreetBets Or The Short Sellers Come Out On Top?

“Fundamental and momentum shorts have incurred very large mark-to-market losses and they have been squeezed out of their positions,” said Dusaniwsky.

The analyst said that, over the last couple of days, he has seen some “serious short covering.”

On the last count in late January, Dusaniwsky said short-sellers had endured mark-to-market losses of more than $5 billion.

Price Action: GameStop shares fell 15.77% in the after-hours session to $189.52 on Monday. The shares closed the regular session 30.77% lower at $225.

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Photo by Keith C on Flickr