GameStop Corp. is a heavy bet by South Korean hedge fund. almost a year ago turned less bullish on U.S. videogame retailer stock after seemingly unstoppable rally misleading many short sellers.
Kim Doo-yong, chief executive of Must Asset Management, said its stock has high volatility and more than a tenfold increase the last interview with Bloomberg in March 2020 inspires his not-so-strong view. Shares have gained 245% so far this year and are up another 28% in U.S. pre-sale trading on Monday.
The Seoul-based hedge fund, which won 602 billion ($ 546 million) in managed funds, had a 4.7% stake in GameStop since April 2020, according to Bloomberg data based on filing. That made Korea’s assets one of the largest investors in the Texas-based company Grapevine.
Kim declined to comment on the current state of the fund on U.S. listed stock, one of the retail investors who has been increasingly influential in markets at the time of the pandemic. GameStop shares are spinning on a whim of short coverage and day trading after Ryan Cohen, the venture investor and online pet retailer Chewy Inc., co-founder, he joined his board on 11 January.
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“We’ve become less bullish and turned more neutral on GameStop,” Kim said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday. “This stock will remain volatile and invisible in the short term.”
Swimming against a bearish full of analysts ’comments, Kim told Bloomberg in March last year that GameStop is“ the only place ”that buyers of company games can personally try. He still believes in the company.
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“We remain very optimistic about the new management of GameStop,” Kim said. “We believe Ryan Cohen and his team can reiterate the success he realized at Chewy.com.”
Kim said he recently bet on another American company. The fund increased its holdings on the U.S. list Kaleyra Inc and now has a 5.2% stake in the software company.
(Updates with US pre-sale trading in the second paragraph.)