GameStop stock soars more than 60% in apparent short squeeze, but analyst points to another reason

While GameStop has 69.8 million shares outstanding, short interest on the stock rose to 71.2 million shares on Dec. 31 from a previous 68.1 million shares, according to FactSet data.

On Monday, GameStop shares finished up 10% after it reached an agreement with activist investor RC Ventures to add three of its members to the board, and advanced less than 0.1% on Tuesday. Also, on Monday, the company said holiday same-store sales rose 4.8% and that digital sales had jumped 309%.

While noting that shorts definitely were a part of the buying binge, Ihor Dusaniwsky — the head of predictive analytics at financial technology and analytics firm S3 Partners, which specializes in analyzing data on short selling — said he doesn’t agree that GameStop’s price surge was the result of a squeeze.

“GME’s board shake-up and stronger holiday sales is causing a long-buying tsunami, which is the primary factor for the price move,” Dusaniwsky said in emailed comments. “While I agree that we are seeing some shorts squeezed out of their positions due to massive mark-to-market losses today, this is much like the chicken-and-egg question – did long buying lead to short covering\squeeze or short covering\squeeze lead to long buying?”

Dusaniwsky believes it’s the former.

“We will not be seeing a massive drop in shares shorted over the next few days, more like a 10%-20% drop which would mean 7 to 14 million of shares covered, which is nowhere near the almost 70 million shares traded this morning,” the analyst said. “Long buyers are the primary force driving GME’s stock price up. “

GameStop shares have skyrocketed more than 500% in the past 12 months, compared with a 16% gain in the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.33% and a 42% rise in the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.52%.