GameStop forever? Early investors weigh in a year after the boom

digitaltrends.com:

In 2020, when Jimmy Pham was a 20-year-old college junior, his school moved online when the pandemic hit. He dropped out, still living at his parent’s home in Orange County, California, helping them with rent and unhappily working as a remote tech for uBreakiFix, making $19.30 per hour.

He was intrigued when he first heard that people were buying stock in GameStop on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets. It first seemed conspiratorial, and he wasn’t immediately sold. But as more and more people posted about their confidence in the stock, Pham became convinced. He bought shares and since then, he’s been putting the majority of every paycheck into the stock.

“I’m not going to sell until I see change happen,” said Pham. “I actually do not care about the money anymore.”

Pham is part of a significant group of people who are still holding on to their GameStop options, watching their money increase while betting on GameStop’s transition from a brick-and-mortar video game business to tech company and insisting that this is a way to change the system. For investors like Pham, it has changed their lives.

On January 11, 2021, GameStop exploded into mainstream awareness when Chewy co-founder and investor Ryan Cohen was appointed to the board after investing $76 million in 2020 and acquiring a 12.9% stake in the company. Cohen’s appointment caused the stock to soar, buyers to rally, and galvanized a movement that started on Reddit to buy shares of GameStop, where users took cues from “GameStop OGs,” including Keith Gill — a.k.a. Roaring Kitty — who had been heavily investing in the company since 2019. These Redditors rallied around the stock not only as a way to get rich, but also to protest the greed of the Wall Street hedge funds which