GME Lags Peers as Cohen Buys and Short Sellers Dig In

Among GME's closest correlated peers, the short interest setup looks crowded by comparison. MNRO gained 2.6% on the week and BRLT added 4.5%, while GameStop shed 2.8%, the weakest performer in the group. Short interest at 10.9% of free float puts GME well above the typical retail peer, where short positions rarely reach double digits.

The short book rebuilt at an unusual pace this month. Shares short have more than doubled since late September, rising from roughly 30 million to just under 49 million as of October 20. That is a jump of more than 50% in under four weeks. Cost to borrow, at 0.49%, is still low in absolute terms despite climbing 40% over the past week. Borrow availability at 294% confirms there is no mechanical squeeze pressure: for every share already borrowed, nearly three more remain available in the lending pool. The 52-week low availability reading was 1.4%, which puts the current 294% in sharp contrast to what the borrow market looked like during the tighter episodes of the past year. Options traders are not particularly exercised: the put/call ratio of 0.26 sits almost exactly at its 20-day average, well below the 52-week peak of 0.52, and the z-score is barely above zero. Taken together, the positioning picture is one of bears rebuilding at scale with plenty of room to operate, rather than a market braced for a squeeze.

The dominant counterforce is Ryan Cohen. His 90-day open-market purchases across the whole insider group total $98.3 million in net value. Cohen personally bought 777,000 shares at $27.00 and a further 67,130 at $26.75 on October 13, all discretionary with no 10b5-1 plan. He also bought 700,000 shares on October 2 at $24.41, and 450,000 more across two transactions on September 29. His 13D/A filing dated October 13, the eleventh amendment since April 2025, now lists his stake at 9.1% of shares outstanding. GameStop carries an active Schedule 13D filer on its SEC register. That is among the more newsworthy structural facts about any US-listed stock, and Cohen's trajectory has been consistently upward across each amendment. As ORTEX notes, 13D/G positions are as-last-disclosed around the 5% threshold, and a holder can exit below that level without a further filing, but nothing in Cohen's recent filing pattern points in that direction. A director, Nat Turner, added a smaller position on October 1 at $24.33. The only selling in the period came from the principal financial officer and general counsel, both under pre-arranged 10b5-1 plans.

The Street is effectively absent as a counterbalance. The only active analyst coverage on the record is Wedbush's Underperform rating, last updated in June 2025, with a target of $13.50 against a current price of $26.47. That target is more than a year old and sits far enough from the current price that it carries limited informational weight for anyone following the stock now. The valuation multiples in the data reflect negative earnings, making conventional ratio analysis uninformative. Wikipedia traffic is running at a z-score of 1.66 against GME's own prior 90 days, a measure of retail attention, not a revenue signal, but worth noting as a gauge of how much the stock is back in wider conversation.

The next earnings date is December 8. The more immediate date is October 30, when warrant expirations fall due. That event, now nine sessions away, is the level worth watching: how the stock trades into and through that expiration will determine whether the short book stays anchored near current levels or gets a fresh catalyst to move.