GameStop stock moved higher Wednesday after CEO, Chairman and President Ryan Cohen extended an unusually aggressive September buying streak, purchasing another 450,000 GME shares on September 29. The latest purchases were made in two transactions — 446,500 shares at a weighted average price of $23.4753 and another 3,500 shares at $23.4499 — putting roughly $10.6 million more of Cohen’s money into GameStop. The purchase matters on its own, but the bigger story is what has happened over the course of September: Cohen has repeatedly returned to the open market to buy millions of additional GameStop shares while the company simultaneously reports stronger profitability, expands its collectibles business and deploys billions of dollars into a radically different investment strategy.
This was not Cohen’s first major purchase this month. On September 10, he bought 1 million shares at a weighted average price of $20.3759, an investment of roughly $20.4 million. Eleven days later, he returned and purchased another 1,150,680 shares at an average price of $22.9375, spending approximately $26.4 million. Add Tuesday’s 450,000-share purchase and Cohen has acquired roughly 2.6 million additional GME shares during September alone, putting approximately $57 million into the stock across those three disclosed rounds of buying. The SEC filings show the transactions were open-market purchases rather than routine equity compensation, making the streak particularly notable for investors trying to interpret management’s confidence in GameStop’s direction.
That does not automatically mean the stock is undervalued. Insider buying can communicate conviction, but it does not guarantee future returns, and GME remains one of the market’s most unusual and volatile stocks. What makes Cohen’s September buying more interesting, however, is that it is occurring while GameStop itself is becoming a fundamentally different company. Traditional retail sales are shrinking, collectibles are becoming dramatically more important, operating profit has improved, the balance sheet holds billions of dollars in financial assets, and GameStop has built a massive investment in eBay while publicly pursuing an acquisition of the online marketplace. The old GameStop investment story was about saving a struggling video-game retailer. The new one increasingly resembles a hybrid of retailer, collectibles platform and investment vehicle — with Cohen personally buying more stock as that transformation accelerates.
Ryan Cohen’s GameStop Stock Buying Has Accelerated as the Price Rises
One detail makes Cohen’s September purchases particularly striking: he has continued buying even as GameStop stock moved higher.
His September 10 purchase came at an average of approximately $20.38. The September 21 purchase came at roughly $22.94. His latest purchase occurred at approximately $23.48. Rather than waiting for another major decline, Cohen has therefore been adding shares at progressively higher prices.
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That pattern does not tell investors what Cohen believes GameStop is worth, and insider purchases should not be treated as price targets. But discretionary open-market buying is watched closely because executives are choosing to expose additional personal capital to the same stock owned by outside shareholders. Cohen already had enormous financial exposure to GameStop before September, making the decision to continue increasing that exposure noteworthy.
Following the September 29 transactions, Cohen’s amended ownership filing reported direct beneficial ownership of 44,683,306 shares, including shares underlying GameStop warrants, representing roughly 8.8% of the company.
And Cohen has not been the only insider buying.
GameStop director Lawrence Cheng purchased 55,000 shares in early September for roughly $1 million, while director James Grube subsequently acquired 10,255 shares for approximately $196,000. That cluster of insider activity arrived around the same time GameStop reported its fiscal second-quarter results.
Those results help explain why the buying streak is attracting more attention than another meme-stock rally normally would.
Revenue Is Shrinking but Its Profit Story Is Moving the Other Way
The most important contradiction inside GameStop’s latest earnings report is also what makes the stock difficult to value using traditional retail metrics.
Second-quarter net sales fell to $790.2 million, down from $972.2 million a year earlier. GameStop attributed the decline primarily to the prior-year Nintendo Switch 2 launch, planned store closures and the divestiture of its operations in France. A conventional reading of those numbers would hardly suggest a retailer entering a new growth cycle.
But profitability moved sharply in the opposite direction.
GameStop generated $160.2 million of operating income, which the company said was the highest second-quarter operating income in its history, compared with $66.4 million a year earlier. Net income climbed to $298.7 million from $168.6 million, while adjusted EBITDA reached $174 million versus $75.7 million in the comparable quarter. GameStop subsequently raised its full-year fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook to more than $650 million.
This is the financial tension increasingly defining GameStop stock. Revenue from the legacy business is under pressure, but management has aggressively reduced costs, closed stores, exited markets and redirected the company toward businesses it believes can generate better economics.
The clearest example is collectibles.
Collectibles Are Quietly Becoming the New GameStop
GameStop’s second-quarter collectibles sales reached $356.3 million, up 57% from $227.6 million a year earlier. More importantly, collectibles represented 45.1% of total quarterly net sales, compared with just 23.4% one year earlier.
That means nearly half of GameStop’s quarterly sales are now coming from collectibles rather than the traditional hardware, software and accessories businesses historically associated with the brand.
The shift is significant because the physical video-game retail model has faced structural pressure for years as consumers increasingly download games digitally and publishers sell directly through console ecosystems. GameStop cannot reverse that industry transition. What it can do is use its brand, physical locations and enormous customer base to move toward categories where physical products remain central.
Trading cards, graded collectibles and other enthusiast products fit that requirement considerably better than boxed video games.
The strategy also creates a different type of customer relationship. Collectibles are driven by scarcity, community, resale values and repeated trading activity, characteristics that potentially allow GameStop to build services and marketplaces around the products rather than simply selling an item once.
They’re Sitting on Billions and Cohen Is Using It
At the end of the second quarter, GameStop reported $5.4 billion of cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities, digital assets and related receivables. Separately, it held an investment in eBay common stock valued at approximately $4.9 billion as of August 1.
Those numbers are extraordinary for a company that still generated only $790 million of quarterly retail sales.
They also make conventional analysis of GameStop increasingly difficult. An investor buying GME is no longer purchasing exposure solely to stores selling gaming products. A substantial portion of the company’s economic value now depends on how Cohen and the board allocate billions of dollars of capital.
The eBay investment provides the clearest example.
GameStop publicly proposed acquiring eBay for $125 per share, valuing the transaction at approximately $55.5 billion, after initially accumulating a substantial economic position in the company. GameStop has maintained a dedicated investor-relations section concerning the proposal and its eBay investment.
That strategy transforms the GameStop thesis because the potential upside and downside increasingly depend on capital allocation. Successful investments or acquisitions could create value far beyond the economics of GameStop’s legacy stores. Poor investments could destroy capital that shareholders previously viewed as a defensive balance-sheet advantage.
Cohen’s repeated personal purchases therefore carry an additional layer of significance. He is not merely buying shares in the retailer he manages. He is increasing his exposure to a company whose enormous pool of capital he is helping direct.
The eBay Bet Could Define Next Era
GameStop’s interest in eBay initially appeared extraordinary because of the enormous difference in scale between the two companies. But the strategic logic becomes clearer when viewed alongside GameStop’s shift toward collectibles and online commerce.
eBay already operates one of the world’s largest marketplaces for collectibles, trading cards, sneakers, luxury goods and other enthusiast categories. GameStop, meanwhile, is increasingly dependent on collectibles for its own sales growth.
Combining those ecosystems could theoretically create a much larger marketplace centered around enthusiast commerce.
But the financial challenge is equally obvious. GameStop’s proposed $55.5 billion acquisition price dwarfs the scale of its operating business and would require a complex financing structure. eBay has also resisted the proposal, meaning there is no certainty a transaction will occur. Reuters reported in August that GameStop had acquired close to a 10% position while continuing to pursue a takeover, though a partnership or other collaboration could become an alternative following eBay’s rejection of the initial proposal.
For GameStop shareholders, the unresolved eBay situation creates both optionality and uncertainty. GameStop already has billions invested in eBay shares, meaning movements in eBay’s stock can affect GameStop’s reported investment results even without an acquisition.
That was visible in the latest quarter.
GameStop reported a $72.1 million unrealized gain on its equity investment during the second quarter, while its broader results were also affected by derivative gains and losses related to digital assets.
The financial statements are therefore becoming increasingly influenced by investment activity rather than straightforward retail operations.
A $32 Deadline Is Approaching for The Stock
GameStop also has approximately 59 million warrants outstanding that are scheduled to expire on October 30, 2026. Each warrant allows the holder to purchase one GameStop share for $32 in cash. If all of the warrants were exercised, GameStop said they could generate approximately $1.9 billion of additional gross proceeds.
The catch is obvious: GameStop stock needs to trade above the $32 exercise price for warrant holders to have a straightforward economic incentive to exercise.
With Cohen’s latest purchase occurring around $23.47, the shares would still need a substantial rally to cross that threshold before the October 30 expiration.
That creates an unusual dynamic around GameStop stock over the next month. If the shares remain below $32, many warrants could expire without being exercised and GameStop would not receive the potential $1.9 billion cash infusion. If the stock rallies above the exercise price, GameStop could receive significant additional capital, although issuing the underlying shares would increase the share count.
Cohen himself owns millions of shares underlying warrants, according to his beneficial-ownership filings, meaning the approaching expiration also intersects with his personal position.
For a stock already famous for sharp momentum-driven moves, that deadline gives traders another number to watch.
Insider Buying Is Powerful
It is easy to understand why retail investors respond enthusiastically when Cohen buys more GameStop stock. His personal financial interests are closely connected to the company, and repeatedly purchasing millions of dollars of additional shares can be interpreted as confidence in GameStop’s future.
The core retail business continues to shrink. Second-quarter sales fell almost 19% year over year. The company’s increasingly important investment portfolio introduces market risk that can cause reported earnings to fluctuate independently of operating performance. The eBay strategy involves billions of dollars and remains unresolved. Digital assets add another layer of volatility. And GameStop’s transformation into a collectibles-focused retailer and capital allocator is still relatively new.
There is also valuation risk.
GameStop has historically traded partly on fundamentals and partly on extraordinary retail-investor enthusiasm. That can produce price movements that are difficult to explain through near-term earnings alone. Cohen’s purchases can reinforce that enthusiasm, but they do not eliminate the possibility of large reversals if sentiment changes.
The bullish interpretation of September is straightforward: insiders are buying while profitability improves, collectibles surge and GameStop deploys its enormous balance sheet toward potentially transformative opportunities.
The cautious interpretation is equally straightforward: investors are being asked to assign significant value to a capital-allocation strategy whose largest bets have not yet produced a clear long-term outcome.
Both can be true at the same time.
Ryan Cohen’s $57 Million September Bet Raises the Stakes
The latest 450,000-share purchase matters because it is no longer an isolated insider transaction.
Cohen bought 1 million shares on September 10 at roughly $20.38. He bought another 1.15 million on September 21 at roughly $22.94. He then returned on September 29 for another 450,000 shares at approximately $23.47. Altogether, he has invested around $57 million in roughly 2.6 million additional GameStop shares during September, based on the disclosed weighted-average purchase prices.
Meanwhile, the company underneath those shares is changing rapidly.
Quarterly revenue has fallen, but operating income reached a second-quarter record. Collectibles sales jumped 57% and now represent 45% of revenue. GameStop has raised its full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook above $650 million. It holds billions of dollars in liquid and investment assets. It has built a $4.9 billion position in eBay and continues pursuing a much larger strategic relationship with the company. And an October 30 warrant expiration could potentially bring another $1.9 billion onto the balance sheet if GameStop stock rises above the $32 exercise price and warrants are exercised.
Cohen appears increasingly willing to put his own capital behind the transformation. Investors now have to decide for themselves what that signal means relative to the underlying risks.
The most important question is no longer whether Ryan Cohen believes in GameStop. His September purchases provide clear evidence that he is willing to increase his financial exposure to the company.
The question is whether GameStop’s new combination of collectibles, investment assets and aggressive capital allocation can eventually generate enough value to justify that conviction.
And with the $32 warrant deadline now only a month away, the stock may not have to wait long for its next major test.
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research or consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. This article was researched and drafted with the support of AI, but was reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the editorial team before publication.
