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- GameStop co-founder Gary Kusin told CNBC he’s keeping a close eye on the Reddit-fueled frenzy this month.
- Kusin’s son, Ben Kusin, had even been an active member of the Reddit forum to encourage the GameStop rally.
- Gary Kusin, who founded the company in the 1980s, told CNBC it was “a bit of an honor” that investors targeted GameStop.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
The GameStop founder and his family are closely following the company’s stock price explosion this month.
Ben Kusin, whose father Gary co-founded GameStop, had been an active member of the Reddit forum to encourage the company’s spectacular rally. Kusin told CNBC’s Ari Levy that his father and brother have been actively watching the drama unfold as GameStop shares have skyrocketed 2,000% since the month.
“It was worlds colliding when this happened,” Ben Kusin told CNBC.
Encouraged by members of the popular Reddit forum r / WallStreetBets, many individuals have invested in GameStop to burn short sellers to the stock, like Andrew Left of Citron Research. The rally, which has grown into a populist movement, resulted in billions of losses for GameStop’s short sellers.
Gary Kusin, who founded the company in the 1980s, told CNBC it was “a bit of an honor” that investors targeted GameStop for its short-squeeze attempt.
Read more: Dan Sundheim’s D1 Capital hedge fund phenomenon stung by AMC short bet caught in Reddit trading frenzy
“I am much more of a spectator than a participant,” added Gary Kusin. “I just grabbed some popcorn.”
The GameStop co-founder joins other high profile spectators of the GameStop rally. Billionaires Elon Musk and Chamath Palihapitiya applauded retail investors for driving the short-squeeze. Progressive lawmakers have called for tighter regulation of the stock market to prevent market manipulation.
The rally represented a comeback for GameStop, the largest games retailer in the United States, after years of sluggish sales. The company closed 462 stores in 2020.
A pandemic-induced surge in video game demand, a major investment from Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen, and the release of the PlayStation 5 have all sparked a revival for the video game store ahead of this month’s frenzy. .
Some at GameStop struggled to cope with the sudden surge. GameStop employees told Insider’s Reed Alexander that they respond to investment questions and bizarre customer interactions. Employees said they had not received advice from GameStop management on how to handle the influx of questions.
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