How To Buy GameStop Stock – Is It a Game Worth Playing?
It was practically impossible to miss the news about GameStop stock. Boomers who had never even heard of the video game retailer (unless it was to buy video games for grandkids a decade ago) were all of a sudden paying very close attention.
After starting 2021 at $17.25 per share on the NYSE, GameStop rose to $347.51 on January 27. The price dropped the next day to 193.60, and fell to about $40 in mid-February. Why? Investors from a Reddit chat room banded together and bought shares of GME in hopes of driving the price up and causing havoc for investors betting on a share price decline. Even Tesla's Elon Musk tweeted about the stock, giving props to those standing up to traditional Wall Street.
GameStop stock became the most short-sold stock of any publicly traded company and through the fluctuation, the stock sits around $180 as I write this in late March.
If you’re interested in getting on this roller coaster, I’ll show you how to do it.
Step 1: Find a broker that offers GameStop stock
Well, of course, you need a broker but first, you have to find one worth joining. You won't want to waste your money on high fees and broker commissions so take a look at online brokers who can help you get in on this hot stock for less.
Here are a few good online platforms to look into.
Wealthfront
To invest in GameStop you will have to have a $100,000 portfolio if you want to use Wealthfront. This investment platform offers more than stock for your portfolio, however. With banking, retirement accounts, college funds, and planning services, you'll find the platform easy to use.
But with a meme stock like GameStop, you may be looking for a way to invest that doesn't require such a portfolio. That's OK, sign up for an account for as little as $1 and use the robo-investing option. Although you won't have a chance to pick GameStop, start investing and learn more about stocks with an account that requires just $500 in your portfolio to begin.
Pros and cons
Pros
- 0.25% fee
- Auto rebalancing
Cons
- $500 minimum to start investing
- Limited access to some investment options if your portfolio is less than $100,000
Stash
Stash is an investment app that sells thousands of stocks and ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, with $1 or less. Beginning investors can begin at just $1 per month. Ready to go deeper? Its Growth account, which adds on retirement account access, is $3 per month. The top-of-the-line is Stash+. For $9 per month – $324 a year – you get all of the above and investment accounts for two children, among other things.
There is no opening deposit required to open an account. You only need to deposit money if you want to buy stocks, of course. But Stash offers a little incentive to start investing. If you deposit $5, Stash matches it and gives you $5 to invest.
And like its competitors, you can find your way into GameStop through fractional shares. Funds are pooled with other Stash members to make high-priced, higher-earning stocks more affordable by receiving a fraction of a stock and a fractional percentage on the returns.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Low monthly fees, starting at $1
- Fractional shares of stocks sold
- No minimum deposit to open an account
- Deposit $5 and Stash matches it
Cons
- Not a robo-advisor, so Stash won’t direct you to stocks to purchase
- Focuses on investment goals, not the purchase of individual stocks
- A flat fee may end up being higher than competitors if you have more than $5,000 invested
Reasons To Use Stash For Investing
- Get $5 to Make Your First Investment
- Invest in Stocks and ETFs with $1 or Less
- Receive Your Paycheck up to 2 Days Faster
- No Overdraft Fees or Minimum Balances
Robinhood
Robinhood got swept into the GameStop craze because it was the main platform the Reddit investors were using. During the height of the bru-ha-ha, CEO Vlad Tenev decided to stop the sell and trades on the GME (ticker) stock. He took heat for getting involved but he put the stock back online for purchase.
Good thing because Robinhood is a free trading platform that can be used as an app on Apple iOS or Android phones or anywhere else online. Really. Robinhood doesn’t charge fees to open or maintain an account. New accounts are given access to up to $1,000 of instant deposits. That means that if you sell a stock, you can use funds from the sale immediately, instead of waiting a few days. This account is called a Robinhood Instant account.
Users can downgrade to a Robinhood Cash account if they want to, as well. This allows zero-commission trades, but it doesn’t include instant deposits or instant settlements.
For $5 per month ($60 per year), users can upgrade to a Robinhood Gold account. It includes everything in Robinhood Instant, with instant deposits starting at $5,000 and increasing based on your portfolio value.
Robinhood Gold also provides margin investing where you borrow money from Robinhood to buy stocks. At least $2,000 must be deposited into the account to trade on margin.
But nothing is ever entirely free. Robinhood also has these three fees:
- Regulatory transaction fee that’s ultimately paid to the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. These can't be avoided and the fee is $22.10 per $1 million of principal (sells only). The fee isn’t charged for values of $500 or less.
- Trading activity fee of $0.000119 per share. No fee is charged for buying 50 shares or less. That's not bad.
- American depositary receipt fee from $0.01-$0.03 per share when buying foreign stocks traded on American exchanges.
But here's what great: Robinhood doesn’t require a minimum to sign up. Even with only a few dollars to invest with, you can invest through Robinhood. Signing up for its Instant or Cash accounts doesn’t require a monthly fee, so your investment costs can be zero.
Wait. It gets better. Robinhood sells fractional shares. Instead of buying one full share of stock, you can buy a fraction of an equity stock for as little as $1. Fractional shares bought through the site can be as small as 1/1,000,000, or 1 1-millionth of a share. So if you think the GameStop share price is too steep, this is your way in.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Not into commitments? Robinhood makes it easy to start investing.
- No monthly fees
- No minimum account balances
- Fractional shares of stocks sold
Cons
- Not as many investment products offered as some competitors
- Not a goal-based strategy
- No phone number to call for customer support
Step 2: Research GameStop shares
GameStop was founded in 1984 in Dallas as Babbages and took its current name in 1999. The company is now headquartered in Grapevine, Texas, and is the world’s largest video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer.
GameStop stock, listed as GME on the NYSE, had its first day of trading on February 13, 2002.
The company started declining in 2016 when online services such as Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and others hurt GameStop’s market for physical video game software.
Like many businesses that relied on physical stores, the Covid-19 pandemic caused GameStop to have dramatically lower foot traffic. It closed all 3,500 of its stores between March and May 2020 and moved to curbside and online sales. After reopening, GameStop has since shuttered 12% of its stores.
In January 2021, the short squeeze on shares of GameStop caused the share price to increase 1,500% over two weeks, to an all-time intraday high of $483 on January 29, 2021. The Reddit users on WallStreetBets who make high-risk stock bets were entirely the key to the huge price jump.
GameStop Corp. saw its stock price also increase when Chewy cofounder and CEO Ryan Cohen bought a 12.9% stake in GameStop through his investment firm RC Ventures. The hope is that Cohen can do for video games and GameStop what he did for pet food and Chewy – turn it into an e-commerce giant.
Related: How to Know When to Sell
GameStock price history
Own almost any stock since its inception and chances are it will grow tremendously over the years. GameStock is no exception.
If you invested $1,000 in GameStop when it launched and was sold as stock, on February 13, 2002, your investment would be worth $17,788.11, according to an investment calculator on the company’s website. The figure doesn’t include reinvested cash dividends.
The return on that $1,000 investment is 1,677%. It includes a two-for-one split adjustment, so instead of owning 49.75 shares with your original $1,000, you’d now own 99.50 shares.
Before 2021, GameStop's stock usually sold for around $40 per share. As of March 29, 2021, it closed at $181. Owning 99.50 shares would be worth $18,009.
GameStop dividend information
GameStoplast paid a cash dividend on March 29, 2019, to shareholders of record on March 15, 2019. The dividend was $0.38 per common share.
The company hasn’t announced a dividend since then.
Investors shouldn’t expect a dividend anytime soon, partly because the company isn’t making a profit. A Wall Street consensus is that it will be three more years before GameStop starts making a profit again, essentially by closing stores and focusing on higher margins in e-commerce sales.
The share price may fall if GameStop goes through with a hint it gave in an SEC filing on March 23 that it may sell more shares of its stock.
The short squeeze is over, according to one analysis, and the shorts have been mostly covered. The stock’s meteoric rise has fallen, though of all the meme stocks out there, GME is still incredibly higher than it was only a few months ago.
Best features of GameStop stock
If you didn’t buy GameStop shares before it rose 1,500% over two weeks in January, you can still buy it and take a chance that it will rise again. The stock closed at around $181 in late March, and improvements at the company could push it higher.
GameStop appears to be on the road to becoming an online-only company, like Chewy. Some analysts expect it to close all or most of its physical stores, and to only do business online.
Another reason to believe in GameStop is Cohen, the Chewy CEO who is a major investor in GameStop. Cohen heads a committee at GameStop to find ways for the game company to transition beyond brick-and-mortar stores. The committee was credited with the exit of chief financial officer Jim Bell, which was seen as a positive, and new hires in customer care and e-commerce fulfillment.
Cohen invested $76 million in the company last year when its shares were trading at an average of $8.43. He has shown an interest in improving the company, which if his plans work, could make him and other retail traders a lot richer too.
Step 3: Open an account & buy GameStop shares
Still interested in GameStop? Then it's time to open an online brokerage account. You don’t even have to fund an account immediately to open one, though you’ll need some money to buy at least one share of GameStop stock.
Using Stash, for example, is as easy as just about any other online broker. Start by clicking on the blue “Get Started” button on the homepage and many other areas of the Stash website.
An email account and password are the first things needed to create an account.
You’ll next be asked to provide some information about yourself so Stash can find out what type of investments you’re interested in. This is part of Stash’s aim of meeting your overall investment needs, and not just focusing on buying one stock.
You’ll provide your name, birthdate, phone number, citizenship status, residential address, estimated pre-tax household income (to evaluate your risk tolerance), and reasons why you want to invest.
Then you pick a plan, starting at $1 per month.
And, of course, pick a payment method.
If you go directly to the Investments page, you can look up a stock name or research stocks and ETFs to see if fractional shares are offered. You can also search by industry, and by ETF category.
GameStop stock can be bought in fractional shares, with as little as $5 invested. Click the blue “Check out on Stash” button and the account signup process begins.
Related: Best Robo-Advisors
FAQs
How much were GameStop shares when the company first went public?
$10.05
How much does it cost to buy GameStop shares today?
$181.30, as of closing on March 29, 2021.
Does GameStop pay dividends?
Not currently. It last paid a dividend on March 29, 2019, of 38 cents per share.
What is the minimum number of GameStop shares that I can buy?
You can buy one share, or you can buy a fractional share. Stash doesn’t list the minimum fractional share that can be bought, though it says the minimum investment is $5. Robinhood sells fractional shares in shares as small as 1 million parts of a share of stock, for as little as $1.
The bottom line
If social media is your stock ticker and meme stocks have grabbed your attention during the pandemic, or if you check MarketWatch throughout the day, you may be interested in buying shares in GameStop. GME stock has risen faster than many stocks, and you may have a few dollars to get in on the action.
An online brokerage account such as Stash, Webull or Robinhood can be a good way to dip your financial toe in the stock market. Trades can be free, or close to it, and you can buy fractional shares instead of having to come up with hundreds of dollars to buy one share.
Just remember that any money you invest should be money you’re willing to lose. Volatility is common in the stock market. Hedge funds lost money by shorting GameStop, and a bet by a small investor that it will be profitable could be just as risky.
Reasons To Use Stash For Investing
- Get $5 to Make Your First Investment
- Invest in Stocks and ETFs with $1 or Less
- Receive Your Paycheck up to 2 Days Faster
- No Overdraft Fees or Minimum Balances
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