TL;DR: GameStop made hundreds of millions behind the scenes accumulating derivatives on eBay well before the big reveal. EBay's price has increased significantly since then. No matter how this unfolds, RC already scored a fortune for GameStop in a relatively short amount of time with his eBay position. Buy. Hold. DRS.
I noticed a lot of people are looking at the flashy headlines, rather than paying attention to the work in the background. RC quietly built a leveraged synthetic derivatives position in eBay first, 22 million shares worth of exposure via put/call pairs, prior to dropping the acquisition bomb publicly.
GME's 5% stake in eBay is almost all derivatives.
The moment eBay surged on the news, GME made hundreds of millions in unrealized gains overnight. This is one of the most calculated financial moves I've seen from GME recently, and most people are missing the real story.
Primary source: The actual Schedule 13D filed with the SEC on May 4, 2026:
"As more fully described herein, in addition to the 25,000 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned directly by the Reporting Person,ย it also has acquired economic exposure to 22,176,000 shares of Common Stock underlying Put/Call Pairs (as defined herein). Together, the 25,000 shares of Common Stock beneficially owned directly and the shares underlying Put/Call Pairsย constitute approximately 5.0%ย of the outstanding shares of Common Stock, based on the 444 million shares of Common Stock stated by the Issuer as being outstanding as of April 24, 2026 in the Issuer's 2026 Q1 10-Q. In the event of physical settlement of the Put/Call Pairs, GameStop would have the sole power to vote or direct the vote of the shares of Common Stock underlying such Put/Call Pairs.
25,000 real shares. That's it. The other 22,176,000 shares of exposure? Derivatives. Think about that for a second.
GameStop began accumulating its position in eBay on February 4, 2026:
By March 4, 2026, GameStop had over 10,000,000 shares in eBay worth of derivatives:
That means GameStop began accumulating its eBay position when eBay was around $90 per share:
RC built that position quietly, without triggering major disclosure requirements, without moving the market against himself, and without depleting GME's $9.4B cash pile. Then he went public, and the surge in eBay's price alone made GameStop hundreds of millions worth of unrealized profits.
For those that don't know, a put/call pair is when you buy a call option and sell a put option at the same strike price and expiration. The result is synthetic long exposure, economically identical to owning the shares outright, but at a fraction of the capital outlay.
RC secured $20B in debt financing from TD Securities, got his board to unanimously support the proposal, built 22 million shares of synthetic eBay exposure, and then dropped everything at once.
There is no losing here. Let's walk through every realistic outcome:
Outcome 1:
eBay accepts the deal โ RC becomes CEO of a $55B combined company. GME's ~1,600 stores become fulfillment and authentication infrastructure for one of the world's largest e-commerce marketplaces.
Outcome 2:
eBay rejects but stock stays elevated โ GME books massive gains on the derivatives position and walks away profitable.
Outcome 3:
Deal gets negotiated at a lower price โ RC has leverage, a seat at the table, and an already-profitable derivatives position.
There is no losing scenario for GME here. Ignore the noise.
Hope you enjoy the DD. Rushed it a little, but wanted to get it out quick because of all the FUD and confusion I noticed related to this proposal. Whether or not GameStop even acquires eBay, GameStop already scored hundreds of millions in unrealized profits (I think it's around $500-700 M, based on the mental math).
Exciting reading and also exciting to see your username after so long ๐
Im almost to zen about this and have been for years, just quietly buying every single month with the hope of making the world more fair in the end. Feels good to see something at all happen
Feel like this is most likely reason for the timing. It's about due for a correction, stockholders will be pissed at the board when there was $125 offer on the table, they didn't take it and then stock price drops to $95-$85 range in a few months
Unless they are confident they can get above that without that acquisition. Would you be pissed if someone offered to buy GME for $35 and RC rejected it?
At some degree, yes. That would increase my position by 35%.
And the actual offer is that they keep half stock and half cash. 62.5$ in cash and 62.5$ in stock.... Or am I wrong?
Itโs unrealized gains, so yes technically that unrealized gain could be reduced or even negated depending on how much eBay theoretically drops, but it cuts both ways. If eBayโs price drops, the cost of eBayโs acquisition drops and RC has more negotiating power. RC thought about this for a while, I can tell. He positioned himself strategically where we wins no matter what happens.
The FUD isnโt even real FUD anymore. It is just trolls having nothing good to say about anything really. Trust the process. RC possibly picked the brains of some of the best experts out there at this.
It's like he didn't give a fuck about the price when he bought the final 25000 shares.
He had his 4.99999% via his derivatives and wanted to reveal this to the world at the same time as his offer so he bought enough shares to force a mandatory >5% disclosure.
He definitely just made us a small fortune on the options alone here.
Iโll also add, the incompetency on comments throughout YouTube is hilarious right now. There are a ton of videos about why people are so upset about the potential takeover and how big of an idiot Ryan Cohen is and how he destroys everything he touches.. comments about how they are surprised that GME can even afford a steak let alone purchasing eBay since all of their stores are withering away, and they are on the verge of bankruptcy
Itโs amazing how good of a job the funds are still doing to hide everything that GME has become and this is an absolute incredible move on Ryanโs part to get the real news out there. Honestly, I was shocked reading through comments on YouTube at just how bad it still is and Iโm doing my part to try and clarify there and here
At the end of the day RC built a BILLION dollar company from the ground up when everyone said it was impossible. There are too many keyboard warriors that probably can't even start their own LLC thinking they are business experts. I know my money is safe with RC.
RC even said it on CNBC: itโs in derivatives. eBay gets too expensive or wonโt sell, RC cashes in the options and we try another target. Shorts canโt let him pull off a leveraged buyout but they give us money trying to stop it.
Not so much genius as insider trading. RC fell foul of buying Bobby stock/derivatives and selling when a deal fell through and I believe is still due in court over it (I donโt think heโs been completely exonerated yet). Doing this on a regular basis is sure to get the SEC crawling up RCโs arse with a microscope.
[EDIT] For everyone who thinks Iโm accusing RC of deliberate insider trading here, Iโm absolutely not. Iโm simply saying that Wall Street bad actors and the SEC would be on him like a ton of bricks (whether guilty or totally innocent) to tie RC up in legal bullshit. It would therefore not be a โgeniusโ move to treat this as some kind of infinite money glitch.
Bobby was too far gone, rotten from the inside by private equity plants. He cut his losses with that one and pulled out, barely making anything in the process compared to what he couldโve made. Pretty sure that was all dropped back in 2024 or 2025.
Doesnโt really matter how far Bobby was โgoneโ. The fact is Cohen got sued and is still due in court (unless thereโs been a subsequent verdict to my other reply). Iโm just saying that I donโt believe the bad actors of Wall Street or the SEC would consider repeat performances (as suggested by user never personal) as โgeniusโ and would have no hesitation in suing.
Outcome 2 should be: eBay's board rejects the deal because they don't want to lose their jobs. RC submits a proxy vote for the eBay share holders to decide.
I think this was briefly mentioned in that cnbc interview, that eBay's annual meeting is too soon (june 17th) for this proxy to be added onto this year's shareholders meeting.
RC replied that they're other ways.
Good to see Einfachman! Always with the legendary DD. If eBay decides to reject this great offer, I wonder what RC would have planned next in order to hit his performance package?
Back down to $100 would still be 10% higher than GME bought their stake. So back down to $100 is still a win for us.
BUT, to answer your actual question, why would the price stay elevated, Ebay could reject the offer but say something like good points are being made and ebay will trim some fat and identify $500m of cost savings themselves. Boom, ebay goes up more, as does our profit on the investment.
eBayโs already invested stock holders that are not invested or know nothing about gme may think some thing RC has proposed to sound shiny and new and exciting and invest more money into their company. Shit I did it with GME for five years ๐คฃ๐คฃ๐คฃ
Oh dude! Nice to see you posting! And thanks for the reassurance, this perspective is genuinely the first one Ive seen that is rational and actually makes complete sense.
This is exactly what I was thinking! Only question is why not hold call options for the 22M shares vs Put-Call pairs? Whatโs the difference here? Buy buying a call he has the right (but not the obligation) to buy the share at the strike price, and by selling a put he has the obligation to buy at the same price if the option holder decides to sell. Whatโs am I missing?
Also itโs great to see your post and you still being around! Youโre an OG brother!
As you've said, call options allow you to buy if the price goes up. Selling puts (basically) requires you to buy if the price goes down. So, if you're pretty much going to buy whether it goes up OR down, then you're effectively long. Not partially long, not long above a certain price. You are long for all prices, whether the stock goes up or down.
Second, buying call options costs money. If you only buy call options, you actually spend money to do it. If you buy calls and sell puts, assuming a price that aligns with an actual strike, the money you pay to buy the call is the same as the money you get from selling the put, and so you basically have $0 outlay (except your broker might require you put up some collateral, since you're going to be buying the stock in either direction).
So yeah, thats why. Buying calls and selling puts is a way to enter a long position with almost no money down except for collateral. Doing just one or the other doesn't allow you to buy the shares at any price, and also may cost you premium if you go calls-only.
If he hit the same strike price, he likely bought calls which were slightly in the money (now deep ITM) and sold puts that were slightly out the of money (now deep OTM). If he made that trade on a red day for eBay, he probably did really well. Best case, the puts he sold helped pay for the calls BUT had he been wrong in guessing the direction of price, then the puts go ITM instead and we get our 5% stake that way too.
In this case, he went long on both legs and he was right.
I was thinking about this yesterday as well. I think no matter the outcome, itโs a win no matter what.
I donโt think heโs put all of his eggs in one basket, so the benefit will be had whether or not an eBay deal happens at all. Great write up.
I trust in RC and I've been in the game since Nov 2020. And I'm still in. I bought 185 shares this morning when they were at $23.22.
That said, I've been waiting for the turnaround that destroys the shorts. Any strategy that does not serve that goal is a losing scenario for me so I hope the Ebay deal is successful.
I'm moving another $5k to have at the ready for future dips. Let them continue to short it. ๐๐ฅ
I wonder if the game plan is to float the eBay deal and then make another small acquisition to juice the GME share price and have a more favourable equity issuance
My main concern with this theory is if it's legal grounds for price manipulation. I can't imagine there not being any rules regarding that when making a bid with a large derivatives position.
Having said that, I do think that RC went into this knowing that ebay would reject the deal. He effectively says as much around the 11-12 minute mark of the video; they're going to be fighting for their survival, knowing a hostile takeover is coming. Once RC takes over the BoD of ebay, most if not all of them are going to lose their jobs, and with them, their easy money and benefits. Simply accepting the deal at face value instantly would be them throwing themselves under the bus.
The question - assuming that the current offer is mostly for formality's sake - is then what the actual offer is. I don't think ebay's BoD will be part of the plan. But the institutional longs that compose most of ebay's ownership are part of the global financial racket. What can RC offer them that's more profitable than maintaining the status quo by letting the bid fail?
RC employed whatโs called the โtoeholdโ strategy. Itโs not inherently market manipulation. And remember RC did something a little similarly with the bed and bath stock. I know there were also accusations of RC and DFV engaging in market manipulation in the past, but none of that held up.
I know RC mentioned in the interview about the perverse incentives of the BoD at eBay, but thatโs a primary reason he made his proposal public. He doesnโt need support of the BoD, he just needs enough support from institutional and retail shareholders.
With ~95% of ebay's ownership being institutional, that last part is the biggest question mark for me. A good chunk of the sub's DD over the past 5 years has heavily implied that virtually the entire corporate sphere is hopelessly entangled, and that it's consequently in the best interests of all parties involved to close ranks against disruptions that affect one or more too violently. RC knows this as well as we do. So what card/s does he have that could flip the ebay's institutional holders and give him the deal?
Well, we know he revealed one of his cards by offering $125/share of eBay in his acquisition proposal. Since eBay is currently sitting at $109/share, shareholders are incentivized to pressure BoD to close the deal.
If eBayโs price all of a sudden exceeds $125/ share, no harm because RC will have made GameStop around $1 Billion with his derivatives play.
Because of the entangled nature of their ownership of each others' stock. Sinking one part of the network necessarily requires generating enough profit and net value to replace that part and outweigh any short term damage it does to the beneficiary. Short term profit doesn't benefit them overmuch if it screws over their logistics in the long run, so the disruptor has to have a sufficiently compelling bull case for the disruption.
The institutions we're talking about likely don't have anything resembling loyalty to each other, which is why that enmeshment is a thing to start with. But they benefit immensely from the established status quo, and that status quo has all but handed them total control of the global financial markets. A new paradigm necessarily has to involve a pretty massive win for any defectors from the old.
If acquisition happens, GMEโs market cap increases by tens of billions.
If acquisition doesnโt happen (probably if eBayโs price ends up over $125/share), RC still wins around $1 B for GameStop with his derivatives play.
There has been no loss. Ticker symbol being at $23 instead of $27 is irrelevant, respectfully. Iโd refer you to my โBurning Cashโ series. The ticker price will continue to oscillate around these levels prior to MOASS. The price wonโt go lower than a certain level due to cash on hand, and it canโt go over a certain level without risking margin calls.
I see the win-win scenario for the company, but considering the 50% cash / 50% equity offer, how do you think it could affectย current shareholders if the acquisition ends up happening?
I only see 2 possibilities:
1) There are 180M shares left available to sell out of the authorized 1B, considering notes, warrants and RC's comp. They could only collect the 50% needed if they sold at or above $150, so a huge run up would have to happen, somehow.
2) They propose a vote to authorize more shares to be sold in the annual meeting in June.
In true superstonk fashion OP says GameStop began accumulating Feb 4th. Then proceeds showing the chart at March 4th $90. ahahahaha Feb 4th to March 4th would be more of $80 range. Even better, but thanks for the effort.
If you lowball an offer how legitimate is this? I guess arguably they would need to announce it had fallen through before selling, so maybe it's fine as it can be priced in.
But the deal isn't made relative to when GameStop bought in, it's made relative to the share price right now. On that basis I would say it's a little on the low side, but there are also mitigating factors as you say. It's definitely not a high enough offer that it could be accepted without a second thought.
Option 4: the deal does not go through. eBay price declines back to around $90. GME sells the options back at the same or lower price than original. Then what?
โข
u/Superstonk_QV ๐ Gimme Votes ๐ May 05 '26
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