Cohen warned that the idea of an owner-operator or risk-taker has been replaced with a new, parasitic class of corporate bureaucrat that he called the risk-free insider and the hollow men of the boardroom.

Key snippets of the missive are below.

“They are masters of PowerPoint. They wear the right suits. They say the right buzzwords about governance and ESG. But they are mercenaries fighting a war with someone else’s ammunition. In a functioning economy, authority is tied to liability. If you make a bad decision, you lose your own money. That fear of loss is the only thing that keeps a business honest. It forces you to cut waste, obsess over the customer, and stay late to fix what is broken. Today, we have severed that link.”

“If the stock goes up, the Insider collects a massive performance bonus. If the stock crashes due to their own incompetence, they are fired with a ‘Golden Parachute’ worth tens of millions. They are gambling with the house’s money, and they never leave the table poorer than they arrived.”

“They use shareholder capital to buy an insurance policy for their own careers. If the plan fails, they can blame the consultants. They delegate the work because they are terrified of the responsibility. They would rather preside over a slow, comfortable decline than risk a bold mistake.”

“The time for polite governance is over. If we want to save the American economy from mediocrity, we must demand a return to the “Owner’s Mentality.” We need leaders who treat shareholder capital with the same reverence they treat their own savings. The era of the Risk-Free Insider must end.”

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The retailer reported Bitcoin holdings were valued at $519.4M at the close of its third quarter. That’s when the cryptocurrency was swapping hands at over $110K per Bitcoin (BTC-USD). At today’s Bitcoin (BTC-USD) price of $73,700, the value of the company’s crypto holdings may be lower, depending on potential purchases or sales since November 1. Regarding that, on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant reported that GameStop (GME) transferred its entire Bitcoin (BTC-USD) holdings to Coinbase Prime around January 23. It’s unclear if the Bitcoin holdings were sold before the recent slide.

In general, GameStop (GME) CEO Ryan Cohen has described Bitcoin (BTC-USD) primarily as a macro hedge, although he has also downplayed it relative to other capital allocation priorities. Recently, Cohen has moved even further away from being looked at as a Strategy (MSTR)-type Bitcoin proxy as the company pursues M&A options. In a media interview last week, Cohen said the new strategy is more attractive than Bitcoin.

Shares of GameStop (GME) are up more than 22% on a year-to-date basis.

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Cohen has not named his potential M&A target but said he is seeking a publicly traded consumer company that’s undervalued, “high quality, durable, and scalable with growth prospects,” and has a “sleepy management team.”

Burry sees Cohen and GameStop (GME) having the firepower to go after a large acquisition because his 0% convertible bonds and warrants give him an additional $6.1 billion in net cash if shares cross into the $30s (GME currently trades up 7% at $25.73). For his part, Burry thinks Cohen is likely to approach multiple different companies and essentially LBO them in a strategy he calls “Instant Berkshire.” The strategy would be to create a portfolio of great companies that generate excess capital or float for additional investment beyond what is required for their growth.

As for targets, Burry started with ADT (ADT), which is seen as attractive for its synergy opportunities, cash flow, and customer relationships. Wayfair (W) ranked second on Burry’s list of GameStop (GME) M&A targets. The online retailer’s logistics infrastructure and customer relationships were highlighted. Other signs seen by Burry as being potential candidates in the Instant Berkshire portfolio include Assured Guaranty (AGO), Penske Automotive Group (PAG), Mattel (MAT), Sprouts Farmers Markets (SFM), and Sirius XM (SIRI). He also mentioned Wynn Resorts (WYNN) or MGM Resorts (MGM) as potentially interesting alternatives to Wayfair (W).

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GameStop Corp. (GME) opened with a 5.8% swing higher as speculation builds over what Ryan Cohen’s M&A master plan might be. Volume on GameStop (GME) is already over 2.2M shares during the morning session, putting it on pace for an above-average volume day.

Earlier in the morning, Fox Business reporter Charles Payne said an interview with Cohen was cancelled. “Ryan is working on something monumental, and he would not be able to say much,” updated Payne on the reason for the cancellation.

Notably, Ryan Cohen has a nonqualified stock option grant on 171,537,327 shares of Class A GameStop (GME) with a strike price of $20.66 per share if an aggressive list of market cap and EBITDA targets are hit. Cohen’s compensation package is similar in some respects to Elon Musk’s at Tesla (TSLA), while Michael Burry thinks Cohen has a Buffett-style playbook working in his favor.

Over the weekend, Seeking Alpha subscribers speculated on which consumer companies could be the M&A target for GameStop (GME). The crowdsourced list included Five Below (FIVE), Western Union (WU), Gravity Co. (GRVY), Nintendo (NTDOY), Target (TGT), Best Buy (BBY), and Build-A-Bear (BBW).

Short interest on GME stands at 14.7% of the total float.

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Here are some of Monday’s biggest stock movers:

Biggest stock losers

• HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE) -8% – Shares dropped as Bitcoin hovered around $75,000, dragging down other crypto-linked stocks amid broader market weakness, Fed uncertainty, and geopolitical tensions. Coinbase (COIN), MicroStrategy (MSTR), MARA Holdings (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT), Iren (IREN), CleanSpark (CLSK), and Terawulf (WULF) all declined between 4% and 8%.
• XPeng (XPEV) -5% – Shares of the EV maker dipped after delivering 20,011 vehicles in January, down 47% from December and 28% Y/Y. Despite the drop, the company ended 2025 with a presence in 60 countries, 380 overseas stores (+150% Y/Y), and over 1,000 global sales and service outlets.
• Oracle (ORCL) -4% – Shares dipped after the company said it plans to raise $45B–$50B in 2026 to fund expanded cloud infrastructure capacity, using a mix of debt and equity. About half of the funding is expected to come from equity-linked instruments and common stock, including mandatory convertible preferred securities and a newly authorized at-the-market equity program of up to $20B. The financing plan raised dilution concerns despite Oracle citing strong contracted demand from major OCI customers such as Nvidia, Meta, AMD, OpenAI, TikTok, and xAI.

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Cohen noted that GameStop’s (GME) ideal target will be a consumer company that’s undervalued but that is high quality, durable, and scalable with growth prospects. The GameStop (GME) prey will also have a sleepy management team at the wheel, according to Cohen.

If the massive investment works out, Cohen thinks GameStop (GME) has the potential to be worth several hundreds of billions of dollars, which would also kick in a massive payday for him as well based on his new incentive-based compensation package. “If it works, it’s genius. If it doesn’t work, then, you know, it will be totally, totally foolish,” Cohen summed up to CNBC.

Kicking the idea around a bit, Cohen’s playbook could be to seek a big-box general merchandiser, mass club/discount chain, or department store owner that still has strong real estate and brand equity but trades at a low earnings multiple.

Sticking with only well-known consumer sector names that have seen multi-year share price underperformance creates an intriguing list that includes Best Buy (BBY), Kohl’s (KSS), Peloton Interactive (PTON), Six Flags Entertainment (FUN), and Lululemon (LULU).

Reasonable cases could be made that Dollar General (DG), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Burlington Stores (BURL), Ross Stores (ROST), Five Below (FIVE), Academy Sports + Outdoors (ASO), Big Lots, and Build-A-Bear Workshop (BBW) fit the profile.

On the more creative side, would MGM Resorts International (MGM) fit the bill of a Ryan Cohen financial engineering project? What about privately held Barnes & Noble or Panera? Does CarMax’s (KMX) slide bring it into the M&A discussion? How much firepower does Cohen have to acquire a bigger market cap target?

Add your own M&A guess in the comment stream

GameStop (GME) closed trading on Friday with a market cap of $10.7B after rallying 4.7%.

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The acquisition will likely be in the consumer or retail industry, which has been his focus during much of his career, Cohen told the WSJ in an interview published on Thursday. He wants to turn GameStop, which has an $11 billion market cap, into a “$100 billion-plus juggernaut.”

Any deal will be “big,” Cohen told the WSJ. “It’s ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish.”

Cohen is looking at a handful of companies that he declined to identify and plans to approach potential targets soon, he told the WSJ.

GameStop (GME) has around $9 billion in cash and liquid securities on its balance sheet that could help fund an acquisition.

Cohen’s comments come after famed investor Michael Burry, a GameStop shareholder, on Monday applauded Cohen’s measured capital allocation and potential acquisitions as key drivers of shareholder value.

Shares of GameStop rose 1.4% in premarket trading on Friday.

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Writing on his Substack, Burry framed GameStop not as a typical retail business, but as a cash-generating platform with a young, disciplined leadership team and the optionality to deploy billions in a patient, intelligent manner.

Burry’s analysis underscores the ongoing transformation under Cohen, who has been strategically reducing store count, divesting non-core assets, and leveraging warrants and 0% convertible debt to raise capital. These moves have fortified GameStop’s balance sheet, now boasting roughly $8.8 billion in cash and $4.4 billion in interest-free debt, while sustaining tangible book value growth amid a shrinking operating business.

Burry also examines past short squeezes and the company’s approach to net operating losses, which can shelter future income. While Burry expresses skepticism about another “mother of all short squeezes,” he views Cohen’s measured capital allocation and potential acquisitions as key drivers of shareholder value.

“The value is not in another big short squeeze,” Burry wrote, but in the optionality of billions in the hands of a capable and patient management team.

“I own GME. I have been buying recently. I expect I am buying at what may soon be 1x tangible book value / 1x net asset value,” Burry added.

On Monday, GME pushed up 8.5% as it now finds itself higher on the 2026 trading year by 23.5%.

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Interestingly, it was five years ago this month that GameStop (GME) became the epicenter of the financial world with a stunning rally led by retail investors that flipped the script on some notable hedge funds. What started as an underdog bet on a video game retailer turned into a cultural phenomenon with a story so dramatic it ended up on the big screen.

Shares of GameStop (GME) were down 0.6% in postmarket trading to $23.01. The stock is up more than 15% on a year-to-date basis. Short interest on GME stands at 14.7% of the total float.

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According to the website, at least 470 GameStop locations will be impacted by the end of January.

The data compiled by the site showed that at least 50 stores will be shuttered in California, 44 in Texas, 30 in New York, 25 in Florida, and 24 in Pennsylvania.

After taking the January shutdowns into account, the number of impacted locations in the past two years is estimated to climb to at least 1,000 locations.

During its glory days, the video game retailer operated more than 6,000 stores across the U.S. The company is expected to be left with less than 2,000 stores after completing the closures.

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