GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO) is having the kind of rally traders live for, and a viral stock pick is only half the story — the other half is a short base that had nowhere to hide.
- GPRO stock is flying again. See the real-time price action here.
Markiplier’s Stake Sends GPRO into Overdrive
Shares exploded 46.06% Monday to close at 88 cents, up from a 60 cent previous close, after Bloomberg reported that YouTube creator Mark Fischbach — known to his roughly 40 million subscribers as Markiplier — disclosed an 8.5% passive stake via a Schedule 13G filed around Aug. 20, instantly making him GoPro’s largest individual shareholder.
The rally hasn’t slowed: as of Tuesday morning, GPRO was trading at $1.44, up 65% on top of Monday’s gain — a two-session move of roughly 140% off last week’s 60-cent low.
Volume has already surged to 134 million shares, more than 14 times the stock’s 9.46 million-share average.
From Delisting Watch to Meme-Stock Darling
Fischbach reportedly called GoPro undervalued and said he wants to see the beaten-down camera maker turn around — comments that were enough to send retail traders piling in on a stock that had spent 30 straight sessions below $1 and drawn a Nasdaq delisting warning.
But the fuel behind the size of the move may be less about conviction buying and more about who’s been forced to cover.
Short interest sat at 16.19% of GoPro’s float as of the Aug. 14 settlement date, with a days-to-cover ratio of 3.3, according to Benzinga Pro.
That’s up sharply from roughly 9% of float a year earlier, meaning a large chunk of GPRO’s tradable stock was positioned for the stock to keep falling right as a splashy new buyer showed up.
With volume running at multiples of normal and a thin float, even a modest wave of short covering can turn a rally into a runaway.
The combination of a high-profile creator staking a large position, a stock already trading like a penny name and a short base that’s grown for months is the textbook setup for a squeeze.
The open question for traders: how much of this move is Markiplier-driven conviction buying versus shorts scrambling to close out, and whether GoPro’s fundamentals (still burdened by a going-concern warning and an ongoing strategic sale process) can hold up once the squeeze dynamics fade.
Photo: T. Schneider / Shutterstock
