What happened
Shares of GameStop (GME -6.59%) are bouncing around this morning, rising as much as 3.6% in early trading, falling back to about breakeven, and up again almost 1% as of 11:26 a.m. ET.
So what
Despite the volatility, there was no company-specific news to account for the stock bouncing around, but unlike other companies that have announced stock splits and seen their shares rise, GameStop's trend has been mostly lower. The stock is down about 12% since the company said at the end of March it wants to split its shares.
Image source: Getty Images.
However, the video game retailer's stock still remains twice the level where it stood one month ago following fellow meme stock AMC Entertainment announcing it was investing in a gold and silver miner. That news sent meme stocks generally rising, but GameStop rocketed higher, which could be why it decided to use the time to announce a share split.
Before it does that, though, it wants to vastly increase the number of shares outstanding, raising the total from around 300 million shares to 1 billion shares.
Now what
Although splits are seen as bullish indicators -- GameStop's stock price action notwithstanding -- they have no impact on the underlying business. That has not really been an issue with GameStop's stock as it rarely trades on its fundamentals anymore, instead gyrating on chat room noise and social media mentions.
But as Chairman Ryan Cohen slowly reveals his plans for GameStop's future -- the retailer recently confirmed it would be launching a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace -- investors will get a better sense, for good or ill, where he intends to take the company.
