The Reddit army has succeeded in launching GameStop to a new stratosphere—but it could actually hurt the stock in the short-term.
The videogame retailer officially made it into the Russell 1000 index, FTSE Russell announced on Saturday. The Russell 1000 tracks large-capitalization stocks—and in order to be included in the latest index reconstitution, stocks had to have market caps of at least $7.3 billion on May 7.
As one of the stocks favored by retail traders this year, GameStop (ticker: GME) met that threshold because it had an $11.2 billion market cap by the deadline, while AMC Entertainment (AMC) didn’t. That said, AMC has rocketed higher since May 7, multiplying by more than five times and surpassing GameStop’s market value—hitting a recent $27 billion compared to GameStop’s $15 billion.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the Russell 1000 “promotion” may actually be bad for GameStop’s stock, as Barron’s explained earlier this month. Funds that track the small-cap Russell 2000 will have to sell GameStop shares on June 28, and funds that track the Russell 1000 will have to buy them. Three times as much money is invested in funds that track the Russell 1000, but GameStop’s overall weight in that index will be much lower than it has been in the Russell 2000. In the Russell 2000, GameStop made up about half a percentage point of the index, while it will be less than 0.1% of the Russell 1000. GameStop will look tiny next to behemoths like Apple (AAPL).
Experts like Jefferies strategist Steven DeSanctis expect that there will be net selling in GameStop of about 5 million shares, or about half of the stock’s recent average daily volume, after the rebalancing.
Meanwhile, AMC will be the largest member of the Russell 2000 by far—more than three times as large as its nearest competitor as of last week. See the full post-rebalancing list of Russell 1000 stocks here and Russell 2000 stocks here.
Evie Liu contributed to this report.
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