Newegg Commerce, Inc. - NEGG

Let's call this "the Galkin squeeze"

If there is one thing the entire “meme” frenzy phenomenon should have taught us, is that retail investors hold more power than the institutional investor class may give them credit for.

Case in point: GameStop

By all rights, GameStop (GME), the king of the meme stock crowd, should have been in bankruptcy court long ago. Back in 2019 the company’s financials flipped from earning close to $5 a share to losing $5 a share, all on the back of something professional investors like to call “fundamentals.” These fundamentals included the growing phenomenon of gamers choosing to download their games rather than getting up off the couch and going into a physical GME store. That trend continues to this day, and GME revenues have been cut in half during this period.

By the time “Roaring Kitty” started posting his thoughts on Reddit’s WallStreetBets message boards in mid-2020, the stock was trading in the $1 range. Without that subsequent meme-stock frenzy and the cash they were able to raise at inflated levels, GME stores would have been in liquidation long ago, and the country’s gamers would have barely noticed it. (The nation’s mall-based-stores operators, however, continue to rejoice.)

GME was saved from that ignominious fate by a formerly unknown individual investor named Keith Gill going by the handle “Roaring Kitty.” Though his analysis may have been deeply flawed, he was right where it mattered most (the share price did go up), as his horde of unsophisticated investors mercilessly bid up the shares to stratospheric levels, taking out both bears and hedge funds alike along the way. So today, rather than moving forward to something better, GME has turned into yet another failing retail platform that is attempting to turn into a Bitcoin holding company in order to delay the inevitable.

The Galkins

A couple of those individual investors that went along for that GME ride were the Miami-based husband and wife team of Vladimir and Angelica Galkin. The Galkins are reportedly the owners of the HUBX electronics wholesale business in Miami, and at one point had upwards of 80% of their net worth tied up in GME shares. Now that’s conviction.

While their investment in ailing commercial jetliner company JetBlue (JBLU) has yet to bear any fruit, the couple recently made a series of filings in shares of Newegg Commerce (NEGG)…