When analyzing meme stocks, it is critical to examine who owns each company's stock.
That's why we're answering a big question today:
Who Owns GameStop Stock?
GameStop stock is owned mostly by individual investors, which is not typical for stocks. Just 34.81% of GameStop shares are owned by institutions, with the majority of those being index funds from BlackRock, Vanguard, and StateStreet.
According to Yahoo Finance!, just 34.81% of GameStop (GME) shares are held by institutions. This is higher than AMC's meager 25%.
But GameStop's institutional ownership is relatively ow. As an example, 58% of Apple (AAPL) share are held by institutions. For Tesla (TSLA), it's 41%. And for Nvidia (NVDA), it's a whopping 66.5%.
So most of GameStop shares are held by individuals.

And at this point, it's safe to assume many of those individuals are ride or die apes. are never-say-die apes that have no interest in selling.
Also, let's look at the institutions that do hold AMC shares. The top 10 are:
Holder | # Shares | % of Shares Outstanding | |
---|---|---|---|
Blackrock Inc. | 7,159,418 |
| |
Vanguard Group, Inc | 6,041,749 | 7.90% | |
State Street Corporation | 1,606,900 | 2.10% | |
Geode Capital Management, LLC | 674,532 | 0.88% | |
Charles Schwab | 672,727 | 0.88% | |
Renaissance Technologies, LLC | 606,141 | 0.88% | |
Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation | 498,333 | 0.65% | |
Morgan Stanley | 493,850 | 0.65% | |
Principal Financial Group, Inc. | 390,578 | 0.51% | |
Northern Trust Corporation | 368,090 | 0.48% |
They three keys here are
- Blackrock Inc.
- Vanguard Group, Inc
- State Street Corporation
Why are these 3 firms so important? It's because they run the biggest index funds in the world. The top 10 ETFs and mutual funds holding GameStop are all index funds.
The biggest fund holding GameStop shares is the iShares Core S&P Smallcap ETF (IJR), which owns nearly 5% of all GameStop shares!
And even some of the names lower on the list, notably Schwab,, also run index funds.
What GameStop's Owners Mean For the Stock
So like AMC, GameStop is in a very weird place.
Since the institutions owning GameStop are mostly running index funds, they literally can't sell GameStop unless the stock is removed from the underlying indices.
For example, the iShares Core S&P Smallcap ETF (IJR) fund follow the S&P SmallCap 600 Index.
So as long as GameStop is in that index, the fund can't sell its shares.
What does this mean?
It means that individuals have a lot more control of GameStop than they do giants like Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia.
So as long as APES hang on to their shares, the stock may stay elevated. (this is obviously not a buy or sell recommendation)
Outside of a major market meltdown (which would impact everything), there's just no real way of knowing if or when APES throw in the towel.
Traditional Wall Street will tell you the fundamentals are everything.
But meme stocks - including GameStop - work on supply and demand, period.
Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments below.