On Monday, May 4, the legendary ‘Big Short’ trader Michael Burry seemingly cast his vote of no confidence regarding Ryan Cohen’s latest ambitious corporate acquisition bid.
Specifically, the famous investor sold all his remaining GameStop (NYSE: GME) shares shortly after the company published its proposal to purchase eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY).
Simultaneously, the sale is notable because Burry disclosed it was his first divestment since he launched his Substack blog, which simultaneously serves as the principal source of information for his investments since the deregistration of Scion Asset Management in late 2025.
“Ryan must see low-hanging fruit, though if huge cash flow could be unlocked as if by a magic wand, one might expect eBay to have found it during its epic search for cash with which to buy back slag heaps of shares,” Michael Burry wrote, reacting to GameStop’s unsolicited proposal to eBay.
GameStop stock plunges on Michael Burry’s divestment
Elsewhere, GME stock suffered a deep plunge on May 4, falling 10.14% from its Friday close of $26.53 to its latest session-end at $23.84.
The price movement came after some direction uncertainty in the preceding extended session, and Burry’s sale might have decided the ultimate downward trajectory.
Similarly, the Tuesday pre-market is indicative of significant skepticism regarding GameStop’s latest proposal. Though the equity is in the green in the extended session, it climbed only 0.50%, leaving the total 24-hour loss at 9.69%.
Michael Burry’s sale and the GME stock performance are directly tied to CEO Ryan Cohen’s proposal to purchase the online marketplace eBay. The non-binding document revealed an unsolicited offer to purchase eBay at a premium of $125 per share for a total of just over $55 billion.
eBay stock rallies on GameStop’s purchase proposal
For its part, the equity of the target company reacted positively to the idea, rising 5.05% to $109.33 during the Monday session and correcting only slightly – 0.31% to $108.99 – in the extended session.
Notably, EBAY stock failed to rise to GameStop’s offered $125, indicating a lack of confidence that the proposal will bear fruit.
Indeed, the agreement on offer has been raising eyebrows since getting published, in no small part thanks to the fact that the video game store change is approximately four times smaller than the online marketplace.
At the time the proposal was unveiled, GameStop’s market capitalization stood just under $12 billion, and eBay was valued at roughly $48 billion.
Still, the merger is not entirely impossible, given that TD Bank allegedly offered a $20 billion in debt financing. Cohen also revealed part of his reasoning when he stated that he believes he can reduce expenditure by $2 billion within the first year and that he can eventually turn eBay into an Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) peer and competitor.
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