Value investor Bill Miller told CNBC on Tuesday that one of his company’s funds sold its GameStop holdings during the Reddit-fueled frenzy that began earlier this year.
“We had GameStop in our great value product and I think our cost for it was about $ 4 or something,” Miller said in an interview on The Exchange. “When it got to the 1970s, when we sold it, of course it went to $ 400.”
Shares of GameStop eventually pulled back sharply from their January 28 high of $ 483, and at one point in February fell below $ 50 when the initial uplifting short squeeze ended.
However, the stock has remained both volatile and in focus as the video game retailer announces steps in its digital transformation. GameStop shares fell more than 5% on Tuesday to about $ 155 each, bringing the company’s market cap to nearly $ 11 billion.
The stock is up nearly 730% to date and more than 2,600% in the last 12 months. Last year, GameStop stock was trading below $ 5 at this time.
Miller, founder and chief investment officer of Miller Value Partners, said his company was pulling out of GameStop and other so-called meme stocks popular with investors active in online messaging forums.
“They’re not interesting right now because they’re in the throes of the Reddit crowd, and you can’t analyze them the same way you do other things, because price dominates the basics,” said Miller, who ran a fund that ran the S&P 500. for 15 consecutive years while working at Legg Mason.
Miller also told CNBC that he remains optimistic about bitcoin, saying demand continues to outpace the supply of the world’s largest cryptocurrency in terms of market value. “That’s all you really need to know, and that means it’s going higher,” he said.
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