Securities investor Bill Miller told CNBC on Tuesday that one of his company’s funds sold its GameStop stakes during the Reddit-fueled frenzy that began earlier this year.
“We had GameStop in our deep value product and I think our cost was about $ 4 or so,” Miller said in an interview with The Exchange. “When it went into the $ 70s, when I sold it, then it went, of course, to $ 400.
GameStop shares eventually retreated sharply from their Jan. 28 high of $ 483, falling below $ 50 at some point in February, as the initial short-term squeeze ended.
However, the stock remained both volatile and concentrated as the video game retailer announced steps in its digital transformation. GameStop shares fell more than 5 percent on Tuesday to about $ 155 a piece, bringing the company’s market capitalization to nearly $ 11 billion.
The stock remains growing by almost 730% so far and by over 2,600% in the last 12 months. At this time last year, GameStop shares were trading below $ 5.
Miller, founder and investment director of Miller Value Partners, said his company avoided GameStop and other so-called memes that are popular with investors who are active on online message boards.
“I’m not interested now, because I’m in the grip of the Reddit crowd and you can’t analyze them in the same way you can do other things, because price dominates the fundamentals.” said Miller, who managed a fund that defeated the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years while working at Legg Mason.
Miller also told CNBC that he remains optimistic about bitcoin, saying that demand continues to exceed the supply of the largest cryptocurrency in the world in terms of market value. “That’s all you really need to know and that means it goes higher,” he said.
Subscribe to CNBC Pro to read Bill Miller the best stock choices right now.