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A long-time fund manager at Fidelity investments sold out of the firm's GameStop stake before the stock reached its epic high in January, Bloomberg reported.
"Sometimes I multiply the difference between the sale price and the current market price by the number of shares that I had, and of course I kick myself," Fidelity's Joel Tillinghast told Bloomberg Radio in an interview.
Tillinghast, who has managed the Fidelity Low-Priced Stock Fund since 1989, isn't just any investor. He was recently named Morningstar's outstanding portfolio manager of the year for being "among the industry's best."
With regard to GameStop, he said "there was no question" it was undervalued when it was in the single digits.
Insider reported previously that Fidelity had been at one time the largest shareholder in the video-game retailer, owning 9.3 million shares as of Dec. 31. The shares were in two funds run by Tillinghast, and according to filings posted Jan. 29, the firm had sold all but 87 shares.
Tillinghast told Bloomberg he sold out of the GameStop stake when the shares rallied above his estimate of fair value, which was before they hit a whopping $483 a share at the end of January. Fidelity told Insider it can't comment as to exactly when and at what price he sold the stock at.
Even so, he told Bloomberg Radio "the comforting thing about being a value investor is I also feel like I sold it for more than my estimated fair value, and I was never meant to get the difference between today's price and my estimated fair value."
Though the shares haven't been as high as they were in January, they're trading around $215 apiece, far above what analysts say is the company's fundamental value.
The epic rally in GameStop shares — in part an effort by an army of retail traders to beat Wall Street — brought the phenomenon of meme stocks into the spotlight earlier this year, and with it, many other companies that have rallied to all-time highs with the help of retail traders.
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