My son lost his father years ago, and did not receive anything from his death. In fact, I financially supported my son 100% through most of his school years, and have worked very hard to get to where I am today. My husband is a wonderful, caring and loving man and is kind to my son. I couldn’t ask for more.

My stepsons were mostly grown when we married. One lived with us for a year of high school at which time we continued to pay support to his ex-wife. I try to be there for his kids, but there is no real bond. Often, there are no replies to phone calls/texts, invites to dinner, family trips etc. The relationship is best described as “my dad’s wife,” which I’m OK with. 

I can’t say it doesn’t hurt; not seeing or speaking to one in over two years, but there’s not much I can do besides being here when needed and sending invites. I’d say my husband spends more time with my son, and has had the opportunity to bond with him more.

Where I’m struggling: My husband believes that we should divide everything equally between the five boys. I’m not OK with that. Perhaps it is because of my son’s age, and what he’s been through. I feel as if I’m taking away from my son to give to boys that I don’t have a relationship with. I believe that our estate should be divided in half, with my half going to my son.

Perhaps I will feel differently down the road, as my son becomes older or after several more years of marriage. Am I the evil stepmother? Was I single for too long, and do I have to singular focus? I regret not talking about this before we got married, but I believed that this would be the fair and right way to handle things.

Financially, how do couples in similar situations tackle these tough decisions?

Torn Mother and Stepmother

Dear Torn,

Yes, it would have been better to have this conversation earlier, but it’s good that you are talking to your husband about it now.

And, no, you are not an evil stepmother. I agree that a 50/50 split is excessive, and a prenup would have helped. If you had met when your children were very young — Brady Bunch-style — then I would understand if you wanted to split your estate equally, as your husband wishes. By all means, take into account your relationship with your stepchildren, and the length of time you’ve known them.

The relatively short length of time you and your husband have been married, the fact that your children are now young adults, and the quality of your relationships with them naturally play a role in your decision making. You had a long life and career before meeting your husband. There’s absolutely no reason to split that spoils of all that hard work five ways.

Be aware of other restrictions regarding spousal inheritance. As for your home, “tenancy in common” allows you to leave your share of your home to a third party. If you have a “joint tenancy” arrangement, one partner will inherit the other’s share when he/she dies. There may be “right of election” in your state that restricts how much you can disinherit your spouse.

In New York, for instance, the surviving spouse has the option to receive a portion of their spouse’s estate. These laws vary from state to state, and may depend on the length of the marriage, whether you share children from the marriage, the value of your respective estates and probate/non-probate assets, among other factors, according to The Demetri Law Firm.

Consult an estate lawyer as to how much of your estate you can actually leave to your son, keeping in mind all the above. It’s time to start talking about trusts, wills and beneficiaries. There are all sorts of ways you can leave your son money. You may also have bank accounts that were set up before your marriage, and are treated as separate rather than marital property.

And as difficult as your situation feels now, splitting the inheritance in large blended families can be far more complicated than yours.

You can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions related to coronavirus at qfottrell@marketwatch.com, and follow Quentin Fottrell on Twitter.

Check out the Moneyist private Facebook group, where we look for answers to life’s thorniest money issues. Readers write in to me with all sorts of dilemmas. Post your questions, tell me what you want to know more about, or weigh in on the latest Moneyist columns.

The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.

More from Quentin Fottrell:

• My married sister is helping herself to our parents’ most treasured possessions. How do I stop her from plundering their home?
• My mom had my grandfather sign a trust leaving millions of dollars to two grandkids, shunning everyone else
• My brother’s soon-to-be ex-wife is embezzling money from their business. How do we find hidden accounts?
• ‘Grandma recently passed away, leaving behind a 7-figure estate. Needless to say, things are getting messy’

The vaccine makers emphasized the results come from preliminary laboratory studies. That echoes public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s medical adviser, who say early news may be encouraging, but it’s still very early in the process of understanding omicron’s threat.

“I think the days — at least for Pfizer and Moderna — the days you were considered fully vaccinated with two shots are going to be a thing of the past,” said Christopher Feudo, a partner at the Boston-based law firm Foley Hoag representing management in employment law matters.

Even before omicron’s rise, Feudo had been fielding calls from clients curious about whether they could require their employees to get boosters too. “I say yeah, why not?”

The same legal leeway that allows companies to institute vaccination requirements at all should also let them alter the requirements to three shots, Feudo said. To his knowledge, none has followed through with a booster requirement yet, but he wouldn’t be surprised if companies eventually did.

Like Feudo, employment lawyer Erin McLaughlin expects some of the companies she represents to tack on booster shot requirements. “I think it’s coming,” said McLaughlin, a partner at the national law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. The same companies that felt strong enough to require vaccines in the name of protecting their workforce will “apply that same rationale to the booster,” she said.

Some employers are thinking about folding boosters into the workplace and some are already doing it — including the NBA.

The professional basketball league does not have a vaccine mandate, but approximately 97% of its players are vaccinated.

Starting Dec. 17, players who have not received a booster shot have to undergo game day COVID-19 testing before they step on the court, according to a league memo reviewed by MarketWatch.

The memo is dated Dec. 3, a week after the World Health Organization labeled omicron a “variant of concern.” The memo also says team personnel without a booster by Dec. 17 cannot travel with the team or be near other players. There are exceptions to the rule if it’s still too soon for players or personnel to get the additional jab, the memo noted.

Other employers are going slower on boosters, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising for all adults six months after they’ve been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech shot or the Moderna
MRNA,
+0.37%
shot. The CDC advises a booster two months after the Johnson & Johnson
JNJ,
+0.60%
shot.

“I see employers right now collecting data on boosters and encouraging them. But mandates remain focused on primary vaccination. We might have a new definition of fully vaccinated in the future,” said Dr. Jeff Levin-Scherz, population health leader at Willis Towers Watson
WLTW,
+1.46%,
which provides human resources consulting.

Even with omicron, Levin-Scherz noted “boosters work better when delivered later, so we don’t want to encourage people to ‘rush’ to get a booster prematurely.” A booster requirement by a certain date could potentially exclude a vaccinated worker who’s still within the booster timeframe, he noted.

It’s absolutely worth encouraging boosters, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

But companies and government officials should think hard about requiring three shots, he said. “The notion of redefining for practical purposes what fully vaccinated is would make things more confusing than they already are,” Schaffner said.

Just over a quarter of America’s adult population has received a booster shot, according to the CDC. Almost 72% of the adult population has either had two Pfizer or Moderna shots, or one Johnson & Johnson shot, the agency said.

Meanwhile, workplace vaccination requirements are spreading. Three in 10 workers say their employers required them to get vaccinated, according to a recent survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The 29% rate in November is up from 25% in October.

More than half of employers either have mandates in place or will require one if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules requiring vaccines at private businesses with 100 or more employees take effect, according to a recent Wills Towers Watson survey.

The rules — which were supposed to go into effect on Jan. 4 — are on pause due to pending federal court challenges. (“Booster shots and additional doses are not included in the definition of fully vaccinated” OSHA said in an explanation of its COVID-19 vaccine-related regulations.)

The pending cases about federal rules on vaccine rules hinge on the question of whether the government overstepped its power in mandating that businesses require vaccines, Feudo said. On the other hand, lawsuits fighting a private employer’s decision to make their own rules have been unsuccessful, he noted.

That matters if employers are going to require boosters some day, he said. “I don’t see a distinction between regular doses and a booster in the eyes of the law in terms of the employer’s ability to mandate vaccines.”

More requirements may involve more goading of workers and shifting requirements for some people who are not in the mood for more, Schaffner said. “This is not the time for the coach to say, ‘You have run around another half mile here.’”

For Schaffner, it goes back to avoiding more twists in a complicated situation. “One of the principles of translating science to public policy is K.I.S.S. — ‘keep it simple stupid.’”

Simplicity and clarity are in short supply when it comes to workplace COVID-19 laws, McLaughlin said. She hasn’t heard yet from clients about booster requirements, but that’s because people are waiting to learn more about the science and also figure out the twists and turns on the federal vaccine mandate hung up in the courts.

“Everybody is in limbo now,” she said.

The scheme got underway just six months after Ilori had been indicted with several other defendants in a separate loan-fraud case. Ilori pleaded guilty in that case in April, and while he was awaiting sentencing, prosecutors say he continued making bogus COVID-19 relief claims.

“As alleged, Adedayo Ilori has made quite a habit of committing loan fraud,” said Damian Willaims, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. 

An attorney who represented Adedayo in the bank-loan case said she was not representing him in the COVID-19 relief fraud case and couldn’t comment. She said Adedayo had been arrested several weeks ago for violating the conditions of his bail in the loan-fraud case, but that a new attorney hadn’t yet been assigned for the new indictment which was unsealed on Wednesday. 

In court papers, Adedayo said he had gotten involved in the bank-loan fraud scheme through a friend after his personal-training business, called DFine by Dayo Ilori, suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic and him contracting the virus. 

A message left for an attorney for Recamier wasn’t immediately returned.

Prosecutors say Ilori and Recamier had filed for loans through the paycheck protection program and emergency impact disaster loans for several businesses, claiming they employed more than 200 people and had a monthly payroll of $3.2 million.

But according to court filings, the two men didn’t actually own the companies, and allegedly used stolen identities and falsified tax documents to make their claims.

In all, the men are accused of submitting claims for $7.5 million in relief money and receiving over $1 million. Prosecutors say the men used the money to buy cryptocurrency and stocks and to cover personal expenses.

In the prior loan fraud case, Ilori and his co-conspirators, who were bank employees, were accused of using stolen identities and doctored bank statements to apply for $1.2 million in small business loans for phony companies. The plan was that they would pocket the cash and walk away from the loans, but they were caught when an informant tipped off the FBI.  

This year — instead of reminding us that insurance payment due — we got a notice that we missed a payment and our policy was getting cancelled. We’d had the same small agency for several years that always took care of us, but evidently our policy was sold and this new firm didn’t remind us. Yes, that’s on us. Anyway, the insurance adjuster came out and identified several areas in need of repair.

The house is large and very old — one section dates back about 150 years, and the “new” section is about 75 years old. We’ve been patching the roof to stop leaks, keeping up with basic maintenance only. Our goal is to keep the house secure, so our mom can live in it as long as possible. The adjuster’s estimate for repairs required to get insurance was fairly significant — to the tune of several thousand dollars.

The policy is almost $4,000. If we are lucky, our mom will be with us another year. We’ve told the insurer we want exclusion on the roof — we won’t get a new roof at this stage — and we primarily want liability coverage. If there’s a fire or something else major, we’ll just scrap the house and sell the land

No one will want the house — it’s too old and too many repairs are needed. But the land, 12 acres total, is worth quite a bit. My brother-in-law who is sharp and a truly great guy — so trust him — said just not to get insurance. He figures the risk is low, so we could save that money.

So, do we get home insurance anyway? It’s always a matter of money. Our mom does have some, and my sisters and I would help if needed. It’s not a financial issue. Rather, what’s the smartest way to allocate her funds?

Sincerely,

Uninsured and overwhelmed

‘The Big Move’ is a MarketWatch column looking at the ins and outs of real estate, from navigating the search for a new home to applying for a mortgage.

Do you have a question about buying or selling a home? Do you want to know where your next move should be? Email Jacob Passy at TheBigMove@marketwatch.com.

Dear Uninsured,

Insurance can really feel like a racket sometimes. After all, we’re paying for something that we will hopefully never use.

I can certainly empathize with your dilemma. Recently, I moved to a new apartment within my co-op, and there was a brief window where I was still in both units before I could turn my keys over for the old unit to be sold. My co-op requires all residents to have condo insurance, but had it not I still would have paid for both policies. After all, what if a flood happened in my old apartment while I wasn’t there? I’d want the financial protection that only insurance can provide.

Yes, you need homeowner’s insurance. It may not be required by law — and there might not be a lender telling you that you must buy it — but it would be a mistake to skip it. And in your letter, you already hit the nail on the head as to why.

“If the house is truly in disrepair, having liability coverage if someone is injured on the property will be important,” said Philip Rutterer, a financial planner based in Nashville, Tenn. “This is the biggest reason to still maintain a policy.”

Presumably, your sister has doctors or nurses who come by to check on your mother and assess her condition. At the very least, I imagine that friends and family stop by to spend quality time with her. So picture, for a second, what might happen if a friend were to trip on a loose floorboard, and break a bone. In situations like that, it’s normal to rely on a home insurance policy to cover some of the costs of their care and rehabilitation. Without insurance, you could be on the hook for that.

Never mind the fact that your mom and sister both need a place to live. An insurance policy would cover the cost of her housing if disaster strikes. Without insurance, how would you all pay for that? And where would they go? These are just a couple of the possible fiascos you could face without insurance.

Even when it comes time to sell the home, you could find that it’s harder to find a buyer if you don’t have insurance on the property. You’ve assumed that no one would want to bother fixing up the home — but anyone who has flipped the channel over to HGTV knows that flipping homes is still very much in vogue. It may not be your taste, but it very well may be someone else’s. And plenty of first-time home buyers are opting to purchase fixer-uppers in today’s tight real estate market, given the lack of turnkey homes for sale.

But a buyer might think twice about purchasing the home knowing it’s not insured. What if your mom left the stove unattended, causing a fire that burned the home to the ground? They might rightfully balk at going through with the purchase if they have to rebuild from scratch if their plan was simply to do a remodel of the existing structure.

If you haven’t done so already, ask around to other insurers to compare estimates. Perhaps another company’s adjuster would be more lenient. At the very least, you should comparison shop the cost of the policy.

“Different carriers might be more aggressive on pricing if they are trying to grow their market share in the area,” Rutterer suggested. Also, ask the insurer if they will pro-rate the plan if your mom does pass away within the next year and you sell the home.

Ultimately, if you need to do repairs to secure coverage, negotiate to find the most cost-effective method. And if you’re frustrated about having to spend that money, it might help to think of it as a down payment on your eventual inheritance. Knowing how popular the Atlanta housing market is, I’m sure when it comes time to sell the home and its land, your family will be pleased with the outcome.

What does the news mean for your wallet? Sign up for Personal Finance Daily to find out

By emailing your questions, you agree to having them published anonymously on MarketWatch. By submitting your story to Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of MarketWatch, you understand and agree that we may use your story, or versions of it, in all media and platforms, including via third parties.

As it accrues, the interest on a reverse mortgage is added to the loan principal. The borrower doesn’t have to make any interest or principal payments until required under the terms of the loan. Typically, no payment is due until the borrower dies or permanently moves out of the home. You can receive reverse mortgage proceeds as a lump sum, in installments over a period of months or years, or as line-of-credit withdrawals when you need cash. After the homeowner dies or permanently moves out, the property is sold, and the reverse mortgage balance, including the accrued interest, is paid off out of the sales proceeds.  

So, with a reverse mortgage, the homeowner can keep control of the property while converting some of the equity into cash. In contrast, if you sell your residence to free up necessary cash, it could involve an unwanted relocation and a big income tax hit if the place has appreciated substantially in value.

Seniors often cannot qualify for conventional “forward” home equity mortgages due to low income. But they can qualify for reverse mortgages. However, as with any major borrowing transaction, it’s important to find a good interest rate and acceptable up-front charges. Up-front charges for a reverse mortgage can be higher than costs for a conventional mortgage.

What does the news mean for your wallet? Sign up for Personal Finance Daily to find out.

These days, most reverse mortgages are home equity conversion mortgages, or HECMs, which are insured by the federal government. You must be at least 62 years old to qualify. As this was written, the maximum amount that can be borrowed under an HECM is $822,325. That limit is up a bunch from just a couple years ago, reflecting surging home prices. The exact lending limit depends on the value of your home, your age, and the amount of any other mortgage debt against the property. To give you an idea, a 65-year-old can usually borrow about 25% of his or her home equity. The percentage rises to about 40% if you’re 75 and to about 60% if you’re 85.

Interest rates can be fixed or variable depending on the deal you sign up for. Rates are somewhat higher than for regular home loans, but not a lot higher.

House-rich but cash-poor and exposed to inflation

Many seniors own hugely appreciated homes but are short of cash. Inflation makes things worse, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better anytime soon.  

An unwelcome side effect of owning a hugely appreciated home is the fact that selling the property to raise cash can trigger a taxable gain well in excess of the federal home sale gain exclusion break — up to $500,000 for joint-filing couples and up to $250,000 for unmarried individuals. The federal and state income tax hit from selling could easily reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and all that tax money would be gone forever.

Thankfully, there’s a potential solution that involves taking out a reverse mortgage on your property instead of selling. That way, you can take advantage of the tax-saving basis step-up rule explained below.

Basis step-up to the rescue

If you continue to own your residence until you or your spouse passes away, the result could be a greatly reduced or maybe even completely eliminated federal income tax bill when the property is eventually sold. This taxpayer-friendly outcome is thanks to Section 1014(a) of our beloved Internal Revenue Code. That provision allows an unlimited federal income tax basis step-up for appreciated capital gain assets owned by a person who passes away. The Biden tax plan initially included a proposal to greatly cut back the basis step-up break, but that idea has been abandoned.

Here’s how the basis step-up rule works. The federal income tax basis of most appreciated capital gain assets owned by a deceased individual, including personal residences, are stepped up to fair market value (FMV) as of the date of death or the alternate valuation date six months later, if the estate executor chooses that option. When the value of an asset eligible for this favorable treatment stays about the same between the date of death and the date of sale by the decedent’s heirs, there will be little or no taxable gain to report to the IRS — because the sales proceeds are fully offset (or nearly so) by the stepped-up basis.

How does the basis step-up rule usually work with a residence?

Here’s how the basis step-up rule plays out in the context of a greatly appreciated principal residence.

If you’re married and your spouse predeceases you, the basis of the portion of the home owned by your departed mate, typically 50%, gets stepped up to FMV. This usually removes half of the appreciation that has occurred over the years from the federal income tax rolls. So far, so good. If you then continue to own the home until you pass away, the basis of the part you own at that point, which will usually be 100%, gets stepped up to FMV as of the date of your death (or the alternate valuation date if applicable). So, your heirs can then sell the property and owe little or nothing to Uncle Sam.

If you’re unmarried and own the home by yourself, the tax results are easier to understand. The basis of the entire property gets stepped up to FMV when you pass on, and your heirs can then sell the residence and owe little or nothing to the Feds.

There are special basis step-up rules in community property states

If you and your spouse own your home as community property in one of the nine community property states (Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin), the tax basis of the entire residence is stepped up to FMV when the first spouse dies (not just the 50% portion that was owned by the now-deceased spouse). This weird-but-true rule means the surviving spouse can sell the home shortly after the spouse’s death and owe little or nothing to Uncle Sam.

In other words, if you turn out to be the surviving spouse, you need not hang onto the property until death to reap the full tax-saving advantage of the basis step-up rule. But if you want to hang on, there’s no tax disadvantage to doing so.

How does the reverse mortgage strategy work?

As you can see, holding onto a hugely appreciated residence until death can save a ton of taxes thanks to the basis step-up rule. However, if you need cash right now to make ends meet, we have not yet solved that part of the equation. Enter the reverse mortgage strategy.

As stated earlier, a reverse mortgage does not require any payments to the lender until you move out of your home or die. At that time, the property can be sold, and the reverse mortgage balance paid off out of the sales proceeds. Any remaining proceeds go to you or your estate. If your heirs would like to keep your home instead of selling it, they must pay it off the with another source of funds. 

Alternatively, your heirs can pay off the reverse mortgage and keep the property along with the basis step-up. With an HECM, your heirs will never have to pay more than the loan balance or 95% of the home’s appraised value, whichever is less. Nice.

What are the fees on a reverse mortgage?

Fees to take out and maintain a reverse mortgage will usually be considerably higher than for a regular “forward” home equity loan or line of credit. With an HECM, you will usually pay an origination fee equal to 2% of the first $200,000 of your home’s value plus 1% of any value above $200,000. However, the origination fee cannot exceed $6,000.

You will also be charged a mortgage insurance premium (MIP) to reduce the risk of loss to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or the lender in the event of default or loss due to value. The MIP has both an initial payment based on the property value and an annual renewal based on the outstanding loan balance.

In addition, the lender can charge a modest monthly servicing fee. Typically, you will also have to pay the familiar third-party home mortgage closing costs for things like title insurance, an appraisal, settlement services, and so forth. These costs are tacked onto the initial reverse mortgage balance and reduce your available loan proceeds.

You’ll need to do some research to find the best product for your specific circumstances.

Can I deduct the interest on a reverse mortgage used to free up cash? 

Not under the current federal income tax rules. Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the interest on home equity loans, which include reverse mortgages, is nondeductible for 2018-2025.  

The bottom line

You might object to the notion of borrowing against your home to solve a cash shortage. Fair enough, but the cash you need must come from somewhere. If it comes from selling your hugely appreciated home, the cost of getting your hands on the money will be a big tax bill.

In contrast, if you can get the cash you need by taking out a reverse mortgage, the only cost will be the fees and interest charges. If those fees and interest charges are a small fraction of the taxes that you could permanently avoid by continuing to own your home, the reverse mortgage strategy can make perfect sense.

Last week, Alphabet Inc.’s
GOOGL,
+0.62%

GOOG,
+0.46%
Google scrapped its Jan. 10 target date for working at the office, until the tech giant can be more confident of a “stable, long-term working environment.” Lyft’s ride-sharing rival, Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER,
+1.92%
also delayed its return date indefinitely. Earlier this week, Meta Platform Inc.’s
FB,
+2.40%
Facebook said it will still reopen at the end of January, but will give employees the option of postponing their return until as late as June. Neither Google nor Facebook mentioned omicron as a reason.

Lyft said Wednesday its changes are to provide employees more flexibility.

“We’ve heard from our team members that they value continued flexibility in determining where they work and would benefit from additional time to plan,” a Lyft spokesperson said in an email to MarketWatch. “We want to give people a choice for all of next year. Offices will fully reopen as planned in February, but working from the office will be completely optional for all of 2022.”

Bloomberg News first reported Lyft’s change of plans Wednesday.

In July, Lyft delayed its return-to-office plans by six months, to Feb. 2, 2022, amid a summer COVID surge.

Little is known yet about the new omicron variant, which was first discovered in late November; early data suggests it may be more transmissible than delta, but causes less severe symptoms.

But after multiple COVID surges over the past year and a half and repeated delays when it comes to returning to offices, companies appear to be taking a cautious approach.

“At a minimum, omicron slows down return-to-office,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a Nov. 29 investor note, calling it a “hiccup” in companies’ plans.

Wells Fargo
WFC,
-1.67%,
which had delayed its return to offices from September to January, said last week that those plans are unchanged, though “we will continue to follow the science.”

Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+2.28%
pushed back its return from January to Feb. 1, and Ford Motor Co.
F,
-0.75%
is now aiming for a March return. Amazon.com Inc. 
AMZN,
-0.00%,
 DoorDash Inc. 
DASH,
+3.35%
and Salesforce.com Inc. 
CRM,
-0.25%
 are among major companies planning to return in January — at least for now. Twitter Inc.
TWTR,
+2.83%
has said its employees can work remotely indefinitely.

GameStop on Wednesday reported that it lost $105.4 million — or $1.39 a share — while Wall Street was looking for something more in the 52-cents range, especially since GameStop only lost 29 cents a share in 2020’s third quarter.

Predictably, GameStop stock fell steeply in Wednesday’s after-hours trading as Wall Street once again shook its head at what is going on at the videogame retailer.

But on social media, where GameStop stock’s most important investor base operates, the results were met with excitement as retail investors devoted to the stock and its guru chairman Ryan Cohen divined positive results in the metrics they actually care about.

To start, GameStop also disclosed that sales rose to $1.3 billion, easily beating Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $1.19 billion, and chalking up at least some of that growth to “new and expanded brand relationships,” and some of the company’s biggest spending appears to be on growing its fulfillment operations to fuel its move from a brick-and-mortar operation to an e-commerce growth story.

These are what many of GameStop’s die-hard Reddit “Apes” delight in hearing from Cohen and his team, and they can eschew EPS since they remain hyper-focused on the long-term growth of the company and Cohen’s still-ethereal “master plan.”

And don’t just take our word for it. Retail investors continue to take their shares and lock them up in direct-registration systems with companies like Computershare
CPU,

that keep investors from getting access and borrowing the shares to short them.

Between the notion of growing sales, more e-commerce operations and expanded partnerships with companies that provide GameStop increased access to the meme-y Promised Land of blockchain and Non-Fungible Tokens, GME fans could argue there was really no need for an informative earnings call — despite the stock falling as much as 6.7% in after-hours trading.

And that’s kind of what investors got.

Once again, GameStop CEO Matt Furlong presided over a very brief call that did not include Cohen but did reference NFTs, blockchain and reinforced the company’s commitment to serving customers and shareholders.

Cohen’s mysterious plan, which has come under fire from some analysts and GameStop observers for months now, did — like Cohen — not materialize on Wednesday, but Cohen’s no-show and the brevity of the call did not disappoint Apes, who not only predicted it on Reddit but supported it as part of the plan.

“There will be a bunch of FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] posts saying ‘We need to know a plan in the conference call tomorrow/today, they owe it to us,’” read one post on GameStop subreddit r/Superstonk. “They don’t owe you shit. Let them continue executing. You just BUY and HOLD and DRS.”

In general, GameStop Apes were thrilled with an earnings report that most Wall Street analysts will find disappointing — but once again the analysts are failing to realize that GameStop doesn’t see traditional Wall Street as its audience, and is even growing to see it as its opposition.

But one thing that even GameStop execs might have to spend a little more time explaining is a curious disclosure at the end of its earnings filing.

Citing an SEC investigation started in May into the January short squeeze on GameStop stock that appeared to be closed after the SEC released its report in October, the company stated Wednesday in its filing that the SEC asked for additional documents “on August 25, 2021” and that “We are in the process of producing the documents and have been and intend to continue cooperating fully with the SEC Staff regarding this matter.”

In the end, GameStop’s CEO Furlong stuck to the loose script of growth that appealed to his real audience, telling listeners on the call — there were no questions asked — that GameStop is now on the quest to find “scale” that it will use to keep driving growth and change.

And if you’re the kind of investor who might have come away from that kind of talk wondering what that even means when your losses are widening, and when GameStop is going to stop acting like a meme stock and start acting like the kind of company Wall Street wants to invest in, we can help.

The answers are: Why would it do either when the stock is up more than 900% in 2021? And also, GameStop isn’t talking to you.