GetCoattail Research — eBay runs the marketplace that has connected buyers and sellers since the 1990s, and in October it sits tenth on AltIndex's meme-stock list — while the week's headlines have been a chief-executive sale, and the name at the top of that same list, GameStop, sits inside eBay's own 5% register. The filings describe a register moving in opposite directions: the two tracked superinvestors both cut in the June quarter, the full market added, insiders have recorded not one open-market purchase, and a 13D chain that began at 25,000 shares now prints 9.8%.
Start with the narrative. AltIndex's meme-stock list, updated on the night of October 10, ranked eBay tenth by Reddit mentions over the prior 24 hours, with 32 mentions and a bullish sentiment flag, at a displayed price of $112.19; the same list is topped by GameStop, with 360 mentions — a name that reappears below in eBay's own filing register. The news flow around eBay in early October has been the October 5 sale by chief executive Jamie Iannone — 11,110 shares at an average price of $107.08, described in the reports as executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan. The analyst backdrop, as aggregated by StockAnalysis and checked October 11, is a Hold consensus from 32 analysts with an average price target of $116.11. Our own price file, which ends October 2, puts the last close at $106.40 — 10.6% below the 252-session closing high of $118.96 set on May 20, 2026, and 34.0% above the 252-session closing low of $79.41 set on February 12, 2026.
Now the filings. For eBay — the thirty-eighth Filing Tape audit — the tape is a study in opposite signs: a tracked cohort that shrank by a third in a rising quarter, a broad register that grew, a 5% register with an active 13D filer, an insider record with purchases at zero, no congressional record at all, and a borrow that has been rebuilding since quarter-end.
Lens 1: the superinvestors — two holders, 2,378,743 shares, both of them cut
We track 83 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR. As of June 30, 2026, 2 held eBay long — no option rows — totalling 2,378,743 shares worth $265,824,531. The direction count is two decreased: no increases, no new positions and no unchanged rows.
Yacktman Asset Management is the larger holder, with 1,262,742 shares worth $141,111,419, a 1.74% portfolio weight, decreased 17.4% in the quarter — 53.1% of the tracked cohort's eBay shares. Lindsell Train holds 1,116,001 shares worth $124,713,112, a 4.74% portfolio weight, decreased 42.1% — the other 46.9% of the cohort. The cohort total moved from 3,468,429 shares at March 31 to 2,378,743 at June 30, a change of -31.42%, a difference of -1,089,686 shares — and the register underneath lost a member as well: at March 31 the three rows were Lindsell Train (1,927,485 shares), Yacktman (1,529,194 shares) and Dodge & Cox Funds (11,750 shares), and Dodge & Cox appears in the collection's exit lists for this name in the second quarter. So the quarter's story is not trimming at the margin; it is both remaining holders cutting — one of them by 42.1% — while a third left. The price rose from $91.02 at March 31 to $111.75 at June 30, a change of +22.8%, and the cohort's reported value implies $111.75 per share, matching the June 30 close exactly.
Lens 2: institutions — 1,292 filers, shares up 15.51%
Zoom out to the whole 13F market and the June quarter was broad accumulation — the opposite sign from the tracked cohort. At June 30, 2026, 1,292 institutions reported positions, up 65 from 1,227 at March 31 (+5.30%), and 1,284 reported long positions. Reported shares rose 15.51%, from 351,665,045 to 406,194,251 shares — 54,529,206 more shares than the prior quarter. Reported aggregate value rose 43.48% to $44,027,593,748; the aggregate includes option rows, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollars "reported" (see methodology). The implied value per share, $108.39, sits 3.0% below the June 30 close of $111.75. Set the two 13F lenses side by side and they point in opposite directions: the full market's share count grew 15.51% while the tracked cohort's fell 31.42%. The broad register did the accumulating this quarter; the famous names reduced.
Lens 3: the 5% register — thirteen filings, and a GameStop 13D chain at 9.8%
Our full parse holds thirteen SC 13D/G filings for eBay — five SC 13G originals, three SC 13G/A amendments, one SC 13D original and four SC 13D/A amendments, eight reporting persons on a row basis, the most recent filed August 12, 2026. The register's maximum percentage, and its most unusual chain, belongs to GameStop Corp.: 25,000 shares (0.01%) as of May 1, 2026 in an original SC 13D filed May 4, the same 25,000 shares in two May amendments, then 39,874,306 shares (9.0%) as of June 3, 2026, then 43,390,383 shares (9.8%) as of July 15, 2026 in an SC 13D/A filed July 17. The Toronto-Dominion Bank printed 40,155,951 shares (9.0%) as of June 30, 2026 in an SC 13G filed August 12, 2026 — the register's latest filing — with a TD Securities Inc. row of 4,100 shares (0.0%) in the same filing. The Vanguard names appear as separate reporting persons, exactly as filed: The Vanguard Group printed 0 shares (0.0%) as of March 13, 2026, Vanguard Capital Management printed 33,728,890 shares (7.52%) as of March 31, 2026, and Vanguard Portfolio Management printed 23,459,787 shares (5.23%) as of March 31, 2026, then 21,567,649 shares (4.85%) as of June 30, 2026. State Street Corporation printed 24,437,654 shares (5.1%) as of December 31, 2024, then 22,301,388 shares (5.0%) as of March 31, 2026, and Ameriprise Financial printed 16,893,932 shares (3.7%) as of June 30, 2025. We report rows as filed and never sum them: the aggregation's total across these rows would add different dates together and present a history as if it were a register total.
Lens 4: insiders — zero purchases in the parsed record, $109,565,978.54 of sales
The parsed Form 4 record holds 206 filings through October 2, 2026. Across it, open-market purchases total zero transactions — zero shares, $0, no buyers at all. Against that stand 178 sales totalling 1,273,412 shares and $109,565,978.54, by nine sellers, 177 of them recorded as officer sales. The last year holds the same shape: zero purchases against 111 sales of 569,123 shares for $56,004,850.45 by six sellers, every one of the 111 recorded as an officer sale. The last 90 days hold 30 sales of 72,864 shares for $7,908,798.90 by three sellers across 18 filings — every one of the 30 recorded as an officer sale, and still no purchases. Our site's insider aggregate, compiled as of October 11 over its own 90-day window, reads the same direction — zero purchases, 26 sales, $5,377,218.74, three sellers, no last-buy date — and differs from the full parse's 90-day figures (30 sales, $7,908,798.90 through October 2) because the windows and aggregation differ; we headline the full parse and print both in the methodology rather than implying they are one number. One boundary matters here: the October 5 chief-executive sale in the headlines postdates the full parse's October 2 cutoff, so it is not inside these totals — the record underneath the headlines is older and wider than any one seller: nine sellers, no buyers, across the whole coverage. We assign no motives to any of it; the record's shape is the fact.
Lens 5: Congress — no record in either chamber
Across the congressional record we maintain (combined record as of October 3, 2026), eBay shows no row at all. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) carries no eBay row, and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) carries no eBay row. This lens is therefore blank as a matter of record, not of missing data: the archives are maintained for both chambers, and neither contains an eBay trade to report. In a series where the congressional lens often prints a handful of trades in one direction or the other, a complete absence is itself the finding.
Lens 6: short interest — 18,180,321 shares, up 22.7% since the June settlement
FINRA's files carry the borrow across 137 settlements, from January 15, 2021. As of September 15, 2026 — the most recent settlement — 18,180,321 eBay shares were sold short, with days-to-cover of 4.17, up 0.90% from the prior settlement. Against the fundamentals file's 445,000,000 shares outstanding, that is 4.09% of the share count. The long view is a borrow well below its history: the series maximum is 37,944,729 shares at the October 29, 2021 settlement, and the latest reading sits 52.1% below that peak. The recent direction is the other way: the borrow printed 14,812,259 shares at the June 30, 2026 settlement — the same date the 13F lenses snapshot — and has since risen 22.7% to the latest reading. Year over year the latest reading is up 4.2% from 17,444,751 shares on September 15, 2025, so the shape is neither squeeze nor collapse: a borrow far below its 2021 peak, rebuilding through the summer. The series minimum is 12,119,640 shares on December 31, 2025.
The recent settlements run 14,028,859 on July 15, then 17,374,463, 15,782,017, 18,018,529 and 18,180,321 — a borrow stepping up from its quarter-end level through the summer. Set beside Lens 2, the quarter's geometry is two-sided again: reported institutional shares rose 15.51% in the June quarter, and the borrow then rose 22.7% off the quarter-end settlement in the weeks that followed.
The gap, stated plainly
The registers describe a company the retail conversation ranked tenth in October, months after its institutions had moved — in opposite directions. The tracked superinvestors held 2,378,743 shares at June 30 — two holders, Yacktman's 1,262,742 shares at 53.1% of it — having fallen 31.42% in a quarter when the price rose 22.8%, after Dodge & Cox exited. The full market moved the other way: 1,292 filers, up 65, holding 406,194,251 reported shares, up 54,529,206. The 5% register printed thirteen filings: a GameStop 13D chain that went from 25,000 shares to 43,390,383 (9.8%), a Toronto-Dominion Bank row at 9.0%, and Vanguard rows split across three reporting-person names, one of them zero. Insiders, across 206 parsed filings, have recorded no open-market purchase at all — zero — against $109,565,978.54 of sales by nine sellers, $7,908,798.90 of it in the last 90 days. Congress registers nothing in either chamber. And the borrow, at 18,180,321 shares, is 52.1% below its 2021 peak but 22.7% above its June 30 settlement. One plausible reading is that the registers run on different clocks and different mandates: the broad market spent the June quarter accumulating a stock its tracked-fund register was cutting by a third, an active filer built the register's largest percentage from a standing start in May, its own insiders have only ever sold in the parsed record, and short sellers have been adding back since quarter-end while retail attention returned. The record supports each clause separately; it does not say which register is right.
What would change the picture
Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These are the filings that would change the description:
- 1. The 2026Q3 13Fs (filing window closing mid-November 2026). The tracked cohort held 2,378,743 shares at June 30 across two holders, after a 31.42% cut. Whether Yacktman's 1,262,742-share position and Lindsell Train's 1,116,001-share position rebuild, hold or disappear is the whole lens; a Dodge & Cox return would be the rest of it.
- 2. A first insider purchase in the parsed record. The record holds zero open-market purchases across 206 filings, against 178 sales. Any P-code print — one buyer, any size — would break the record's single direction; continued sales would extend a run already at $109,565,978.54.
- 3. The next GameStop 13D amendment. The chain stands at 43,390,383 shares (9.8%) as of July 15, 2026. A further increase, a reduction, or an exit filing would each rewrite the 5% register's largest row.
- 4. Whether the borrow keeps rebuilding. Short interest rose from 14,812,259 shares at the June 30, 2026 settlement to 18,180,321 by September 15. A fall back toward the June level would end the rebuild; a continued rise would extend it.
- 5. A first congressional print. The congressional register holds no eBay row in either chamber. A first purchase or a first sale, in either chamber, would give this lens its first data point.
Until one of those prints, the record describes a stock held by two of our 83 tracked superinvestors — 2,378,743 shares, after a 31.42% one-quarter cut in which both holders decreased and one holder exited — whose full market added 54,529,206 reported shares in the same quarter, whose 5% register is headed by a 9.8% GameStop 13D chain, whose insiders have bought nothing in the parsed record against $109,565,978.54 of sales, whose congressional register is empty in both chambers, and whose borrow has risen 22.7% since the quarter-end settlement while retail attention returned.
Related reading: Two of 83: One Holder Is 99.9% of the Superinvestors' Toast Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #37; Two of 83: Third Point Opened a New Block Position. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #36; Zero of 83: The Superinvestors Aren't in IREN — Filing Tape #1. eBay's own page: eBay Inc. (EBAY) on GetCoattail.
Methodology and data notes
- Superinvestor lens: 83 managers collected directly from SEC EDGAR Form 13F (managers_13f collection), positions as of June 30, 2026; eBay identified by CUSIP 278642103. Two distinct managers hold long positions totalling 2,378,743 shares; both reported rows are long (no put or call rows); directions are two decreased, with no increased, new or unchanged rows, and the collection's exit lists contain one row for this CUSIP (Dodge & Cox Funds, 11,750 shares, prior reported value $1,069,485). Quarter-to-quarter cohort totals (3,468,429 shares at March 31 across three filing rows — Lindsell Train 1,927,485, Yacktman Asset Management 1,529,194 and Dodge & Cox Funds 11,750; 2,378,743 shares at June 30 across two filing rows; change -31.42%) are from the site pipeline's holdings files on the same CUSIP basis in both quarters, and the pipeline's second-quarter total matches the EDGAR collection's long total exactly (difference of 0 shares and $0), so no collection difference needs reporting for this name. Yacktman Asset Management's share of the cohort is 53.1% = 1,262,742 / 2,378,743.
- Full-market lens: SEC Form 13F Data Sets full-market aggregation. The primary table is the full13f collection's by-ticker file (holders = distinct filers reporting the CUSIP; 1,284 of the 1,292 reported long positions), and its figures match the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP row for 278642103 exactly on holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value. The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (1,129 and 1,064, a net of +65 that matches the change in holder count) have no counterpart in the by-CUSIP aggregation, which does not publish them, so this audit does not rely on them. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($44,027,593,748 over 406,194,251 shares) implies ≈$108.39 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $111.75 in our price file, a gap of -3.0%. The aggregate sums the VALUE of every information-table row — including put and call option rows — while the share count covers long common-stock rows only, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollar values "reported."
- Insider lens: full-parse Form 4 aggregation (agg_by_ticker), record as of October 2, 2026 (206 filings). Sale and purchase counts are transaction-code counts (S and P) in non-derivative rows; grants and exercises are not counted as purchases, and one filing can contain many transaction rows. Purchase transactions total 0 across the parsed record (0 shares, $0, no buyers, no officer purchases). Sale transactions total 178 across the record (1,273,412 shares, $109,565,978.54, nine sellers), 177 of them recorded as officer sales. In the year through October 2, 2026: zero purchases and 111 sales (569,123 shares, $56,004,850.45, six sellers, all 111 recorded as officer sales). In the 90 days through October 2, 2026: zero purchases and 30 sales (72,864 shares, $7,908,798.90, three sellers, all 30 recorded as officer sales) across 18 filings. The site's insider aggregate (compiled as of October 11, 2026, 90-day window) reads zero purchases, 26 sales and $5,377,218.74 with three sellers and an empty last-buy field; its window ends nine days later than the full parse's and its aggregation differs, so its counts are not expected to equal the parse's 90-day figures, and both are printed here rather than blended. The widely reported October 5, 2026 chief-executive sale postdates the full parse's October 2 cutoff and is not counted in any figure in this lens. "No purchases" in this audit is scoped to this parsed record, whose 206 filings are the coverage stated here.
- 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G aggregation and parsed filings (13 filings matching CUSIP 278642103 and issuer CIK 1065088, eight reporting persons on a row basis: 5 SC 13G originals, 3 SC 13G/A amendments, 1 SC 13D original and 4 SC 13D/A amendments), filings through August 12, 2026. GameStop Corp.'s chain (25,000 shares at 0.01% as of May 1, 2026, filed May 4, 2026, and unchanged in amendments as of May 15 and May 26, 2026; 39,874,306 shares at 9.0% as of June 3, 2026, filed June 5, 2026; 43,390,383 shares at 9.8% as of July 15, 2026, filed July 17, 2026), The Toronto-Dominion Bank's row (40,155,951 shares at 9.0% as of June 30, 2026, filed August 12, 2026, in a filing that also carries a TD Securities Inc. row of 4,100 shares at 0.0%), Vanguard Capital Management's row (33,728,890 shares at 7.52% as of March 31, 2026), Vanguard Portfolio Management's rows (23,459,787 shares at 5.23% as of March 31, 2026; 21,567,649 shares at 4.85% as of June 30, 2026), The Vanguard Group's row (0 shares at 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, filed March 26, 2026), State Street Corporation's rows (24,437,654 shares at 5.1% as of December 31, 2024; 22,301,388 shares at 5.0% as of March 31, 2026) and Ameriprise Financial, Inc.'s row (16,893,932 shares at 3.7% as of June 30, 2025) are reported as filed. No rows are summed, because the aggregation's totalSharesReported field (265,889,040 shares) adds different dates together. No reason for any change is asserted — the filings themselves are the record.
- Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site, combined record as of October 3, 2026 — no eBay row. The House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) likewise carry no eBay row. Congressional disclosures report value ranges, so this lens records direction and counts only; here it records an absence in both chambers.
- Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. The published series covers 137 settlements from January 15, 2021 (25,033,467 shares) to September 15, 2026. The maximum of the series is 37,944,729 shares on October 29, 2021, so the latest reading of 18,180,321 shares on September 15, 2026 sits 52.1% below the peak ((18,180,321 / 37,944,729) − 1), 22.7% above the June 30, 2026 settlement reading of 14,812,259, and 4.2% above the September 15, 2025 reading of 17,444,751; the change from the prior settlement (18,018,529 shares on August 31, 2026) is +0.90%. The latest row's prior-settlement field (18,018,529) matches the prior settlement file's reported figure exactly. The series minimum is 12,119,640 shares on December 31, 2025. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact. The share-count ratio (4.09%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
- Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries eBay's revenue of $11,100,000,000 labelled fiscal 2025, its net income of $2,031,000,000 labelled fiscal 2025, and its assets of $17,610,000,000 labelled fiscal 2025 — all three fields carry the same fiscal year in the file. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 445,000,000 (as of July 31, 2026, sourced in the file to an EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding count) and a file-computed market value of $47,641,698,913.57. The file's price for the name is $107.06 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $106.40, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
- Prices: our own daily-close file for eBay through October 2, 2026 ($106.40 close, +22.2% year to date on that file; 252-session closing high $118.96 on May 20, 2026; 252-session closing low $79.41 on February 12, 2026; closes of $91.02 at March 31, 2026 and $111.75 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of +22.8%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -4.8% ((106.40 / 111.75) − 1)). The drawdown from the 252-session closing high is -10.6%, and the latest close sits +34.0% above the 252-session closing low ((106.40 / 79.41) − 1).
- Market context sources: AltIndex's meme-stock list as updated on the night of October 10, 2026 (eBay tenth by Reddit mentions over the prior 24 hours, 32 mentions, bullish sentiment flag, displayed price $112.19; GameStop first on the same list with 360 mentions), checked October 11, 2026; the run of October 2026 insider-sale reports covering the October 5, 2026 sale by chief executive Jamie Iannone (11,110 shares at an average price of $107.08, described in the reports as executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan), as carried by multiple financial outlets in the week to October 10, 2026 and checked October 11, 2026, summarised in our own words; and the analyst backdrop aggregated by StockAnalysis (32 analysts, Hold consensus, average price target of $116.11), checked October 11, 2026. Figures we could not confirm against two sources were left out.
- eBay is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: eBay Inc. (EBAY) stock page. Series data: ebay_lens_data.csv · ebay_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Toast · Block · IREN.
Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.
This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.
Revision history
- v1.0 — October 11, 2026: first publication.