Picking stocks will always partly be about luck
Largely.
It's not luck when the market is ignoring reality, like at the start of the pandemic. The stock market was down -4% on March 10, 2020. The situation was so urgent the Fed called an emergency meeting a few days early, and dropped rates to 0% and introduced quantitative easing. Experts predicted widespread cases, and in every country where Covid-19 got a foothold, it expanded rapidly. All of the data pointed in one direction, and the market got it badly wrong with a -4% net drop from Mar 9-10. So sometimes stock picking is based on data, while the U.S. stock market is not.
I'm still very confused why you think hedge funds left and came back.
They've been in the whole time. Just real scared at a 300-400 price level.
I think the price moves on Jan 28 show hedge funds are not scared in the $300-$400 range. On Jan 28, GME hit a high of $483 and a low of $112, closing at $194. I view that as hedge funds seeking to profit by selling short a stock that trades far above what it's worth. If anything, hedge funds get greedy when GME hits $300-$400/share, and begin short selling.
Back on Feb 2-4, sellers pushed GME's price lower each time: $141 ==> $90 ; $112 ==> $92 ; $91 ==> $54. That group of sellers seemed to be absent in the first week of March, when the stock ranged from $100 to $150. The same prices appeared, but the selling pressure didn't return. That selling pressure was absent at the same prices where it appeared earlier... so I assume those sellers left. And since the volumes were in the billions, I assume it was hedge funds or other institutional money.
Maybe the $300-$400 range is correct, but describes when hedge funds get greedy. From Feb 2 - Mar 9, GME never pushed above $300... then on Mar 10, it hit $349. That same day, selling pushed the stock dramatically lower (a $172 low, closing at $265). But I'm not sure where those same sellers are today... much lower volume, and GME stock has gone from $242 to $282 so far ...
Earlier selling pressure was like a wall that pushed GME lower and lower. That doesn't seem to be what's happening this week, so it seems like less selling pressure now than in late Jan/early Feb.