IMPORTANT POINTS:
- GameStop shares rose 30% on speculation about Keith Gill.
- Gill posted a screenshot showing a significant position in GameStop.Gill’s first comeback sparked a spectacular rally in May.
GameStop shares rose again on Monday on speculation that Keith Gill, the man who inspired the epic short squeeze of 2021, could have a huge position in the video game retailer.
Impact of the publication of “Roaring Kitty”
Shares rose about 30% to trade at about $30.26 each. The NYSE briefly halted trading in the name due to volatility. Shares rose more than 70% early in the day.
Gill, known as DeepF——Value on Reddit and Roaring Kitty on YouTube and.
Gill Portfolio Details
According to the screenshot posted on Reddit’s r/SuperStonk forum, the Reddit crowd’s favorite investor owns 5 million shares of GameStop, valued at $115.7 million at Friday’s closing price. The account also showed a position of 120,000 call options on GameStop with a strike price of $20 expiring on June 21 that were purchased for approximately $5.68 each. GameStop shares closed Friday at $23.14.
The post was not independently verified by CNBC. It’s notable that Gill didn’t post on the infamous WallStreetBets chatroom, where he updated all of his trades at the height of the GameStop mania more than three years ago, although the username is the same one he used.
Reactions and effects on the market
Around the same time on Sunday night, Gill posted a cryptic image of a reverse card from the “Uno” game in X.
AMC shares rose 13% on Monday after the movie theater chain surged 48% in May, amid the resurgence of meme stock fever.
Historical context and revival
Gill’s first comeback on social media three weeks ago sparked a spectacular rally in GameStop, with the stock doubling in May. At the time, he simply posted a photo of a man in a chair leaning forward, but that was enough to trigger a buying frenzy among amateur traders.
GameStop took advantage of the May rally to raise more than $900 million in a stock sale.
The investor was a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. In 2021, through videos on YouTube and posts on Reddit, Gill encouraged a group of retail traders to pressure hedge funds that were shorting GameStop shares.
Consequences and challenges
The stock became so wild at one point that brokerages, including Robinhood, had to restrict trading in the stock as their clearing margin exploded. The mania also led to a series of congressional hearings, featuring Gill, on brokerage practices and the gamification of retail.
GameStop is still struggling with the transition to online gaming, moving away from in-store video game purchases, with investors confident that CEO Ryan Cohen will eventually reinvent the company.
