GameStop surged to nearly 70 percent after Roaring Kitty, the online streamer who drove the GameStop short squeeze in January 2021, made his first social media post in three years on Monday.
GameStop traded up as much as $36.70, or 110 percent, on Monday morning. Trading GameStop stock has so far been halted multiple times due to “volatility.” Stock for AMC, which was also targeted during the 2021 squeeze, increased 19 percent, and shares for Reddit increased 11 percent.
The post, which amassed 73,000 likes and 14 million views in 15 hours, was a simple cartoon of a man adjusting himself in his chair to become more alert with what appears to be a video game controller in his hands. On his profile, he has pinned a four-minute video explaining the GameStop short squeeze from 2020. He continued to post memes throughout Monday morning.
X users replied with posts asking Roaring Kitty what stocks they ought to be buying. The official account for the wallstreetbets subreddit replied “in the context of ct whatever capo is bearish on” to a post asking, “hey bro what we buying.” Luke Belmar, unusual_whales, “greg,” and Andrew Tate all commented on Roaring Kitty’s return.
— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) May 13, 2024
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the legend is back 🚀pic.twitter.com/NjbNE57keu
— wallstreetbets (@wallstreetbets) May 13, 2024
3 years ago this man changed the world and now he’s back
Buckle up https://t.co/OAejjBtB5V pic.twitter.com/2MfNltwyUK
— greg (@greg16676935420) May 13, 2024
Roaring Kitty, aka as Keith Gill, who posted extensively before and during GameStop, $GME's run in 2020-2021, has returned to Twitter/X. https://t.co/GeGswzCR2U
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) May 13, 2024
I lost a lot of money attacking The Matrix during Gamestop.
Always been part of the resistance 🫡 pic.twitter.com/9UefFOI8nW
— Andrew Tate (@Cobratate) May 13, 2024
Roaring Kitty, real name Keith Gill, is a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. Going by “DeepF——Value” on Reddit, Gill garnered a cult following in the days of the COVID lockdown economic haze, corralling followers to support the video game retailer GameStop as if they were a decentralized hedge fund. They specifically supported stocks that were being targeted for demise by hedge funds and short sellers like Melvin Capital, thereby forcing the funds to cover their short positions and inflate the price of the stock to nearly $120 a share, split-adjusted, from about $3 in the course of ninety days.
Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Point72 ultimately had to swoop in and prop Melvin up with $3 billion due to the outsized losses. Online brokerage Robinhood was forced to limit the ability to trade heavily shorted stocks, which encouraged a user to file a class-action lawsuit against the app. It was eventually dismissed in August 2023. Gill was also hit with a class action lawsuit for allegedly pretending to be a novice trader and disguising his status as a “licensed professional.” That suit was also dismissed. Keith was called to testify in Congress alongside Robinhood, Melvin, Reddit, and Citadel, and his story was turned into a 2023 film called Dumb Money.
Shane Devine is a writer covering politics and business for VT and a regular guest on The Unusual Suspects. Follow Shane’s work here.
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