GameStop shares soar 75% over ‘Roaring Kitty’ $116M bet

Keith Gill, the retail investor known as “Roaring Kitty,” briefly reignited the meme stock craze of 2021 on Monday after his Reddit account posted a screenshot of a chart which revealed a $116 million position in GameStop.

The Reddit post by Gill, which could not be independent verified, sent the company stock soaring in pre-market trading by nearly 100% on Monday.

But shares of the video game retailer pulled back in the afternoon trading session on Wall Street.

As of 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, shares of GameStop were up 27%.

Gill’s Reddit persona, which goes by the name “DeepF–kingValue,” posted an item that was titled “GME YOLO update – June 2 2024.”

“GME” represents the ticker symbol for GameStop while “YOLO” is an acronym which stands for “you only live once.”

The post from Sunday – the first post from Gill’s Reddit account in three years – included a chart which showed a holding of 5 million shares that were bought at $21.27 – or around $116 million in total.

The chart also included call options worth $65.7 million that expire on June 21.

If the options are exercised, it would allow the buyer to purchase shares of GameStop at $20 per share.

As of 2 p.m. Eastern time, shares of GameStop were trading at $31.25.

Gill could not be immediately reached for comment.

The Reddit post was a repeat from 2021, when screenshots of his bullish GameStop trades triggered a rush of demand for “meme stocks” – often companies with weak fundamentals that gained a cult-like following through social media hype.

Unlike in 2021, however, Gill declined to post the item in the “WallStreetBets” chatroom where he posted his trade updates during the GameStop craze.

The stock closed at $23.14 on Friday, up about 33% since Gill began sharing cryptic posts and memes from his “Roaring Kitty” account on X.com in May, sparking speculation over whether he would resume sharing his trades online after the hiatus.

After surging as high as $40.50 in early trading on Monday, GameStop shares lost more than half of their gains.

The stock on mid-afternoon Monday was recently changing hands at $29.93, up 29%.

It’s unclear whether Gill is behind the latest post. There has been speculation online that he sold his X account to a conceptual artist.

Gill’s popular YouTube channel, which boasts more than 676,000 subscribers, has been dormant for the last three years.

Last month, Gill posted a popular meme that shows a man leaning forward in his chair while holding a video game controller.

The meme, which was viewed tens of millions of times and generated hundreds of thousands of likes, sparked speculation that Gill, who had not posted anything online in years, was returning to the public eye.

GameStop, which is based in Grapevine, Texas, logged its highest trading volume in three years, surging by as much as 400%, thanks to the meme — but the rally fizzled shortly afterward.