The man at the center of the pandemic meme stock craze appeared online for the first time in three years — and sent GameStop shares skyrocketing Monday.
Keith Gill, better known as ‘Roaring Kitty’, posted an image of one on Sunday man sits forward in his chair – a meme used by gamers when things get serious.
The stock soared an astonishing 119 percent at one point Monday, causing losses of $1 billion for would-be short sellers who continued to bet that the video game retailer would go bankrupt.
It was a throwback to 2021 when GameStop made headlines for a short squeeze on its stock. At the time, it was a video game retailer struggling to survive as consumers quickly switched from discs to digital downloads.
The big Wall Street hedge funds bet against it, or shorted the stock, expecting it to go bankrupt. But Gill and his fans disagreed and bought millions of GameStop shares.
That started what’s known as a “short squeeze,” when the big investors who had bet against GameStop were forced to buy the surging stock to offset their massive losses.
At Monday’s opening bell, it appeared Gill had reignited that phenomenon, as shares of GameStop more than doubled from Friday’s closing price of $17.46.
Keith Gill, aka ‘Roaring Kitty’, talks about Gamestop and other stocks on his YouTube channel – in 2021. On Monday he tweeted for the first time in three years, and shares of Gamestock soared by as much as 100 percent
Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty,” posted an image of a man sitting forward in his chair on Sunday. It’s a meme used by gamers when things get serious
GameStop shares rose on Monday, hitting an 18-month high
They hit an 18-month high of $38.20 and even after a slight decline, they were trading 67 percent higher at 1:30 p.m.
“Expect short coverage in this stock,” says Ihor Dusaniwsky of data firm S3 Partners.
He said that just an hour into trading on Monday, short-selling hedge funds had lost $1 billion – at least on paper.
It’s the biggest intraday trading jump for GameStop since the meme craze of 2021. Other meme stocks like theater chain AMC also rose.
Gill became a hero for smaller retail investors in 2021 thanks to his posts in the Reddit subcategory Wallstreetbets. The messages sparked a battle between David and Goliath with major hedge funds betting heavily on GameStop’s survival and shorting the stock.
The little guys won, at least for a while, sending GameStop stock up more than 1,000 percent in 2021, and other meme stocks as well. Struggling movie theater chain AMC rose 2.30 percent in the same year.
And some big traders lost billions.
Citron Research, Melvin Capital and other well-known hedge funds lost an estimated $5 billion on the other side of the trade in 2021, according to analytics firm S3 Partners.
Gill and other GameStop investors were betting in part on the ability of Ryan Cohen, co-founder of Chewy.com, to push the traditional retailer in a more online direction.
Cohen built up a stake in GameStop before eventually joining the board last year Become a CEO.
Yet it wasn’t just GameStop that caught fire on Monday. Some of the same meme stocks that saw astronomical gains in 2021 also rose.
AMC rose 33 percent. Koss, a headphone maker, rose 25% and BlackBerry, once the dominant smartphone maker, rose 7%. The retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond, another meme stock, filed for bankruptcy protection last year.
However, some meme stocks, including GameStop and AMC, had already surged higher earlier this month, and quickly.
GameStop shares, which have steadily faded since 2021, were up 57 percent this month. In January, GameStop reported its first annual profit since 2018, although it is still unclear whether Cohen’s turnaround plan will succeed.
The AMC was up 10 percent in the past thirty days.
The chart shows GameStop’s stock price over five days
The story of Roaring Kitty was made into a movie. This image released by Sony Pictures shows Paul Dano as Keith Gill in a scene from ‘Dumb Money’
Gill reaped a big profit by investing in a struggling video game company, but went into denial when he did so appeared virtually at a Congressional hearing that he used social media to drive up GameStop’s stock price.
He simply told lawmakers at the time, “I like the stock.”
As Roaring Kitty, Gill disappeared from message boards after posting a video in June 2021 kittens go to sleep.
The story of Roaring Kitty and the meme stock craze was turned into a movie last year called ‘Dumb Money.’
