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Roaring Kitty was one of the main forces behind the WallStreetBets subreddit that drove GameStop stock's incredible gains during the pandemic.
new york
CNN
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GameStop shares soared on Monday after the trader who helped spark the 2021 meme stock frenzy made a surprise return on social media. The surge had nothing to do with the company's troubled fundamentals and everything to do with a gamer cartoon shared on X by a trader nicknamed Roaring Kitty.
GameStop shares soared 68% on Monday following Keith Gill's account management. shared a meme with, this is my first post in 3 years. The stock has soared more than 110% and was halted multiple times on Monday morning due to wild swings.
Shares of Robinhood, the trading platform that suspended purchases of GameStop, AMC Entertainment and other meme stocks during the frenzy of 2021, rose 7%. AMC stock soared 31%. Reddit shares rose 13%.
The image posted by Gill shows a man leaning forward in a chair with a video game console in his hand.He had GameStop. I posted the same manga in February too., but with a red arrow and a chair. In Gil's comics, they are blue. According to Know Your Meme, the meme has been interpreted as a way to say “when things get serious.”
Gill did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.
Robinhood on Monday denied claims on social media that it had again suspended purchases of GameStop stock on its platform.
“This is incorrect. Robinhood has not stopped purchasing GameStop stock,” Robinhood spokesperson Anupriya Ghat said in a statement to CNN. “We are seeing increased volatility and movement in GME, which is causing market-wide currency trading restrictions and suspensions. These are market-wide and are not specific to Robinhood.”
Gill, known as “Deepf—-ingvalue” on Reddit, is one of the leading forces behind the subreddit WallStreetBets, which led to the astonishing gains in GameStop stock. Traders are bidding on retailers' shares to target short sellers, who aim to make money by borrowing shares, selling them, buying them at lower prices and then returning them.
Individual investors drove other stocks soar in 2022, including AMC Entertainment and Bed Bath & Beyond. These are now collectively known as meme stocks, or stocks of companies with a cult following, which fluctuate wildly based on their popularity among trader communities on social media rather than their fundamentals.
Gill described himself as a casual day trader in testimony at a 2021 Congressional hearing on GameStop mania. He said he did not aim to inflame the GameStop frenzy, but rather believed the stock represented an attractive opportunity for investors.
“The idea that I used social media to promote GameStop stock to unsuspecting investors is ridiculous,” Gill said in written testimony. “It was abundantly clear that my channel was for educational purposes only. …Whether other retail investors bought the stock was irrelevant to my theory.”
Gill also said he first bought GameStop stock and then call options in the summer of 2019, when the stock was trading at about $5 a share. He further strengthened that position for the remainder of this year and throughout 2020, testifying that he believes “the market remains oblivious to GameStop's unique opportunity.”
But even he didn't believe it would reach the high of $483 per share in 2021.
“At the time, I thought it was a possibility, but the probability was very low,” Gill testified.
Gil was the main character in the 2023 film “Dumb Money” (played by actor Paul Dano), which depicts the events leading up to and during the GameStop short squeeze.
This story is in development and will be updated.
