GameStop leaps as investor known as ‘Roaring Kitty’ indicates he holds a large position in the stock

Shares of GameStop soared Monday following speculation that the man at the center of the pandemic meme stock craze owns a large number of shares of the video game retailer that may be worth millions.

GameStock’s volatile stock ended the day with a 21% gain after earlier being up as much as 75%.

Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty” on social media platforms YouTube and X, also goes by the name Deep F- – – – – – Value on Reddit. Late Sunday, the Reddit account shared a screenshot in the r/SuperStonk forum that people are speculating could be an image of the shares and call options Gill holds in GameStop. The image showed that Gill may hold 5 million shares of GameStop that were worth $115.7 million as of the closing price on Friday. The screenshot also showed 120,000 call options in GameStop with a $20 strike price that expires on June 21. The call options were bought at around $5.68 a piece.

In addition, Gill’s account on X posted a picture of a reverse card from the popular game Uno on Sunday night. There was no text accompanying the image.

This latest activity comes about three weeks after Gill appeared online for the first time in three years, spiking the price of GameStop at the time. In May, the “Roaring Kitty” account posted an image on X of a man sitting forward in his chair, a meme used by gamers when things are getting serious.

The post on X was followed with a YouTube video from years before when Gill championed the beleaguered company GameStop saying, “That’s all for now cuz I’m out of breath. FYI here’s a quick 4min video I put together to summarize the $GME bull case.”

GameStop in 2021 was a video game retailer that was struggling to survive as consumers switched rapidly from discs to digital downloads. Big Wall Street hedge funds and major investors were betting against it, or shorting its stock, believing that its shares would continue on a drastically downward trend.

Gill and those who agreed with him changed the trajectory of a company that appeared to be headed for bankruptcy by buying up thousands of GameStop shares in the face of almost any accepted metrics that told investors that the company was in serious trouble.

That began what is known as a “short squeeze,” when those big investors that had bet against GameStop were forced to buy its rapidly rising stock to offset their massive losses.

The day’s meme surge also included movie theater chain AMC Entertainment Holdings, which gained more than 11%. But others shed their gains over the course of the day. Koss Corp. a headphone manufacturer, which was 17% at one point, ended up less than 1%. And BlackBerry, the one time dominant smartphone maker, finished unchanged after being up almost 6%.

Michelle Chapman, The Associated Press