Shares of GameStop and AMC Entertainment exploded Monday, up close to 80% and 50%, respectively, as Roaring Kitty, aka Keith Gill, the trader and Reddit celebrity who sparked the so-called meme stock revolution on Wall Street starting in early 2021, posted on X (formerly Twitter) for the first time in almost three years.
Gill, a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, got the big screen treatment in Dumb Money, where he was played by Paul Dano. An investment advisor working at home during Covid, he researched video game retailer GameStop and saw solid fundamentals he thought weren’t reflected in the share price, and were being overlooked by the Street. Big firms in fact were shorting the stock, betting it would fall.
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The film by Craig Gillespie, released in Sept. of 2023, was based on the book The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich.
Gill had a strong online following on Reddit chatroom WallStreetBets and YouTube for his weekly livestreams, where he was open about showing his research and his own stock positions. He called Roaring Kitty “a method for hunting stocks and pouncing on investment opportunities.”
When he starting arguing for GameStop, his fans bought and bought — often using investment app Robinhoood, and encouraged each other across social platforms not to sell. That drove GameStop to the stratosphere and also squeezed shorts, who had to scramble to cover their positions. He’s credited for sparking a first, exhilarating, democratizing moment in the markets that stymied the SEC, regulators and Congress, which held a series of hearings.
Enthusiasm by retail investors spilled into other shares as well, especially theater chain AMC Entertainment, whose skyrocketing stock allowed the company to avoid bankruptcy. The meme stock craze settled down subsequently once folks were back in the office more, and day trading less.
What now?
Overnight last night, Gill’s @TheRoaringKitty account posted (below) a cartoon of what appears to be a stock trader leaning forward, seemingly ready to get to work, followed by a series of short videos.
He didn’t refer to any particular stocks.
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