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Roaring Kitty is one of the leading forces on the WallstreetBets subreddit, which has seen eye-popping returns on GameStop’s stock during the pandemic.
New York
CNN
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GameStop shares skyrocketed on Monday after the trader’s surprise social media earnings helped spark a meme stock frenzy in 2021. The upheaval has nothing to do with the troubled company’s fundamentals — and everything to do with a gamer cartoon shared on X by a trader nicknamed Roaring Kitty.
GameStop shares soared 74% on Monday after a report by Keith Gill X shared a meme, marking its first post in three years. Shares had earlier surged more than 110% and were halted several times on Monday morning due to volatility.
Short sellers saw $1 billion in bets against GameStop on Monday, according to data firm S3 Partners. Short-sellers aim to make a profit on a stock by borrowing the stock, selling it, and then buying it back at a lower price.
Shares of another memorable stock, AMC Entertainment, surged 78%. Reddit shares rose about 9%. Shares of Robinhood Markets, the trading platform that halted purchases of GameStop, AMC and other memorabilia stocks during a frenzy in 2021, rose 4%.
The image Gill posted depicts a man leaning forward in a chair with a video game console in hand. GameStop was there He published the same cartoon in February, but with the blue arrow and the chair. In Gill’s cartoon, they are red. This memory is interpreted to signify “when things get serious.” According to Know Your Meme.
Gill did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
GameStop shares tripped several circuit breakers — a temporary and forced halt in trading to cool off investors for a while. Robinhood took to social media on Monday to deny claims that GameStop had halted stock purchases back on its platform.
“This is wrong. Robinhood has not stopped buying GameStop shares,” Robinhood spokeswoman Anupriya Ghat said in a statement to CNN. “GME is seeing heightened volatility and movement, prompting market-wide exchange trading limits and suspensions. These are market-wide and not specific to Robinhood.
Gill, who goes by “Deepf—-invalue” on Reddit, was one of the leading forces behind the WallStreetBets subreddit, which saw eye-popping returns on GameStop’s stock. Traders bid on the retailer’s stock, targeting short sellers.
Retail investors sent other stocks higher in 2021, including AMC Entertainment and Bed Bath & Beyond. They are now collectively known as meme stocks or stocks of companies that are seeing wider swings based on their popularity than their fundamentals among trading communities on social media.
Gill described himself as a casual day trader in testimony during a 2021 congressional hearing on GameStop Mania. He said He didn’t help fuel the GameStop frenzy and instead believed that the stock was an attractive opportunity for investors.
“The idea that I used social media to promote GameStop stock to uninformed investors is absurd,” Gill said in written testimony. “I have been clear that my channel is for educational purposes only. … Whether other individual investors bought shares is irrelevant to my thesis.
Gill said he first bought the GameStop stock in the summer of 2019 and then bought the call options. He added to his position throughout the year and into 2020, and testified that he believes “the market is overlooking GameStop’s unique opportunity.”
But he doesn’t believe a share will rise to $483 in 2021.
“At the time I thought it was possible but a very low probability,” Gill testified.
Gil is a main character 2023 Movie “Dump Money” (starring actor Paul Dano), which depicts the events before and after the GameStop short squeeze.
As stocks settle later in the trading day, levels may change slightly.
