KITTY BACK IN ‘GAME’
Day trader goes mi mi mi meme, soaking shorts
GameStop shares surged as much as 110% on Monday after “Roaring Kitty,” the day trader who played a key role in the so-called “meme stock rally” of 2021, made a surprise comeback to social media — putting the squeeze on short-sellers who lost $1 billion because of the rally.
Roaring Kitty, whose real name is Keith Gill, posted a popular meme that shows a man leaning forward in his chair while holding a video game controller. The meme sparked speculation that Gill, who had not posted anything online in years, was returning to the public eye.
Gill did not include a caption or any other context.
“Hey bro what we buying,” one user commented on the post.
“TIME TO LOCK IN COUSIN,” another user said while posting their own version of the same meme.
Posted film clips
Gill — who was portrayed by actor Paul Dano in the 2023 film about the meme-stock frenzy called “Dumb Money” — later posted a series of movie clips touting his apparent comeback. One of the clips showed Marvel supervillain Thanos saying, “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” and another had “Breaking Bad” antihero Walter White declaring, “We’re done when I say we’re done.”
Roaring Kitty’s posts are “like a match on dry tinder” for his rabid followers, according to Peter Atwater, the president of consulting firm Financial Insyghts.
“It doesn’t take much, if the crowd descends, to push the price wickedly in one direction,” Atwater told The Post. “If you were short this morning, you have had your face ripped off. This was not a morning to wake up short.”
About a quarter of GameStop’s publicly available shares are in short position, and the bearish investors lost almost $1 billion on paper on Monday, according to CNBC.
Short-sellers typically sell borrowed stocks in hopes of making a profit by buying back later when the price falls.
Shares of GameStop, which has struggled with dwindling sales for years, jumped nearly 75% to close at $30.45 after getting halted multiple times. It’s the highest close since August 2022.
GameStop in March cut an unspecified number of jobs to reduce costs and reported lower fourthquarter revenue. With today’s gains, the stock now has a market value of more than $9 billion, but at its peak was worth about $37 billion.
Meme stocks rode the wave of frenzied trading on Monday, with AMC Entertainment soaring 78% to $5.19 and Reddit climbing 8.7%.
Gill, a 37-year-old former employee at Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, helped spark a frenzy in which retail traders bought stock in struggling firms like GameStop and AMC to squeeze short-sellers.
GameStop’s value spiked more than 2,000% in the first months of 2021. At one point that year, the stock hit an all-time high of $120.75 in intraday trading.
Aside from his Roaring Kitty moniker, Gill posted as “DeepF--kingValue” on Reddit’s “Wall Street Bets” forum. Gill’s personal windfall from the meme stock rally was never disclosed, though the value of his GameStop stake was worth nearly $48 million at its peak, according to Reuters.