GameStop stock soars after ‘Roaring Kitty’ who drove meme frenzy resurfaces

globalnews.ca:

Shares of videogame retailer GameStop jumped more than 50 per cent in early trading on Monday after “Roaring Kitty,” a former marketer at an insurance firm credited with sparking the 2021 meme stock rally, returned to X.com after a three-year hiatus from social media.

Keith Gill, known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and “DeepF***ingValue” on Reddit, was a key figure in the so-called Reddit rally, which saw shares of GameStop surge as much as 21-fold over two weeks in January 2021 before crashing to pre-surge levels in the subsequent days.

Gill on Sunday posted a sketch of a man leaning forward in a chair, a popular meme among gamers that indicates things are getting serious. It is his first post on X, earlier Twitter, after being notably absent on social media platforms since mid-2021.

“Roaring Kitty” did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for a comment.

GameStop was trending on investor-focused social media stocktwits.com on Monday, indicating interest from individual investors, while Roaring Kitty and retail trading platform Robinhood were trending on X.com.

Roaring Kitty “seems to be the most likely suspect for the renewed interest today… but I would be careful not to characterize the participants in this phenomenon as investors,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth.

“There’s no fundamental change in any of the companies that are popularized in this phenomenon.”

GameStop in March cut an unspecified number of jobs to reduce costs and reported lower fourth-quarter revenue.

The company has about a quarter of its publicly available shares in short position and the bearish investors were set to lose $437 million on paper on Monday, analytics firm Ortex said.

Short sellers typically borrow