Is Roaring Kitty the internet’s Warren Buffett?

livemint.com:

The question everybody on Wall Street is asking this week: How is GameStop suddenly a big thing again? However, the more interesting question might be: Why was it still kind of a thing last week? On Tuesday, shares in videogame retailer GameStop rose 60% to $49 a piece, having already gained 74% Monday. Those of AMC Entertainment were up 135% on the week at Tuesday’s close. This new rally was triggered by X user “Roaring Kitty," who had been inactive for almost two years before posting a drawing of a man leaning forward on a chair.

The account is associated with Keith Gill, a former financial consultant who first brought attention to GameStop two years ago with a series of videos analyzing its untapped potential. Users on Reddit organized to prop up this and other stocks that were unloved by Wall Street in an attempt to make hedge funds’ short bets go awry. To be sure, the mania is unlikely to go as far this time around: According to Vanda Research, $16 million flowed into GameStop on Monday, compared with a peak daily inflow of $88 million on Jan.

27, 2021. “Meme stocks" are linked to the specific zeitgeist of 2021, when people were bored at home because of the Covid-19 lockdowns and suddenly received a bunch of stimulus checks from the government. Hedge funds have presumably become more cautious since, following the massive losses suffered by Gabe Plotkin’s now-defunct Melvin Capital.

Still, it is remarkable that, before this week’s surge, GameStop was still worth around $15 a share. It might not seem like much compared with the split-adjusted $81 it reached in 2021, but it was 10 times its price before the pandemic and still amounted to an insane valuation of 700 times expected earnings last week. Now it is 1,910