'Roaring Kitty': What to know about the meme stock investor
After a 3-year absence, 'Roaring Kitty' is back in action
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"Roaring Kitty" came roaring back to life last month, sending his top position, GameStop, into a trading frenzy.
The meme stock retail trader, widely identified as Keith Gill, broke his "Roaring Kitty" X account’s roughly three-year streak of dormancy May 12 with a picture depicting a seated video game player leaning forward. Prior to that, his most recent post on X had been from June 2021.
He followed the post with numerous subsequent video clips where he flooded his timeline in the weeks that followed, right up until his June YouTube livestream, the first in also about three years.
FOX Business takes a look at who ‘Roaring Kitty’ is and what he has to say about GameStop.
Keith Gill - ‘Roaring Kitty’
While giving testimony to Congress three years ago, the retail trader offered some details about himself, including that he had been raised in Massachusetts and was the first in his family to earn a bachelor’s degree. He is estimated to be 38 years old.
Media outlets first tied Gill to the "Roaring Kitty" accounts on X and YouTube and the username "DeepF*ckingValue" on Reddit in early 2021 amid the Reddit day trader-driven short squeeze of GameStop.
He learned about investing overall from jobs he held and time he spent analyzing stocks outside of work, according to his testimony.
"The idea that I used social media to promote GameStop stock to unwitting investors is preposterous," he testified at the time. "I was abundantly clear that my channel was for educational purposes only and that my aggressive style of investing was unlikely to be suitable for most folks checking out the channel."
Keith Gill, a Reddit user credited with inspiring GameStop's rally, smiles as he speaks virtually during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on a laptop computer in Tiskilwa, Ill., Feb. 18, 2021. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
GameStop Position
Shares of the video game retailer are no stranger to the meme world of volatile trading, but Gill's return last month has lifted the stock over 125% in the second quarter of 2024 alone, amid days of extreme swings and multiple trading halts.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GME | GAMESTOP CORP. | 24.17 | -0.76 | -3.05% |
Gill, who goes by DeepF-------Value on the Reddit platform and "Roaring Kitty" on others, showed a GameStop holding of 5 million, or 1.8% of its publicly available stock. It also showed $65.7 million in GameStop call options, which are typically bought to express a bullish view. It expires on June 21 at a strike price of $20. The value appears to be worth about $116 million.
He confirmed his position on his June 7 YouTube livestream.
GAMESTOP SHARES SOAR AFTER ‘ROARING KITTY’ POSTS ON X
‘Roaring Kitty’s YouTube Live Stream
Gill hosted his widely anticipated livestream June 7. He was jovial while talking about GameStop and reiterating his belief that the management team has the chops to turn around the company.
He posited that now that GameStop had entered what he believed to be a "transformation stage," it "becomes a bet on the management" particularly on CEO Ryan Cohen "and his crew."
"That's probably going to be an ongoing debate as to how people feel about him, whether he can successfully transform that business," Gill told viewers. "I feel like I see enough where I believe this guy might — he might be able to do it right. That's not a guarantee."
He also showed viewers he was still invested in GameStop three years later, at one point in the livestream pulling up what appeared to be his brokerage account.
At the same time, he emphasized that none of what he said was advice and to not "follow anyone blindly."
Keith Gill, a Reddit user credited with inspiring GameStop's rally, during a YouTube livestream arranged on a laptop at the New York Stock Exchange in New York Friday, June 7, 2024. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
GameStop Shares
The price of GameStop stock saw a massive increase in late January 2021, hitting $483 at one point during January 28 trading. That occurred after retail and Reddit traders went against short-sellers and hedge funds as FOX Business previously reported.
Shares closed at $28.22 on June 7, 2024.
GameStop
Potential Legal Issues?
The Massachusetts Securities Division confirmed to FOX Business' Kelly O'Grady this week that it is investigating Keith Gill’s trading activities (Roaring Kitty). This follows his purchase of GameStop call options prior to posting on social media, which likely spurred the run-up in the stock price.
The Securities and Exchange Commission did not respond to FOX Business' request for comment. It's unclear if Gill's posts are tied to any market manipulation.
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Hollywood Takes Notice
His involvement was recently depicted in the movie "Dumb Money" directed by Craig Gillespie and based on the book "The Antisocial Network" by author Ben Mezrich. The filmmakers cast Paul Dano as Gill.
During his testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services in February 2021, Gill said his "investment in GameStop and my posts on social media were entirely my own" derived solely from publicly available information.
Gill said he had been driven to put money on GameStop by a belief that the retailer was "dramatically undervalued." (Shelby Knowles/Bloomberg/File / Getty Images)
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Breck Dumas and Eric Revell contributed to this report.