Meme stock GameStop rallied again on Monday on speculation that Keith Gill, the man who inspired the epic short squeeze of 2021, could have a huge position in the video game retailer.
Shares were last up about 30%, trading at about $30.26 apiece. Trading in this name was briefly suspended by the NYSE due to volatility. At the opening the price rose by more than 70%.
Gill, who follows DeepF——Value on Reddit and Roaring Kitty on YouTube and
According to the account snapshot posted on Reddit’s r/SuperStonk forum, the Reddit trading crowd’s most popular trader holds 5 million GameStop shares worth $115.7 million as of Friday’s closing price. The account also showed a position of 120,000 call options on GameStop with a $20 strike price expiring on June 21 that were purchased for about $5.68 each. GameStop shares closed at $23.14 on Friday.
The post has not been independently verified by CNBC. Notably, he did not post in the infamous WallStreetBets chat room where he posted all of his trading updates at the height of the GameStop mania over three years ago, even though the username is the same one used.
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Around the same time on Sunday evening, Gill posted on X a cryptic image of a reversed card in the game “Uno.”
Shares of AMC rose 30% on Monday after the movie theater chain gained 48% in May on the revival of the meme stock boom. Reddit shares rose 5% on Monday.
Gill’s first return to social media three weeks ago sparked a stunning rally in GameStop, with shares more than doubling in May alone. At the time, he merely posted a picture of a man leaning forward on a chair, but that was enough to spark a buying frenzy among hobby retailers.
GameStop capitalized on the May rally by raising more than $900 million through a stock sale.
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GameStop, YTD
The investor was a former marketer for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance. In 2021, through YouTube videos and Reddit posts, Gill encouraged a group of retail traders to exclude hedge funds from shorting GameStop.
At one point, the action got so wild that brokers, including Robinhood, had to limit trading in the stock because it was blowing their clearinghouse margin. The mania also led to a series of congressional hearings with Gill discussing brokerage practices and the gamification of retail trading.
GameStop is still struggling to pivot to online gaming away from brick-and-mortar video game purchases, as investors trust that CEO Ryan Cohen will eventually reinvent the company.
—CNBC’s Katrina Bishop contributed to this report.
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2024-06-03 14:25:18
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