The pandemic “meme stock” run is the stuff of history books and Hollywood movies these days, and now one of the figures central to that phenomenon has made a grand return. Keith Gill, better known by his online handle Roaring Kitty, posted a meme of a player sitting forward in his chair on X/Twitter, which usually indicates that the poster is going to take the match seriously–and it appears to have had a tangible effect on GameSpot’s stock price.
— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) May 13, 2024
In the day since that announcement, Roaring Kitty has posted a large number of videos to X, mostly depicting hype-up sequences from popular movies and TV shows, such as Troy, Peaky Blinders, and Marvel movies. According to the AP, Gill’s return appears to have triggered a large run on GameStop stock, which surged more than 74% on Monday. As of this writing, the stock price has settled around $50, almost three times its pre-Roaring Kitty return price of around $17. The run also caused sale of the stock to be temporarily halted multiple times on Monday.
Gill is the main character of Dumb Money, a Hollywood film that highly dramatizes the story of the GameStop short squeeze. Though the film received positive reviews from critics, it was not a box-office success, earning roughly $20.7 million against a reported $30 million budget from its theatrical run. The ballooning value of GameStop and other stocks in January 2021 had outsized effects on the financial industry, with trading platforms like Robinhood being hit with class-action lawsuits after the broker prevented its clients from making GME purchases. A US House committee even held a congressional hearing on the phenomenon.
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