sony pictures
Shares of GameStop and AMC Entertainment soared by 80% and nearly 50% on Monday, respectively, thanks to Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, a trader and Reddit celebrity who has sparked the so-called meme stock revolution on Wall Street since early 2021. It skyrocketed. I posted on X (old Twitter) for the first time in about 3 years.
Gill, a former marketing executive for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, received the big screen treatment in 2016. dumb money, where he was played by Paul Dano. The investment advisor, who was working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, researched video game retailer GameStop and identified solid fundamentals that were not reflected in the stock price and that he believed were overlooked by the public. . In fact, large companies were shorting their stocks, betting that their stock prices would fall.
The film, directed by Craig Gillespie and released in September 2023, is based on Ben Mezrich's book The Anti-Social Network.
Gill has amassed a strong online following in the Reddit chatroom WallStreetBets and weekly livestreams on YouTube, where he openly shares his research and his stock positions. He called Roaring Kitty “a way to find stocks and jump on investment opportunities.”
After he started advocating for GameStop, his fans frequently used the investment app Robinhood and encouraged each other on social platforms not to buy or sell. This pushed GameStop into the stratosphere and squeezed shorts as well, forcing them to scramble to cover their positions. He is credited with sparking the market's first exhilarating democratic moment, thwarting the SEC, regulators, and Congress, which held a series of public hearings.
The enthusiasm of individual investors spread to other stocks, especially the theater chain AMC Entertainment, which was saved from bankruptcy due to its soaring stock price. The meme stock boom then subsided as people returned to offices and day trading became less common.
What now?
Last night, Gill's @TheRoaringKitty account posted a cartoon (below) of what appears to be a stock trader bent over and about to get to work, followed by a series of short videos.
He did not mention specific stocks.