GameStop and AMC shares rose after Roaring Kitty posts for the first time in 3 years

New York
CNN
—

The surprise social media comeback of the trader who helped spark the meme stock craze in 2021 sent GameStop shares skyrocketing on Monday. The increase had nothing to do with the company’s struggling fundamentals — and everything to do with a cartoon of a player that the trader, nicknamed Roaring Kitty, shared on X.

GameStop shares rose 74% on Monday following the account run by Keith Gill A photo shared by X, marking her first participation in three years. Shares rose more than 110% earlier and were halted by volatility several times Monday morning.

Short sellers saw $1 billion in market losses betting on GameStop on Monday, according to data firm S3 Partners. Short sellers aim to make profits on stocks by borrowing shares, selling them, and returning them after purchasing them at a lower price.

Shares of AMC Entertainment, another meme stock, rose 78%. Reddit shares rose nearly 9%. Shares of trading platform Robinhood Markets, which suspended purchases of GameStop, AMC and other meme stocks during the madness of 2021, rose 4%.

The photo posted by Gill shows a man leaning forward in a chair with a video game controller in hand. GameStop had The same cartoon was published in FebruaryBut with a blue arrow and a chair. In Jill’s cartoon, she is red. The meme is interpreted as “When things get serious” According to your meme recognition.

Gill did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

GameStop shares have tripped several circuit breakers — a temporary, mandatory pause in trading to allow investors to cool off a bit. Robinhood denied claims on social media on Monday that it had once again halted purchases of GameStop stock on its platform.

“This is not true. Robinhood has not halted purchases of Gamestop shares,” Anupriya Ghat, a spokeswoman for Robinhood, said in a statement to CNN. . These are market-wide and not Robinhood-specific.

Gill, who goes by “Deepf—-ingvalue” on Reddit, was one of the leading forces on the WallStreetBets subreddit that generated stunning returns in GameStop stock. Traders bid up the retailer’s shares, targeting short sellers.

Retail investors sent other stocks higher in 2021, including AMC Entertainment and Bed Bath & Beyond. They are now known collectively as meme stocks, or stocks of companies that follow a particular cult and which experience wide volatility based on their popularity among communities of traders on social media rather than their fundamentals.

Gill described himself as a casual daytime trader in his testimony during a 2021 congressional hearing on the GameStop mania. He said He didn’t help fuel the GameStop frenzy Instead, he believed the stock represented an attractive opportunity for investors.

“The idea that I used social media to promote GameStop stock to unwitting investors is preposterous,” Gill said in written testimony. “I was very clear that my channel was for educational purposes only. …Whether or not other retail investors bought the stock is irrelevant to my thesis.

Gill also said he first bought GameStop stock, and later call options, in the summer of 2019, when the stock was trading at about $5 per share. He added to his position through the rest of the year and 2020, and testified that he believes “the market remains oblivious to the unique GameStop opportunity.”

But even he didn’t think it would reach the high of $483 a share in 2021.

“At the time I thought it was possible, but very unlikely,” Gill testified.

Jill was a major figure in 2023 movie “Dumb Money” (played by actor Paul Dano), which depicts the events leading up to and during the GameStop short squeeze.

As stocks stabilize after the trading day, levels may change slightly.