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‘Roaring Kitty’ forgoes fast GameStop choices payday within the tens of millions, raises stake

'Roaring Kitty' Keith Gill defends GameStop posts, says he is as bullish as ever on the stock

Keith Gill, the favorite of the Reddit trading people and the man who inspired the epic GameStop Short Squeeze, just doubled his bet on the video game dealer and foregoing a quick million dollar win to increase his stake.

The investor, who offers DeepF —— Value on Reddit and Roaring Kitty on YouTube, exercised his 500 GameStop call option contracts as they expired on Friday, giving him 50,000 more shares at an exercise price of only 12 USD. If he had sold the options at Friday’s price, he could have made more than $ 7 million on the bet.

In addition to exercising these options contracts, Gill bought 50,000 more GameStop shares and increased his total investment to 200,000 shares valued at more than $ 30 million.

While he’s been giving up the quick payday on this options trading, his long investment is now even wilder profitable at its average cost of $ 55.17, according to Gill’s latest update on the Reddit r / WallStreetBets forum on Friday. GameStop closed at $ 154.69 on Friday, bringing it to a profit of nearly $ 20 million. (The post hasn’t been independently verified by CNBC so we’ll assume it’s his actual account.)

Gill attracted an army of day traders who piled into the stationary video game and call options, propelling stocks up 400% in a single week in January. GameStop is up 720% over the year.

Shares rose slightly after close of business with some investors, perhaps encouraging Gill to exercise his call options to get even longer.

The investor was a former Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance marketer. Through YouTube videos and Reddit posts, Gill encouraged a group of retailers to drive out hedge fund short selling on GameStop.

The action got so wild at one point that brokers, including Robinhood, had to restrict trading in stocks as it blew up their clearinghouse margin. The mania also led to a series of Congressional hearings where Gill discussed broker practices and retail gamifying.

Gill owned 10,000 shares of GameStop at the end of 2020 and increased his stake to 50,000 shares in January and 100,000 shares in mid-February. Judging by the updates he posted on Reddit, he has not sold his GameStop stakes in the incredibly short period of time or in the period that followed.

The GameStop story is far from over. In addition to reviewing the retail saga, the company is itself in the midst of a transformation and hopes to capitalize on the massive price rally.

GameStop announced a $ 1 billion stock sale in early April to accelerate the transition to e-commerce led by activist investor and board member Ryan Cohen, co-founder of Chewy. The company also hired former Amazon and Google CEO Jenna Owens as its new chief operating officer.

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GameStop dealer will inform Congress his advocacy as Roaring Kitty wasn’t for his personal revenue.

GameStop trader will tell Congress his advocacy as Roaring Kitty wasn’t for his own profit.

Keith Gill, the former director of wellness education at MassMutual, who campaigned for GameStop stock in his spare time, is ready to tell a House committee on Thursday that he has never offered any investment advice for a fee and “has no one to buy or sell the stock has prompted for my own benefit. “

The statement made no mention of Mr. Gill being a registered broker and licensed financial analyst while posting online through GameStop under the pseudonym Roaring Kitty and another pseudonym that contained a vulgarity.

In the five-page statement, Gill described himself as a true believer in the fate of GameStop, a video game retailer, and said his online posts about the company had nothing to do with his work at MassMutual. He portrayed itself as a one-person company struggling with wealthy hedge funds, some of which were short selling GameStop stock and betting on its collapse.

“The idea that I used social media to promote GameStop shares to ignorant investors is absurd,” said Gill in a statement his attorney gave to the House Committee on Financial Services prior to the hearing on speculative and aggressive trading Thursday had submitted month in shares of GameStop. “It was very clear to me that my channel was for educational purposes only and that my aggressive investment style probably wasn’t appropriate for most of the people who check out the channel.”

He said he shared his investment ideas online because he “had reached a level where I thought public sharing could help others”.

Mr Gill described himself as the average man on a modest income and practically unemployed for two years before joining MassMutual in April 2019. The statement went beyond how much money he made trading GameStop stock – though he said so, his family once said “we were millionaires”. Nor did he mention that the Massachusetts securities regulators are investigating whether his social media posts violated securities industry rules and regulations.

On Tuesday, Mr Gill and his former employer were named as defendants in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that he misled retail investors who bought GameStop shares during their rally of 1,700 percent shares in order to incur losses when the stock quickly returned most of its gains. The lawsuit alleges that MassMutual and its brokerage arm failed to properly supervise Mr. Gill, who was an employee until a few weeks ago.

Mr Gill’s attorney, William Taylor, declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for MassMutual said the company is looking into the matter with Mr. Gill.

Mr Gill is one of half a dozen witnesses due to testify at the hearing, which will focus on the impact of short selling, social media and hedge funds on retail investors and market speculation.

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World News

‘Roaring Kitty’ Keith Gill defends GameStop posts, says he’s as bullish as ever on the inventory

'Roaring Kitty' Keith Gill defends GameStop posts, says he is as bullish as ever on the stock

Reddit and YouTube’s trading star known as “Roaring Kitty” defended his social media posts that led to a mania in GameStop stocks last month.

The trader, whose real name is Keith Gill, will testify before the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services on Thursday. Aside from defending his actions, Gill used his testimony to re-establish why he is still optimistic about GameStop.

“GameStop’s stock price may have improved a bit over the past month, but I’m more optimistic than ever about a possible turnaround. In short, I like the stock,” said Gill in the comments. “I believed – and continue to believe – that GameStop had the potential to reinvent itself as the ultimate destination for gamers in the thriving $ 200 billion gaming industry.”

Through YouTube videos and Reddit posts, Gill – who offers DeepF —— Value on Reddit and Roaring Kitty on YouTube – attracted an army of day traders who cheered each other and plunged into video-only stock and call -Options.

GameStop’s share price rose to $ 483 per share before falling more than 90% to currently around $ 46 per share.

“I felt the company was dramatically undervalued by the market. The prevailing analysis of the impending fate of GameStop was just wrong,” he said in the statement. “My investment skills had reached a level where I felt that public sharing could help others.”

In his testimonial, Gil said he started buying GameStop stock in 2019 when the share price fell on disappointing profits. Gill also liked that famous investor Michael Burry was optimistic about GameStop.

“Thinking the stock was undervalued, I bought call options on June 7, 2019. I increased my position for much of 2019 and 2020 as I became increasingly confident as I continued to analyze the company and its three perspectives. that the stock’s price has indeed been dramatically undervalued, “the testimony reads.

He said the market underestimated GameStop’s growth prospects and overestimated the likelihood that the video game company would go bankrupt. Gill believes GameStop can expand its digital capabilities and capitalize on its 60 million loyal members, the testimony reads.

The WallStreetBets star went on to say that social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and WallStreetBets on Reddit improve the playing field for individual investors as they work together to develop investment ideas.

“I was very clear that my channel was for educational purposes only and that my aggressive investment style was likely not appropriate for most of the people who visit the channel,” said Gill. “Whether other individual investors bought the stock was irrelevant to my thesis – my focus was on the fundamentals of the business.”

Gill’s last post on Reddit said he made $ 7.8 million from GameStop. A class action lawsuit was filed against Gill in federal court in Massachusetts on Wednesday alleging he was an inexperienced trader despite being a licensed professional.

While Gill worked as a marketing and financial education clerk at MassMutual, he said he never sold stocks for the company and was not a financial advisor. MassMutual was named as a defendant in the lawsuit. “We are looking into the matter and have no comment,” said Paula Tremblay, a spokeswoman for MassMutual.

“My investment in GameStop and my social media posts have been entirely my own,” said Gill. “I have not asked anyone to buy or sell the stock for my own benefit. I did not belong to any group that tried to create movement in the stock price. I never had a financial relationship with a hedge fund. I had no information about GameStop except which was public. I didn’t know any people within the company and I never spoke to an insider. “

Gill is due to testify in front of Congress on the GameStop trade controversy at 12 p.m. ET Thursday.

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