(Reuters) – Shares of GameStop jumped 40% in premarket trading on Monday after the return of social media character “Roaring Kitty,” whose online posts had sparked a trading frenzy at the video game retailer in 2021 , on X.com after three years.
Keith Gill, known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and “DeepF***ingValue” on Reddit, was a key figure in the so-called meme stock rally, which saw shares of GameStop jump 400% in during the last week of January 2021. before returning to pre-surge levels the following week.
Gill posted a sketch on Sunday of a man leaning forward in a chair, a popular meme among gamers that indicates things are getting serious. This is his first post on X, previously Twitter, after having been notably absent from social media platforms since mid-2021.
GameStop was trending on investor social media stocktwits.com on Monday, indicating interest from individual investors, while Roaring Kitty and retail trading platform Robinhood were trending on X.com.
Shares of struggling video game retailer GameStop have surged more than 57% so far in May, but still remain far from the 2021 high.
“There have been a few attempts where investors have tried to justify that this is the return of meme stocks, but we haven’t really seen that materialize,” said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital .com.
The meme stock rally in 2021 was sparked by Gill’s posts on Reddit’s Wallstreetbets discussion group about the gains he had made on his investments in the heavily shorted company that sparked renewed interest in GameStop.
The rally extended to heavily shorted stocks, including AMC, as Reddit users banded together to squeeze hedge funds that had bet against GameStop and other companies.
Gill was summoned to testify before the US Congress alongside US hedge fund managers to examine the trading frenzy.
AMC has fallen more than 95% since the end of 2021.
(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Pranav Kashyap; editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
