Shares of GameStop Corp. (GME) soared as much as 110% on Monday before paring gains after the company was halted multiple times by “Roaring Kitty,” a man seen as a pioneer of the meme-stock boom during the pandemic, as its shares soared. Posts It will be held online for the first time since 2021.
The stock closed above $30 a share on Monday, up 75%, and has been trending higher, rising about 60% in the past two weeks.
That year, “Roaring Kitty,” identified as Keith Gill, rose to prominence on the WallStreetBets subreddit and on YouTube for his bullish stance on GameStop (GME).
A post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday included a meme of a hunched over video gamer who appeared to be seriously engaged in a game. The post garnered more than 81,000 likes and 9,000 comments. Roaring Kitty’s last post on X was in June 2021.
He was known for posting commentary about why GameStop shares were rising, and eventually testified before Congress about the massive short selling in January 2021 that was sparked by a large number of retail traders.
Short interest in GameStop stands at about 24% of shares outstanding, according to data from S3 Partners.
“Including today’s losses, GME short sellers have lost $1.34 billion as of May, and $952 million for the year,” Igor Dusaniwski, managing director at S3 Partners, told Yahoo Finance on Monday.
Monday’s short selling came on the heels of recent rallies in meme stocks, with movie theater operator AMC (AMC) up 50% during trading hours and Trump Media & Technology (DJT) up 8%.
“Short sellers could see some volatile and bloody trading in these stocks,” Dusaniwski said.
As Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre recently pointed out, the recent surge in meme stocks doesn’t seem like an ominous sign like it has in the past, but rather a sign of a healthy risk appetite in investing.
A screen displaying the GameStop Corp. logo and trading information is displayed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, US, March 29, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDiarmid (REUTERS/Reuters)
Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter. Follow.
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