Who is Keith Gill, the “Roaring Kitty” pumping up GameStop shares?

GameStop recently reprized the stock frenzy that gripped the video game retailer in 2021, when the company’s share soared as much as 2,000%. Then, as now, the man who ran the original “meme stock” is Keith Gill, an amateur trader whose power to move markets stems from his popularity on social media.

Read on to learn more about Gill.

Who is Keith Gill?

Keith Patrick Gill is a financial analyst turned social media influencer who has gained a large audience among retail investors. Known on YouTube as “Roaring Kitty” and as “DeepF—Value” on Reddit, he recently reignited investor interest in GameStop, a money-losing video game chain, with a cryptic X post that some interpreted as a symbol of his return to the world of investments after a three-year hiatus.

The post, a image of a sketched man leaning forward in a chair, was followed by a series of other posts featuring comeback-themed songs and film clips. That was enough to send GameStop shares soaring from $22.91 per share in late May to $32.80 on Monday.

Gill’s ability to influence GameStop shares may have grown so much that E*Trade is considering banning him from the trading platform, according to to the Wall Street Journal.

Born in Massachusetts in 1986, Gill grew up in Brockton with two brothers, according to a biography posted on the website of Stonehill College, his alma mater. He was a standout track and field athlete at Stonehill, where he graduated with a degree in business in 2009.

In 2001 testimony at a Congressional hearing on the meme stock phenomenon, Gill he said he is the first member of his immediate family to earn a college degree. He is married and has a son.

What is Gill’s connection to GameStop?

After working with a startup in New Hampshire, Gill returned to Massachusetts, where he began a career in financial services. He became a chartered financial analyst and a licensed securities broker. Those credentials eventually landed him a job at MassMutual in 2019. He left the company in 2021, Reuters reported.

In 2020, Gill began increasing his presence as an online influencer by, among other things, encouraging people to invest in GameStop, whose shares he began buying the previous year. His preferred social media platforms: Reddit and YouTube discussion forums, where he posted videos about his views on financial markets and undervalued stocks. Notably as Roaring Kitty, Gill was posting videos at a time when Americans were stuck at home during the pandemic, prompting some to try investing.

“I believed the company was dramatically undervalued by the market,” Gill said in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee in 2021. “The prevailing analysis of GameStop’s imminent destruction was simply wrong.”

Sure, Gill made a lot of money after promoting the purchase of GameStop shares, but he also lost a lot. In 2021, for example, Gill revealed that he had lost $13 million in a single day of its investments in the games retailer. Gill’s move with GameStop ended up becoming a pivotal storyline in the 2023 film “Dumb Money,” where Gill is played by actor Paul Dano.

What’s the craze about meme stocks?

GameStop was one of several struggling companies, including movie theater chain AMC, Bed Bath & Beyond and Blackberry, that retail investors who gathered on the Reddit forum Wallstreetbets embraced during the pandemic. It was these investors who eventually put a label on these companies – “meme stocks” – while the movement’s catchphrase was “to the moon”.

In the early days of the meme stock craze, a stated goal of at least some investors was to thwart hedge funds and other institutional investors who had bet against players like GameStop and AMC.

But Gill denied being motivated by a desire to punish Wall Street.

“I knew from public reports that a well-known investor, Michael Burry, was interested in GameStop. Because I thought the stock was undervalued, I purchased call options on June 7, 2019. I increased my position throughout much of 2019 and 2020, because as I continued to analyze the company and its prospects, I became increasingly confident of that the share price was in fact dramatically undervalued.”

How is GameStop doing as a company?

In recent years, GameStop has suffered declining sales amid an industry-wide shift to video game streaming and digital downloads. Before reporting a profit in the most recent quarter, the company had recorded seven consecutive quarterly losses.

But with the help of meme stock investors, the company in March 2023 made its first profit in two years. Before that, it had recorded seven consecutive quarterly losses. The cost-cutting measures also helped the retailer save money and gave it more time to find new ways to drive growth, analysts said at the time. In the long term, however, GameStop still faces significant challenges as the gaming industry changes.

In March, the company reported revenue of $5.2 billion for fiscal 2023, down from $5.9 billion the previous year. GameStop said in a regulation archiving last month, it sold a new batch of 45 million company shares, an amount that will generate around US$933.4 million in new capital. As of February, GameStop had 4,169 locations, of which 2,915 are in the US. GameStop Named Chewy Founder Ryan Cohen as its new CEO last fall.