Inside Roaring Kitty's 3 insane weeks of hyperactive social media posting that sparked a feeding frenzy for GameStop stocks (2024)

• Keith Gill, better known as Roaring Kitty, kickstarted the meme stock movement back in 2021.
• But the 37-year-old trader vanished from the public eye abruptly three years ago.
• That was, until last month, when his sudden reemergence sent GameStop shares into a frenzy.

Memes, video clips, and Reddit posts.

That's all it took for trader Keith Gill, known as Roaring Kitty, to send GameStop share prices soaring and plunging in the past few weeks.

Gill, 37, first grabbed headlines in 2021 when his evangelical zeal for GameStop shares triggered a short squeeze. The former CFA charter holder even had to testify to Congress in February 2021 for his role in the meme stock saga.

But Gill vanished from the public eye just months later when he posted his last YouTube video in April 2021.

That was until last month, when his sudden reemergence on X, formerly Twitter, sent GameStop share prices on a roller coaster ride.

Here's how Gill's bizarre social media antics have upended the stock market over the years.

"I like the stock"

Gill is widely credited for sparking the meme stock craze three years ago.

The former MassMutual financial analyst started posting his bets and analyses on GameStop on Reddit's WallStreetBets forum under the username "Deepf*ckingValue" in 2019.

His online activity would later expand to YouTube, where he built an online following with his "Roaring Kitty" persona. Gill uploaded 84 videos and livestreams on his YouTube channel from July 2020 to April 2021 and has over 600,000 subscribers as of press time.

It is unclear how much money Gill made from his GameStop play.

Gill initially invested $53,000 of his life savings into GameStop in 2019. At the time, the video game retailer's stock was hovering around $5 per share. The share price would eventually peak at $483 in January 2021.

Gill's unabashed support for GameStop shares turned him into a hero among Reddit users, who saw him as a modern-day David going up against the Goliath-like hedge funds shorting the stock.

In February 2021, Gill testified before the House Financial Services Committee about the meme stock saga. In his testimony, Gill defended his social media activity and said he used only publicly available information to trade.

"The idea that I use social media to promote GameStop stock to unwitting investors and influence the market is preposterous," Gill said. "My posts did not cause the movement of billions of dollars into GameStop shares."

"As for me, I like the stock. I'm as bullish as I've ever been at a potential turnaround for GameStop, and I remain invested in the company," Gill concluded.

Roaring Kitty is back

Gill would retreat from public life just months after he testified to Congress. Besides ceasing his online activity, he left his job at MassMutual, per Reuters.

Gill, however, broke his three-year-long silence on social media last month when he posted a sketch of a man leaning forward in his chair on X.

The X post, published on May 12, caused GameStop share prices to skyrocket to 82% the following day.

Interestingly, Gill's post didn't contain a direct call for his followers to buy GameStop shares, though the man in the sketch does seem to be clutching what looks like a game controller.

Nonetheless, the post's cryptic message was enough to galvanize Gill's fans and supporters, who were quick to focus on his favorite stock.

"Roaringkitty is back," the WallStreetBets subreddit said in an X post on May 12.

Memes, clips, and Reddit posts

Since coming back online, Gill has been a prolific user of X, sometimes making multiple posts daily. The trader's posts have been coming in at a frenetic pace and seem to lack much cohesion.

For instance, Gill has posted edited clips from movies like the Wachowskis' "The Matrix" and Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill."

On top of clips, Gill has riffed on memes — like on May 17, when he superimposed a tired-looking Ben Affleck taking a smoke in front of a GameStop store.

Aside from drawing in retail investors, Gill's antics caught the attention of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The 70-year-old revealed on May 21 that he'd bought $24,000 worth of GameStop stock to support the meme stock movement.

"We need a free and fair market. Let's punish predatory short selling to the moon," Kennedy wrote in his X post. "By the way, I ride with you and I'm not leaving."

But Gill wasn't done just yet. On June 2, he returned to Reddit where he appeared to disclose a $116 million GameStop position.

He later made a follow-up post, saying that his stake had grown to $140 million. He then posted a picture of a Uno reverse card on X on the same day.

Gill's recent uptick in social media activity appears to have piqued the interest of regulators and financial institutions, who may be concerned about possible market manipulation.

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gill could get barred from Morgan Stanley's electronic trading platform, E*Trade.

A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts securities division told The Journal that they were also investigating Gill's activities.

Representatives for Gill and GameStop didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.