The meme stock influencer Kieth Gill, better known online as Roaring Kitty or DeepFucking Value, opined on YouTube—carefully—on Friday about GameStop’s future as a company. It was his first livestream since 2021.
“Do I have to be careful about what I saw here?” the influencer asked, while displaying a background of GameStop’s stock price on Yahoo Finance. “I wanted to remind people that I’m the one active on my accounts, of course.”
The announcement of his livestream a day before had caused the firm’s share price to spike 47% over the course of the trading day to $46.55, pushing higher during overnight trading. But the stock had buckled over 30% from its closing price to below $32 before Gill’s remarks.
As Gill’s livestream was scheduled to begin, over 320,000 viewers awaited the influencer on YouTube. An endless stream of messages cascaded across his channel’s chat box, often presented in all-caps styling or accompanied by gorilla, rocket, diamond emojis.
I’m telling my kids this was Warren Buffett pic.twitter.com/w5eTCXZib9
— LilMoonLambo (@LilMoonLambo) June 7, 2024
Some viewers in the run-up to Gill’s appearance beckoned other users to “HODL” their positions in the firm. Others wondered whether Gill had sold his shares, or if he was okay, as the minutes ticked past noon—well after the livestream was scheduled to begin.
“I kind of forget how to do this,” the influencer said as he began his livestream, appearing to wear bandages along with a sling over his right arm. “Oh shit, I’m alive—kinda,” he said, later telling viewers that the bandages and splint were for comedic purposes.
“It is what it is. What am I going to do?” he said of GameStop’s lower stock price on Friday. “You post a couple memes, you post a couple of screenshots, and everyone loses their mind.”
Gill said people should pay attention to GameStop’s business model, saying the retailer is in a “transformation stage” and moving away from its legacy business model of selling games and video game consoles in-store. Gill added that he believes in the firm’s management team.
“He seems to be taking the right approach, given this unique situation,” Gill said of GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, who took over last September. “Let’s see where it goes from here.”
Before Gill spoke, the stream displayed a raft of disclosures, of which one sentence said, “You should not treat any opinion expressed on this YouTube channel as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy.”
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gill’s recent trading and social media behavior is subject to investigation from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Massachusetts’ securities regulator.
Before Gill had the chance to dawn his virtual stage, GameStop itself had news to break. The company disclosed on Friday that its first-quarter earnings were rough, and that the video game retailer’s net sales had fallen 29% to $881.8 million from $1.237 billion a year prior.
The firm’s financials were a letdown compared to Wall Street estimates. Nonetheless, GameStop announced alongside the performance that the firm would sell 75 million shares in the company after raising $900 million through the sale of 45 million shares in May.
Gill, who became the de facto face of retail-led movement to bet big against Wall Street short sellers through GameStop in 2021, had reignited interest in GameStop through his online return. Appearing on Twitter (aka X) first, he later began posting again on Reddit.
Within the Reddit community Superstonk, Gill’s purported positions had already garnered immense interest. Holding a mix of GameStop shares and call options earlier this month, his latest “YOLO update” showed paper gains of over $382 million.
Around 30 minutes into Gill’s livestream, the channel had garnered over 700,000 viewers. As the price of GameStop fell, he flashed his positions on E*Trade to viewers, which had decreased in value by around $235 million.
Even amid such unrealized losses, he kept a jovial attitude for more than half a million live observers.
“Do I have a lawyer in the room?” Gill read from a message posted in the livestream’s chat. “No, but maybe I should,” he responded.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
