GameStop Shares Surge After ‘Roaring Kitty’ Re-emerges

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GameStop’s share price skyrocketed on Monday after the man who became the face of “meme stock” mania in 2021 with his enthusiastic promotion of the struggling video game retailer emerged from a three-year hiatus. On Sunday evening, Keith Gill, the trader known on some social media platforms as Roaring Kitty, posted an illustration of a person holding a video game controller while leaning forward on a chair on X. On no other news, GameStop’s stock more than doubled in early trading, prompting several temporary volatility-related halts by the New York Stock Exchange. The shares were up about 74 percent at the close, adding billions in market value in a matter of hours. During the frenzy, Mr. Gill posted a series of cryptic clips from movies, television shows and music videos, including the film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the television series “Game of Thrones” and the song “Stand Up” by Ludacris. But even after Monday’s surge, GameStop’s stock remained well below the heights it reached in 2021. Mr. Gill gained a cult following among day traders during the coronavirus pandemic with lively and irreverent videos on YouTube and posts on Reddit arguing that GameStop was undervalued. In 2021, that stock and others, like AMC Entertainment, soared in value as armies of small investors piled in, boosting one another in online forums that were heavy on memes and jokes and light on discussion of traditional financial fundamentals.