(Bloomberg) — GameStop Corp. shares are set to crash when trading opens on Monday after a Reddit account that helped power 2021’s meme-stock boom posted a position in the company’s shares worth $116 million.
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A screenshot posted by Keith Gill, known on Reddit as DeepF-Value, on June 2 showed the purchase of 5 million shares at $21.27 apiece. It was the account’s first post in three years. The screenshot also included, but was not able to be viewed, 120,000 call options worth $65.7 million expiring on June 21, which would allow Gill to buy the stock at $20 apiece.
The gaming retailer’s shares surged more than 19 percent to $27.58 in trading Sunday on Robinhood, which allows 24-hour trading of some shares, the highest price the trading platform allows.
On social media platform X, Gill also posted an image of a reverse UNO card, which players use in the game to change the direction of cards they receive, under her account handle “Roaring Kitty.” The post was viewed more than 4.5 million times in about five hours after it was published at around 8pm New York time on Sunday.
“The surge in interest in meme stocks at a time when major U.S. indexes are struggling to reach new highs is a sign of excessive exuberance and likely a bad omen given growing market headwinds,” said Robert Lee, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Gill has been largely silent on social media since rallying day traders on Reddit in 2021 to buy the company’s shares to counter short sellers, claiming at the time that the company was ready to “reinvent itself” as a top-tier gaming hub.
In mid-May, it returned to X with the image of video gamers leaning in, raising expectations that it would aggressively return to the market.
GameStop shares have fallen more than 50% since a two-day surge sparked by the post in mid-May. The company’s shares famously soared more than 2,000% in early 2021, propelling the meme-stock craze into the broader public consciousness.
In his final Reddit post on April 16, 2021, Gill posted a screenshot showing he held 200,000 shares of GameStop stock at the time, worth approximately $30.9 million.
Gill posted his latest post on Reddit’s r/Superstonk subforum, which is a “forum for theoretical discussion regarding GameStop stock.”
(Updated to add analyst comment in fifth paragraph.)
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