Roaring Kitty is back and so are meme stocks. GameStop and AMC surge like it's 2021

quote:

---

The man at the center of the pandemic meme stock craze appeared online for the first time in three years, sending the prices of the quirky and volatile shares sharply higher Monday.

Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty,” posted an image Sunday on the social platform X of a man sitting forward in his chair, a meme used by gamers when things are getting serious.

He followed that tweet with a YouTube video from years before when he championed the beleaguered company GameStop saying, “That’s all for now cuz I’m out of breath. FYI here’s a quick 4min video I put together to summarize the $GME bull case.”

GameStop in 2021 was a video game retailer that was struggling to survive as consumers switched rapidly from discs to digital downloads. Big Wall Street hedge funds and major investors were betting against it, or shorting its stock, believing that its shares would continue on a drastically downward trend.

Gill and those who agreed with him changed the trajectory of a company that appeared to headed for bankruptcy by buying up thousands of GameStop shares in the face of almost any accepted metrics that told investors that the company was in serious trouble.

---

quote:

---

At Monday's opening bell it appeared that Gill had reignited the phenomenon as shares of GameStop more than doubled. They closed Monday up 74%. It's the biggest intraday trading jump for GameStop since the meme craze of early 2021. Other meme stocks like the theater chain AMC were jolted higher as well.

Trading in GameStop was halted eight times before noon on Monday due to volatility.

---