How Far Can Roaring Kitty’s Return Really Carry GameStop?

Meme stock fever is back, with GameStop, AMC, and other companies from the 2021 hype cycle seeing surging share prices in recent days amid the apparent return of Roaring Kitty, a key figure behind the 2021 craze. But with the trader and influencer primarily posting rousing movie clips so far, how long will the hype sustain a meme stock revival?

Roaring Kitty is the alias of Keith Gill, a financial advisor turned content creator and stock trader who commanded attention when he made enthusiastic bets on the price of GameStop shares in early 2021. The video game retailer’s share price sank over the previous few years as the firm struggled to adapt to industry changes.

His livestreams and bullish Reddit posts under the name DeepFuckingValue helped inspire many other everyday traders to buy into GME, pushing the price from around $5 to a high of nearly $500 per share. A resulting short squeeze led to billions of dollars’ worth of losses for firms that were betting against GameStop’s revival, and caused broader market chaos.

Roaring Kitty disappeared from social media in June 2021, months after testifying before Congress on the matter. But his Sunday tweet, showing a man holding a controller and snapping to attention, helped rile up a revival in trading for GameStop, movie theater chain AMC, and other meme stocks, along with meme cryptocurrencies as well.

At a closing price of $48.75, GME shares are up nearly 203% over the past five days, while AMC is up 117% during the same span to $6.85. That’s huge. But both stocks lost considerable ground over the course of Tuesday’s trading, amid questions of whether Roaring Kitty plans to do more than just tweet out video clips.

GME opened the day just below $65 per share before dipping nearly 25% by the close, while AMC had a sharper 42% dip from the $11.88 start to the close.

Both stocks are ticking up after hours, however, and we saw a sizable jump from the end of business on Monday to the markets opening on Tuesday. Could it repeat again? Anything’s possible with meme stocks, just like meme coins. They’re famously volatile and often based on social media sentiment.

But it’s unclear how much Roaring Kitty plans to increase his online presence—and whatever his plans, can it really drive another large-scale meme stock revival? Roaring Kitty has yet to resume his livestreams and Reddit bull-posting from 2021; so far, it’s just been a steady stream of tweets featuring meme-ified movie and music video clips.

That’s been enough to pump GameStop and AMC shares, along with various meme coins. But if that’s all we get from Roaring Kitty, will this revival ultimately be more than a blip on the radar—a short-lived blast of nostalgia? Traders eagerly await the answer.

Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.