Did you wake up on a Monday morning thinking today’s the day you joke about losing over $50 million in a matter of hours? If you’re Roaring Kitty, alias Keith Gill, the answer is yes.
After GameStop shares closed 12% lower for the session, the YOLO king of the WallStreetBets community posted a screenshot showing his risky bet on the meme stock suffered another hefty drop in value.
The $17 million he lost on his 5 million shares in the company—according to his Reddit post, where he’s known as DeepF–kingValue—was the least of his concerns. The drop in the underlying asset triggered an even larger swing in the value of his derivatives position, which fell an additional $34.5 million.
There’s a reason why his dated GameStop posts are all titled “YOLO update,” short for You Only Live Once, the credo of meme-stock speculators who emphasize a get-rich-or-die-trying mentality.
That’s because Gill already watched on Friday as the grand total of $300 million went up in smoke before him, right when he was on the cusp of becoming a billionaire on paper.
GameStop foils short squeeze with share issue
His apparent attempt to trigger a massive short squeeze in GameStop and catapult the value of his holdings into the 10-digits was foiled after the company launched a surprise stock offer that flooded the market with as many as 75 million newly issued shares. The news sent the GameStop price tumbling 40% on Friday, leaving it well below the threshold needed by Gill.
— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) June 10, 2024
Fortunately, he seems to take it all with humor. “You were a billionaire,” Gill wrote on Monday in a self-deprecating post seen by over 5 million users on X, formerly Twitter.
It’s unclear what the next move is for the 38-year-old, whose 2021 battle with GameStop short-sellers like hedge fund Melvin Capital was immortalized last year on the silver screen in Dumb Money.
After a three-year-long absence, Gill burst back onto the scene on May 13 with a series of memes on social media, effectively announcing the fight wasn’t over until he said so.
On June 2, he then revealed he had amassed a GameStop position in stock and call options worth over $181 million.