Almost five years ago, GameStop champion Keith Gill (Roaring Kitty) revealed a $53,000 bet in his favorite video game retailer. This week, Gill’s net worth is over $289 million.
The meme stock leader, known as “DeepF——Value” on Reddit and “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and X, revealed he still holds 5 million GameStop shares and 120,000 call options after a 21% rally, netting $79 million on paper in a single day. Gill, who started his GameStop position with $53,000 in September 2019, encouraged retail traders to squeeze short-selling hedge funds. By April 2021, he had 200,000 common shares. He resurfaced online three years later with significantly larger positions, while GameStop continues to struggle with its shift to e-commerce.
Roaring Kitty wealth. Next steps?
The last screenshot of Gill’s portfolio showed 120,000 call options against GameStop with a strike price of $20 that expires June 21.
Put another way: If the stock closes above $20 that day, Gill could exercise the options at $20 apiece, leaving him owning an additional 12 million shares. A total of 17 million shares would make him the fourth-biggest shareholder in GameStop, coming in behind Vanguard, BlackRock and Ryan Cohen’s RC Ventures, according to FactSet.
The notional value, if exercised, would be $240 million worth of stock bought at $20.
“Unless you have the money to take custody of the stock after exercising the calls, you’re just renting them with the assumption of selling them, or selling stock against them before they expire,” said CC Lagator, co-founder of brokerage Options AI. “The issue on a position of that size is, it would be very apparent to other market participants that those calls or stock versus those calls was being sold, putting a lot of pressure on the stock.”
$1 billion?
If Gill exercises the calls, that would leave him with 17 million shares. At Monday’s close of $28, the stake would be worth $476 million.
At GameStop’s recent peak of $64.83 on May 14, it would be worth $1.1 billion. (His cost to acquire such a stake this way would be $421.4 million.)
Gill could also roll those call options to a further expiration date to buy some time, which means exiting the current position and immediately entering a similar position. However, that could be a costly option.
“The problem with that is he’s going to be wasting money on new option premium each time he does that,” Lagator said.
Shares of GameStop fell 5.4% on Tuesday.
Gill could run into some trouble, though. The Wall Street Journal reported that Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade broker was considering booting him because of the worry that what he was doing could amount to market manipulation.
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