Meme stock champion Keith Gill, known as “Roaring Kitty” online, seemed to increase his ownership in GameStop’s common stock and appears to be holding more than 9 million shares.
Gill posted a new screenshot of his E-Trade portfolio on Reddit’s Superstonk forum after the bell Thursday, showing that he is now holding 9.001 million GameStop shares and more than $6 million in cash. On June 2, the first day he started disclosing his position in 2024′s meme stock frenzy, his portfolio had 5 million shares as well as 120,000 call options against GameStop.
Call options give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy shares at a specified price by a certain expiration date.
It’s hard to decipher what Gill did exactly to get to this position. He could have dumped all of the 120,000 call contracts and used the proceeds to buy the additional shares, or he could have sold a portion of the massive options position and exercised the rest early.
There was a huge spike in trading volume Wednesday afternoon of GameStop call contracts with a strike price of $20 and an expiration date of June 21, the same ones Gill owned. The phenomenon, along with sliding prices in GameStop shares and call options, led many to believe Gill had started offloading.
Many had speculated that Gill wouldn’t have held onto those calls to expiration. For Gill to exercise all of his calls, he would have needed to have $240 million to take custody of the stock — 12 million shares bought at $20 apiece — way more than he had shown publicly in his E-Trade account.
Gill didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The total value of Gill’s portfolio, including cash, reached more than $268 million as of Thursday evening, up from $210 million on June 2.
GameStop shares surged more than 14% on Thursday.
The video game retailer’s annual shareholder meeting was disrupted by computer problems Thursday, as servers crashed under overwhelming interest in the stream.
GameStop recently raised more than $2 billion in an equity sale as the company took advantage of the revived meme rally. The company said it intends to use the money for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.
