Yahoo Finance ‘Roaring Kitty’ Appears to Have Exited GameStop Call Options
(Bloomberg) -- Keith Gill — the meme-stock investor known online as “Roaring Kitty” — appears to have exited his entire options position in GameStop Corp. while adding to his heap of shares.
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A screenshot on Gill’s Reddit account on Thursday showed his portfolio no longer included the 120,000 GameStop call options that were set to expire next week and had a strike price of $20. Instead, his portfolio showed a position of more than nine million common shares, up from five million earlier this week.
The screenshot, under Gill’s Reddit handle “DeepF—-ing Value,” appears to show a cash position that dipped to $6.3 million from nearly $30 million on Monday. That implies Gill may have used some of the cash to add to his stake of common shares.
The calls traded roughly 142,000 times on Wednesday and Thursday. By the end of Wednesday’s session, the number of outstanding contracts had already dropped 34% to 111,818.
The $20 calls, which closed at $6.40 Wednesday, traded between $6 and $9.80 Thursday as GameStop shares rose 14% to $29.12. That leaves the options above Gill’s purported average purchase price of $5.6754.
“It looks like he sold 80,000 calls and exercised 40,000,” said Danny Kirsch, head of options at Piper Sandler & Co. “So now he’s long nine million shares based on the screenshots circulating on Reddit.”
The surge in trading came with GameStop scheduled to hold a shareholder meeting on Thursday. However, the meeting was postponed due to technical difficulties with the livestream, according to the company.
News of Gill’s position and his highly-anticipated return to YouTube last week nearly doubled GameStop’s share price to over $45. The company capitalized on the rally by selling $2.14 billion of shares to raise cash. With the options expiration approaching, Wall Street was wondering if Gill would exercise the contracts to receive the shares or just close out the position.
Gill’s cryptic X posts, combined with portfolio checks on his Reddit handle, have sent investors piling into GameStop shares over the past four weeks.
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