Yahoo Finance Solana Meme Coins, GameStop Stock Rocket as 'Roaring Kitty' Returns on X
A single post by @TheRoaringKitty, the X profile of retail trader Keith Gill, led to rallies in meme coins and GameStop stock (NYSE: GME). Users interpreted the post as a sign to focus on certain stocks.
Gill’s cult following contributed to the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021. GME rose over 44% in GME pre-market trading, while AMC Entertainment Holdings jumped as much as 12%
A single picture on Monday sparked rallies across some cat-themed meme coins and Gamestop stock (NYSE: GME) as market cults heralded the apparent return of TheRoaringKitty, the X profile of retail trader Keith Gill, who made his first post since late 2021.
Gill posted a meme that refers to a period of “locking in,” a colloquial term for a period of intense focus or concentration. Users on X and Reddit largely seemed to consider the image as a sign to lock into trading markets.
— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) May 13, 2024
Stocks related to Gill and other “meme stocks,” surged. GME prices were up as high as 44% in pre-market trading, and surged as high as 100% on market open before trading was halted. Cinema chain AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AMC) was up 12% in pre-market, rising to as much as 30% after open.
An unaffiliated GameStop meme coin on the Solana blockchain surged more than 550%, DEXTools data shows, while an AMC token jumped 1,200%. Some microcap cat-themed meme coins such as kitty (KITTY) rose thousands of percent, while larger tokens popcat (POPCAT) and mog (MOG) rose over 15%. Larger-cap meme coins {{DOGE}} and {{SHIB}} were higher by 5% and 7%, respectively.
Data shows that opportunistic developers issued a slew of tokens referring to Gill, TheRoaringKitty, GameStop, and “stonks” – a meme term for stocks—in the past 24 hours.
Who is Roaring Kitty?
Gill’s analysis of the video game retailer GameStop on Reddit, starting in 2019 and gaining traction during the COVID pandemic, created a viral phenomenon at the time. It was largely cited as a driving factor in the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021 as several small-time traders banded together and purchased options and leveraged shares of the company.
The stock rose from $4 to over $120 in a month and, at its peak, was up thousands of percent from its lifetime low of 64 cents in April 2020.
Gill’s initial $53,000 investment was worth nearly $50 million at its peak, emerging as a rags-to-riches story of a lone trader making a fortune from his bedroom by betting against hedge funds. One of the most prolific losers was Melvin Capital, a fund that lost billions of dollars betting on the decline of meme stocks, among other bets that move against it.
