Stock in GameStop (GME) dropped over 27 percent Friday during meme-stock investor Keith Gill’s 50-minute YouTube livestream discussing his positions in the stock.
The stock, which rallied Thursday after Gill (known online as Roaring Kitty) announced his plan to host livestream about GME, opened Friday at $37.37 and quickly shot up to $47.90, according to Yahoo Finance.
The stock was sitting at $37.88 by the time Gill’s livestream was scheduled to start at noon. By the time he ended, around 1:10 p.m EST, the stock was down to $27.65, according to Google, good for a 27 percent decrease.
Gill, while spending most of the livestream joking around and drinking beer, did affirm his commitment to the stock, claiming he took large positions in GME because of his belief in the company’s CEO, Ryan Cohen. He also said he believes GameStop’s business model is less about the “legacy business” of selling games and more about a future “transformation stage.”
“This transformation part … it becomes a bet on the management. In particular, of course, Ryan. Fucking. Cohen,” Gill said.
#CNBC is livestreaming @TheRoaringKitty livestream
What a time to be alive $GME $AMC pic.twitter.com/fGelBZGhxh
— PeloSwing🎯👸🏻 (@PeloSwing) June 7, 2024
Gill announced a massive position of nearly $116 million in GME on Sunday, causing the stock price to rise over 72 percent at the time. He also revealed that he had purchased nearly $66 million worth of call options. The stock’s Friday plummet cost Gill over $230 million on paper. (RELATED: Hedge Fund That Bet Against GameStop Is Shutting Down)
Gill, who led a “retail revolution” of small-time traders buying stocks institutional investors had bet against during the COVID-19 pandemic, had gone largely silent on social media platforms in the wake of his virtual testimony to Congress in Feb. 2021. Then, in May, he re-emerged from a nearly three-year hiatus with a flurry of meme tweets, rocketing the GME share price up over 110 percent, while also boosting a series of other meme stocks like movie theater chain AMC.
During Gill’s Friday livestream, the New York Stock Exchange issued 10 separate LULD pauses, or “halts,” holding the trading of the stock for five minutes in each instance.
