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Keith Gill, the financial influencer known as Roaring Kitty, made his first appearance on a YouTube<\/a> live stream in three years on Friday, and he had a bone to pick with his brokerage firm. During his session, Gill called out E-Trade, which reportedly considered<\/a> banning him from trading earlier this week after he revealed positions worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the meme stock GameStop.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen those headlines,\u201d joked Gill, pulling up a webpage showing his portfolio and deleting the E-Trade logo using his browser\u2019s developer tools. \u201cDon\u2019t make me remove it.\u201d<\/p>\n Gill\u2019s nearly one-hour stream came a few weeks after his X<\/a> account posted<\/a> a GameStop-related meme, driving speculation about whether the vaunted internet figure had really returned after years of speculation, and kicking off a rally in GameStop<\/a> prices. Without any verbal confirmation from Gill himself, who would communicate through often absurdist YouTube livestreams during the peak of the meme-stock trading mania in 2021, some wondered whether he had sold his social media accounts or been hacked.<\/p>\n That changed<\/a> on Sunday, after Gill posted his positions using his signature Reddit account, DeepFuckingValue, revealing that he was holding positions in GameStop shares and call options that, at their peak, had him worth<\/a> over half a billion dollars. After market close on Thursday, he posted a new screenshot of his positions and added a live stream scheduled for Friday afternoon to his YouTube channel\u2014his first since the pandemic era.<\/p>\n Hundreds of thousands of people piled into the stream on Friday, with the sidebar chat flying with new comments. After a 20-minute wait, a sizzle reel of cat clips aired, followed by a long scroll of financial disclosure text. Roaring Kitty was back. <\/p>\n Internet culture around meme stocks has receded from the boom days of the pandemic, with stimulus checks long spent and the economy in a precarious state. But Gill\u2019s return has breathed new life into the strange nooks of social media platforms like Discord, Reddit, and YouTube, where amateur investors trade memes and financial advice, often with the spirit of sticking it to institutional traders like large hedge funds.<\/p>\n During Friday\u2019s livestream, Gill claimed that he was not working with anybody on his new, massive position, with some skeptics accusing him of partnering with GameStop or hedge funds. \u201cWhat weirdo spends their free time working on memes\u2014is someone else doing that?\u201d Gill said. \u201cThis is me, I\u2019m the one active on my accounts.\u201d <\/p>\n During his often rambling one-man show, in which Gill doubled down on his support for GameStop due to his belief in its CEO Ryan Cohen, interest seemed to wane among his audience\u2014and other investors. Despite the stock halting in trading because of volatility, its price still slumped, in part impacted<\/a> by the company\u2019s early reporting of its quarterly results on Friday. At the time of publication, shares are trading around $28 after reaching a high of nearly $50 this morning.<\/p>\n While Gill may not yet be a millionaire, he still has reason to celebrate\u2014his call options have a strike price of $20, meaning he is still \u201cin the money.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nIn the money<\/h2>\n
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