By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – GameStop (NYSE:GME) shares surged by 8% Monday following a Bloomberg report that said the man known as "Roaring Kitty" on social media, whose online posts helped spark January's trading frenzy in shares of the video game retailer, exercised call options to acquire 50,000 more of them at a strike price of $12.
Compared with their 52-week low, the stock has risen nearly 128%.
Keith Gill, otherwise known as "Roaring Kitty," was a key figure in the so-called "Reddit rally," which saw shares of GameStop surge 400% in a week before crashing back to pre-surge levels.
His total investment in GameStop is now worth more than $30 million, giving him a profit of nearly $20 million, Bloomberg said. Gill has 200,000 shares in the company, the report said.
After Gill’s first disclosures in January, the company became a favorite of the Reddit gang, WallStreetBets, which then drove the prices higher and higher, resulting in a short-squeeze and scarring some of the biggies who were short the stock.
Since then, the stock has been at the heart of many a battle between the Reddit followers and some of the Wall Street giants, with fundamentals relegated to the backseat.
In another development related and one that points to the churn taking place there as it attempts to pivot to an online-focused avatar, the company said its CEO George Sherman would leave at the end of July.
Less than two weeks ago, the company announced the nomination of Chewy (NYSE:CHWY) founder Ryan Cohen as chairman of the board. Cohen is also a major investor in the floundering video game retailer and the man driving the digital transformation.