Even as GameStop prices collapsed, retail investors on the Reddit social media platform urged each other to hold the line and stick with their shares to hold the bag in a game of high-stakes chicken against short sellers.
Retail investors have inflicted multi-billion dollar losses on a few hedge funds, and now they’re feeling their own pain.
Keith Gill, a Redditor on the WallStreet Bets forum who goes by the name “DeepF***ingValue” helped trigger last week’s insane rally in video-game retailer GameStop’s stock prices. He has been sharing regular updates on his GameStop investment and says he lost more than $13 million in a single day as the shares crashed.
Gill has 50,000 shares in GameStop plus 500 call options. The value of his stake dropped by $13.6 million on Tuesday as GameStop’s share price fell 60 percent, adding to a $5.2 million loss on Monday, according to screenshots of his brokerage account that he posted on Reddit, New York Post reported.
“We are in this together,” a Reddit trader named 4RedditDeals posted on Wednesday. “We all felt the pain of today. If you’re reading this, you’re not alone.”
Gill has become an internet celebrity since he and his fellow WallStreetBets users executed one of the hugest short squeezes in history, driving up GameStop’s price up to as much as $483 last week. GameStop was trading at $17.25 on Monday, Jan. 4. Its 52-week low is $2.57.
Even with his losses, Gill said that he racked up a $7.6 million gain on his GameStop bet, which reportedly began with a $53,000 investment in June 2019. He doesn’t appear to have sold any shares or options since the stock fell this week, according to the New York Post.
“A HERO HOLDS!! IF DFV CAN HOLD WE CAN HOLD!,” Reddit trader davecmartin posted. “he lost more in one day than most will make in their entire lives”, Redditor everybodzzz said.
“I thought I was the only one still hanging on,” jcornflakes posted on Reddit Wednesday. “Down 70%. I felt very alone today. Thank you for still being here with me. I feel like we’re the last ones playing the violin on the titanic”.
Sellers clearly had the upper hand, the Evening Standard reported.
Redditors have been credited with helping push up the price of silver, which also soared, then fell. Many Redditors were angry that the rise in silver was being attributed to them, saying it was actually big Wall Street investors pretending to be retail investors who did that.
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“Sharp slumps for Reddit’s short squeeze portfolio may have reassured investors that the game’s rules are reasserting themselves,” Spreadex analyst Connor Campbell told Evening Standard.
Known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube, Gill discussed in a 2020 video how aggressively Wall Street investors had bet against GameStop. Gill has 334,000 YouTube subscribers, according to CNBC. Wall Street short-sellers set off an online revolution that turned financial markets upside down and caught the attention of regulators, New York Post reported.
“I didn’t expect this,” Gill, 34, told the Wall Street Journal. “This story is so much bigger than me.”
