Keith Gill, the Redditor known as “DeepF – kingValue” who led an army of ordinary Joes to increase GameStop’s inventory costs, is everything you would expect him to be.
He’s 34, wears an orange samurai headband over his shoulder-length hair, loves cat t-shirts, and operates a YouTube channel in a Boston basement behind a table full of used cups, assorted technical equipment, sports caps and Uno cards.
But in a recent interview for the Wall Street Journal, the man who calls “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube insisted that he is just a normal guy, albeit a nerd who just got extremely rich.
“I didn’t expect that,” Gill, father of two and new king of the Reddit WallStreetBets website, told WSJ in an interview published on Friday.
“This story is much bigger than me.”
Gill, who until recently had a day job at a life insurer, is the force that fueled the GameStop roller coaster that threw billions of dollars of hedge funds into the red and inflated a struggling video game company, destined for Blockbuster’s infamy. , far beyond its current value.
Gill, now a pseudo-celebrity who has caught the attention of Congress, the Federal Reserve, and probably even the Securities and Exchange Commission, has long advocated unloved actions. He first invested $ 53,000 in GameStop in June 2019, when the stock hovered around $ 5 – a move that people at the time called crazy as the video game company struggled with the advent of online streaming.
But he held his ground and others embarked, driving stocks higher and higher and unleashing one of the most dramatic sales squeezes in recent history – it really worked. On Wednesday, Gill posted a screenshot of his brokerage account showing a daily gain of $ 20 million in GameStop shares.
“His steady hand convinced many of us to not only buy, but to hold. His example literally changed the lives of thousands of normal people. Really? Thank you. You deserve every penny, ”a Reddit fan, reality_czech, replied to him.
Jon Hagedorn, one of Gill’s many fans on the message board website, told the WSJ that the amateur investor “will be considered the greatest legend in the history of WallStreetBets”.
“He’s the original OG,” he told the outlet.
Gill insists that trading was just a hobby and that his plan was not to bring down the establishment or see his life turned upside down overnight, but he welcomes the sudden flow of money.
“I always wanted to build a covered track or country house in Brockton,” said the former athletics star in his hometown in Massachusetts.
“And now, it looks like I could really do that.”