Keith Gill, the Redditor known as “DeepF – kingValue,” who led an army of average Joes to increase the cost of GameStop shares, is all you would expect it to be.
He is 34 years old, wears an orange samurai tiara on his hair to his shoulders, loves cat shirts and operates a YouTube channel from the basement of Boston behind a desk full of used cups, various technological equipment, sports hats and Uno cards.
But in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the man who goes by “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube insisted that he was just a normal guy, even though he was a nerd who had just become rich.
“I didn’t expect it,” Gill, a father of two and the new king of the Reddit page WallStreetBets, told WSJ in an interview posted Friday.
“This story is much bigger than me.”
Gill, who until recently had a day job for a life insurance company, is the force that fueled the roller coaster GameStop that pushed billions of dollars into the red and inflated a video game company. which destroyed, destined for the infamy of Blockbuster, far beyond real 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 been an advocate of unrequited actions. He first invested $ 53,000 in GameStop in June 2019, when stocks hovered around $ 5 per share, a move people at the time said was crazy when the video game company faced the emergence of online transmission.
But he stood firm, and others got on board, pushing stocks higher and higher and launching one of the most dramatic short straits in recent history, which actually worked. On Wednesday, Gill posted a screenshot of his brokerage account showing $ 20 million in daily earnings on GameStop shares.
“Your firm hand convinced many of us not only to buy, but to hold on. Your example has literally changed the lives of thousands of ordinary people. Seriously, thank you. You deserve every penny, “a Reddit fan, reality_czech, replied.
Jon Hagedorn, one of Gill’s many fans on the message board website, told WSJ that the amateur investor “will become the greatest legend in WallStreetBets history.”
“He’s the original OG,” he told the dam.
Gill insists that trading was just a hobby and his plan was not to demolish the establishment or see his life turned upside down overnight, but he welcomes the sudden influx of cash.
“I’ve always wanted to build indoor track equipment or a cottage in Brockton,” the former track star said on his way out of his hometown of Massachusetts.
“And now, it looks like he could actually do it.”