By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed

GameStop Options Trade Profits from Roaring Kitty’s Post

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A well-timed trade in GameStop (NYSE:GME)’s options resulted in significant profits on Friday after an account linked to “Roaring Kitty,” a notable stock influencer and advocate for GameStop, made a cryptic post on the social media platform X.

The post, from Keith Gill (“Roaring Kitty”), featured an altered image from the 1999 film “Toy Story 2,” which humorously placed a dog’s face over one of the characters. This was Gill’s first social media update in over two months, and his posts are closely watched by retail traders, often leading to surges in the stocks and options he references.

Following Gill’s post, GameStop shares experienced a rise of as much as 9% on Friday, although they later moderated to a 4% increase at $23.39.

Just prior to Gill’s tweet, a trader purchased approximately 10,000 GameStop Sept. 13 call options, priced at a strike price of $22.5 for about $1.74 million, roughly 18 minutes before the post.

Approximately 20 minutes after the tweet, two segments of these options (5,000 contracts each) were sold for a total of around $2.29 million. With only about 4,300 contracts open before Friday, it is likely that the position closed was the same one just opened, netting the trader approximately $550,000, or a gain of about 30%, per Reuters calculations based on LSEG data.

“That’s a lot of short-dated calls just before a weekend, where you don’t have a whole lot of time to expiration, so you need a quick move, which also makes it a little more egregious,” stated Brent Kochuba, founder of financial insights firm SpotGamma. “It’s going to raise eyebrows, no doubt about that,” he added.

Gill has not yet responded to requests for comment. Earlier in June, he shared an image of a puppy on X, which led to speculation regarding Chewy (NYSE:CHWY). Following that post, Chewy shares soared to a near one-year high. A regulatory filing later revealed that Gill had acquired a 6.6% stake in Chewy three days prior to his announcement.

On the same day, Chewy shares rose 1.5% to $26.54, recovering from a nearly 4% dip after Gill’s post.