Keith Gill, the Redditor known as “DeepF-kingValue” who led an army of mean Joes to drive up the cost of GameStop stock, is all you’d expect from him.
He’s 34, wears an orange samurai-style headband over his shoulder-length hair, loves cat T-shirts, and operates a YouTube channel from a Boston basement behind a desk full of used cups, miscellaneous tech, sports hats and Uno -Cards.
But in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the man who mentions Roaring Kitty on YouTube claimed that he’s just a normal guy, albeit a nerdy who just got extremely rich.
“I didn’t expect this,” Gill, a father of two and the new king of the Reddit page WallStreetBets, told WSJ in an interview published Friday.
“This story is so much bigger than me.”
Gill, who until recently had a day job for a life insurance company, the force that sparked the GameStop roller coaster that put hedge funds into the red of billions of dollars and blew up a swinging video game company destined for Blockbuster disgrace far beyond its true worth.
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 a supporter of unloved stocks. He first invested $ 53,000 in GameStop in June 2019, when the stock was about $ 5 a share – a move people called crazy at the time as the video game company struggled with the advent of online streaming.
But he held out, and others got on board, pushing the stock higher and higher, causing one of the most dramatic brief periods in recent memory – which really worked. On Wednesday, Gill posted a screenshot of his trading account showing a daily profit of $ 20 million on GameStop stock.
Your steady hand convinced many of us not only to buy but to hold on to. Your example has literally changed the lives of thousands of ordinary people. Really thanks. You earn every penny, ”one Reddit fan, reality_czech, replied to him.
Jon Hagedorn, one of Gill’s many fans on the bulletin board website, told WSJ that the amateur investor will become “the greatest legend in WallStreetBets history.”
“He’s the original OG,” he told the outlet.
Gill insists that trading was just a hobby and his plan wasn’t to take down the establishment or turn his life upside down overnight, but he welcomes the sudden influx of cash.
“I’ve always wanted to build an indoor track facility or field house in Brockton,” the former track star told his hometown outlet in Massachusetts.
“And now it looks like I could really do that.”