GameStop Options Trade Nets $550K After Influencer's Post

Luminary Times10 Sep, 2024Business

A well-timed GameStop options trade delivered a significant $550K profit on Friday. This came after a cryptic social media post from "Roaring Kitty," also known as Keith Gill, a famous stock influencer. The post featured an altered image from the 1999 movie "Toy Story 2" with a dog's face on one of the characters. This was Gill's first social media activity in more than two months, triggering intense interest from retail traders. GameStop shares surged as much as 9% after Gill's post, but later settled at a 4% increase. Just 18 minutes before his tweet, a trader bought around 10,000 GameStop call options, each with a $22.5 strike price. The cost of this trade was approximately $1.74 million. Shortly after Gill's post, this same trader sold two blocks of 5,000 contracts, netting around $2.20 million.