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Financial influencer Keith Gill, better known as Roaring Kitty or DeepFuckingValue on social media, is once again making his presence felt. He has bought just over 9 million shares of Chewy, a company specializing in pet food.

In the news: A filing with the U.S. stock market watchdog SEC reveals that Roaring Kitty bought as many as 9,001,000 shares of Chewy.

  • That investment makes the influencer one of the stock company's major shareholders. In fact, he now owns 6.6 percent of the American pet food specialist. Based on Friday's closing price, Gill's stake is worth over $245 million.
  • Investors initially reacted positively to the news. At the start of the first day of trading, the stock was trading about 10 percent higher. But after half an hour of trading, none of those opening gains slipped. At the time of this writing, Chewy is actually trading down 4 percent.
    • A share is currently going over the counter for $26.1. Earlier this year, a Chewy share was worth $22.35.

Noted: As is often the case with Gill, he was already giving hints on social media about his new investment.

  • He had posted an image of a dog on June 27 on X, the former Twitter. Chewy's stock shot up about 30 percent that trading day in just under 2 hours. Later that day, the share price gains still went up completely.

Roaring Kitty and GameStop

Verdict: Roaring Kitty has become a phenomenon within the investing world in recent years.

  • He drew all the attention to himself for the first time in 2021. He then called for massive purchases of GameStop shares to trigger a short squeeze. In a short squeeze, investors try to price shorters out of the market.
    • How do shorters go about it? By borrowing shares and selling them immediately, shorters hope to make a profit by buying them back at a lower price at a later date.
    • If the price rises too sharply, shorters are forced to sell their positions, which drives the price up further. That is the ultimate goal of a short squeeze.
    • Regardless, the short squeeze in 2021 was a success. GameStop's share price rise was so sharp that some leveraged funds ran into trouble, with Melvin Capital being the biggest loser at the time. That fund saw more than 50 percent of its value go up in smoke in January.
  • It was quiet for a while since then, but a few months ago RoaringKitty suddenly made himself heard again. Thus, with a series of tweets, he once again caused a remarkable boom in GameStop. By May 14, the stock price had risen to $48.75, up from $11 at the start of that month.
  • Since RoaringKitty's "comeback," volatility has reigned supreme at GameStop. On June 7, for example, the stock price was down some 40 percent following a disappointing live stream by Gill. It was his first stream since the meme stock boom of 2021. Today, a share of the game store chain changed hands for just over $23.

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