Overnight, US stocks staged a shocking counterattack, and meme stocks started shorting the market one after another. The core target of the air war three years ago$GameStop (GME.US)$It once soared close to 120% in the intraday session on Monday, and at least six times during the day triggered a meltdown due to excessive fluctuations, and eventually closed up 74%. According to S3 Partners data, GME bears have lost a total of 1 billion US dollars due to Monday's intraday surge.

Other meme stocks also rose collectively due to Keith's return. It is also the core target of meme stocks$AMC Entertainment (AMC.US)$closed up 78.4%,$Koss Corp (KOSS.US)$increased 36.7%,$BlackBerry (BB.US)$Up 6.9%.$Reddit (RDDT.US)$As well as the influencer brokerage preferred by retail investors$Robinhood (HOOD.US)$It also rose at the same time.

The reason is — retail leader Keith Gill, who set off the meme stock frenzy in 2021 and then disappeared, is back.

On May 13, local time, Keith Gill (screen name Roaring Kitty/DeepFuckingValue or DFV) posted a meme image on X. The picture shows a person leaning forward and getting serious when playing games.

This tweet, which is suspected to be sounding the horn of battle once again, was viewed more than 18 million times on X. He then released a few more movie clips, all of which revolved around the character's return. Previously, his last tweet was in June 2021, and the content was a video of a cat sleeping.

The return of “King of Retail Investors” made X and the retail army on Reddit, the home base for retail investors in the US stock market, very excited.

On X, some people quoted the “Dune” theme and shouted Lisan Al Gaib (savior); the image of Sweet Tea, the lead actor in “Dune II,” was also replaced with the classic image of Keith Gill wearing a red headscarf.

The legions of retail investors on Reddit are scrambling to put the crown back on Keith with various meme images.

Netizens on Reddit said bluntly that they have saved 100,000 US dollars by saving money over the past few years and are ready to gamble on everything.

Other netizens said that they don't care if they lose money; they just follow Keith to the next level.

Who is Keith Gill? Retail investors lead the big brother, and the protagonist of the Century War

Why does Keith Gill have so much energy when just one tweet can set off US stocks?

The reason Keith has such a high position in the minds of retail investors is because he led the “meme stock war” against Wall Street institutions in 2020-2021.

Keith's job is the financial education director of Yantong Insurance. In 2014, she began posting on Twitter to share her investment experience. Starting in 2019, he began posting on WallStreetBets, an investment community on Tieba Reddit in the US, singing about multiple game stations, believing that this stock was undervalued.

Game Station was founded in 1984 and is mainly a business that rents and sells physical game cards. At its peak, it had nearly 7,000 stores around the world, which is a childhood memory of many European and American gamers.

However, with the advent of the internet age, more and more gamers are choosing to buy games at Sony and Microsoft's digital stores. Physical cards have almost become “antique,” and the game station business is becoming more and more bleak. With a huge loss of 795 million US dollars in 2019, the stock price fell sharply, unsurprisingly, from more than 20 US dollars to a minimum of only about 3 US dollars.

Sluggish performance and a sharp drop in stock prices have naturally attracted many bloodthirsty bears, especially Wall Street institutions. These institutions are betting that Game Station's stock price will continue to fall, hoping to make another profit before the company goes out of business.

Throughout 2020, GameStop became the most shorted stock in US stocks, and the stock price was below $10 most of the time.

However, Keith insisted on singing on multiple game sites on the internet and frequently posted screenshots of the actual game on Reddit. No matter how the stock price rises or falls, it just doesn't buy or sell. Exactly during this period, GameStop was supported by American millionaire Ryan Cohen. Cohen also believed that GameStop could become the “Amazon of the gaming industry” through reforms and bought GameStop's stock in a big way.

After many parties fought back, by the end of 2020, Game Station's stock price continued to rise, and the funds in Keith's account also changed from 50,000 US dollars to hundreds of thousands or 10 million US dollars. More and more retail customers look at Keith with admiration and envy.

At this time, long and short games are also becoming more intense. Some technical retail traders believe that the shorting ratio of GameStop shares was as high as 140% at the time. If retail investors continued to buy in groups to raise GameStation's stock price, then since the actual number of shares in circulation was less than the amount loaned, bears must scramble to buy back the shares to reduce losses and push GameStop's stock price to continue to rise, the so-called “short” market.

However, the shorting agency Citron scoffed at this, and also published a report mocking retail investors who followed the trend and bought game stations, saying that they would lose their money in the end.

As it turns out, the arrogant Citron didn't see the situation clearly.

At the time, affected by the pandemic lockdown, the number of new retail investors in the US increased dramatically. Not only did they have huge financial subsidies from the Biden administration, but also experienced education from the rise of the coin industry and received the concept of highly volatile investments. More importantly, many small retail investors hated Wall Street institutions representing traditional financial forces and were anxious to fight for game stops symbolizing beautiful childhood memories.

And Keith became the leading brother of these retail investors. He wears his iconic red headscarf every day to broadcast live on Tubing, calling on everyone to buy Game Station shares.

GameStop closed at $17.25 per share on January 4, 2021. By the end of the month, it had reached a high of more than $500 per share. Throughout 2021, GameStop's stock price rose by more than 1000%, which also drove other meme stocks such as AMC and Blackberry. The highest increase in AMC's range even reached 2,300%. Hedge funds with a size of 10 billion US dollars were only forced to close their positions and destroyed by small scattered funds.

And Keith did a great job. This battle of the century between retail investors and institutions was hailed by retail investors as the “Battle between David and Goliath,” and was also adapted into the movie “Idiot Money.”

Century War shocked Congress Keith announced his withdrawal from the Internet

Ultimately, the meme stock movement that has taken the US stock market by storm shocked the US authorities. In February of that year, Treasury Secretary Yellen convened a meeting with regulators to discuss the impact of this meme stock campaign. As a central figure, Keith was later summoned to the US Congress to testify.

He emphasized to the National Assembly that he is only an individual investor, does not belong to any agency, does not provide professional financial advice, and his opinions are only used for “educational purposes.” He only believes that Game Station's main business is undervalued by the market, and believes that the company can adapt to the digital game retail world through reforms.

In his testimony, he also explained why he shared his views on social media. He said the reason he did it was because:

Hedge funds and other Wall Street firms have teams of analysts who can work together to write research reports and comment on investment ideas, yet individual investors don't have this advantage.

In his written testimony, Keith also insisted that the idea that he alone instigated a sharp rise in meme stocks was “ridiculous.”

It's ridiculous to think my idea of using social media to sell GameStop shares to unsuspecting investors is ridiculous; I know very well that my channel is for educational purposes only... Whether other individual investors buy shares is irrelevant to my argument.

In June 2021, Keith posted a video of her kitten sleeping on Twitter, then disappeared from social media until her sudden return on May 13.

According to media reports, Keith initially bought $53,000 worth of GameStop shares in 2019, then increased his position several times. At the peak of the meme stock price surge, the value of his shares was about $48 million.

edit/ruby