It all started on Reddit when 34-year-old investor Keith Gill, also know on Reddit as u/DeepF***ingValue, saw an opportunity in the stock market and pounced. Gill, a financial advisor, began investing in GameStop (GME) in June of 2019 when he threw $53,000 into the video game giant at around $5 per share. It is also around that time when he began publicizing his investments on the now infamous Reddit page, r/wallstreetbets. Gill discovered value in the struggling retailer and decided to take a chance.
GameStop controls over 4,800 retail stores spanning across 15 countries. Even though they are the world’s largest video game retailer, they were standing on thin ice. Their sales had been declining since 2018 and GME was looking dangerously bearish. On top of that, GameStop had been having trouble finding a suitable CEO, going through five of them in just over a year.
It may seem like GME could possibly be the worst stock an investor could buy, especially considering the amount of money hedge funds were shorting the stock for — but Gill snatched up the stock when he saw an opening. He saw potential where others could not. He believed that there was still more room for GameStop to grow its empire considering the recently released PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X had been in production. Gill bought around 10,000 shares of the stock and publicized it through his YouTube videos, as well as on the vulgar but also informative Reddit page, r/wallstreetbets. His posts caught some momentum and suddenly hordes of traders, old and young, experienced and rookies, all began pouring big money into GME — and the gains were astronomical. At one point, Gill was looking at $48 million in his trading account. Thousands of people owe their newfound fortunes to Gill for inciting this virtual riot.
However, the frenzy Keith Gill started didn’t end with GameStop. Other stocks such as AMC (AMC) and BlackBerry (BB) reveled in their massive gains as well. It seems that normal, everyday traders like Gill were tired of big hedge funds controlling the market, so they decided to take matters into their own hands. Hedge funds lost billions, while your everyday, average trader made millions. GameStop will be written into the history books as having some of the largest gains to ever be recorded on the stock market in such a short amount of time.
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