NEW YORK CITY - The man at the center of the pandemic meme stock craze appeared online for the first time in three years, sending the prices of the quirky and volatile shares sharply higher Monday.
GameStop in 2021 was a video game retailer that was struggling to survive as consumers switched rapidly from discs to digital downloads. Big Wall Street hedge funds and major investors were betting against it, or shorting its stock, believing that its shares would continue on a drastically downward trend.
At Monday's opening bell it appeared that Gill had reignited the phenomenon as shares of GameStop more than doubled. They closed Monday up 74%. It's the biggest intraday trading jump for GameStop since the meme craze of early 2021. Other meme stocks like the theater chain AMC were jolted higher as well.Gill became a cause célèbre in 2021 after his posts on the Reddit subcategory Wallstreetbets ignited a David vs.
Some of those new and smaller investors believed, at least in part, that Ryan Cohen, co-founder of Chewy.com, could push the traditional retailer in a more online direction. Cohen built up a stake in GameStop before eventually joining the board and last year becoming its CEO.