(Bloomberg) — Keith Gill — the meme stock investor known online as “Roaring Kitty” — is claiming his entire options position in GameStop Corp. while he expanded his pile of shares.
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A screenshot on Gill’s Reddit account on Thursday showed that his portfolio no longer contained the 120,000 GameStop call options that were set to expire next week and had a strike price of $20. Instead, his portfolio showed a holding of more than nine million common shares, up from five million earlier this week.
The screenshot, under Gill’s Reddit handle “DeepF-ing Value,” appears to show a cash position that has fallen to $6.3 million from nearly $30 million on Monday. That implies Gill may have used some of the money to expand his stake in common stock.
The calls were traded about 142,000 times on Wednesday and Thursday. At the end of Wednesday’s session, the number of outstanding contracts had already fallen by 34% to 111,818.
The $20 calls, which closed at $6.40 on Wednesday, traded between $6 and $9.80 on Thursday, while GameStop shares rose 14% to $29.12. That leaves options above Gill’s alleged average purchase price of $5.6754.
“It looks like he sold 80,000 calls and exercised 40,000,” said Danny Kirsch, head of options at Piper Sandler & Co. “So now he’s long nine million shares, based on the screenshots circulating on Reddit.”
The increase in trading came as GameStop was set to hold a shareholder meeting on Thursday. However, the meeting was postponed due to technical issues with the livestream, the company said.
News of Gill’s position and his long-awaited return to YouTube last week caused GameStop’s stock price to nearly double to more than $45. The company capitalized on the rally by selling $2.14 billion worth of shares to raise cash pick up. With the options expiration approaching, Wall Street wondered whether Gill would exercise the contracts to receive the shares or simply close the position.
Gill’s cryptic X-posts, combined with portfolio checks on his Reddit account, have caused investors to pile into GameStop stock over the past four weeks.
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