NEW YORK – A pivotal actor in the meme stock craze that began during the pandemic continues to hold a powerful sway over the movement of shares in major U.S. corporations.
Nearly four months after revealing a massive stake in the online pet supply retailer Chewy, Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, has dissolved his entire holdings in the company.
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Shares slumped overnight and traded down 1% on Wednesday.
Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July revealed that Gill had acquired 6.6% of the company's shares after hinting at investments using pictures of dogs on the social media platform X.
Gill became widely known 2021, when he rallied retail investors around GameStop. At the time, the video game retailer was struggling to survive — and big Wall Street hedge funds and major investors were betting against it, or shorting its stock. But Gill and those who agreed with him changed GameStop’s trajectory by buying thousands of shares in the face of almost all accepted metrics that told investors that the company was in serious trouble.
GameStop and Chewy have a common tie in Ryan Cohen. He founded Chewy in 2011 and stepped down as CEO in 2018. Gill saw in Cohen the potential to save GameStop, where he is CEO.
Other meme stocks have arisen since then, one of the most well known being Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.
Trump Media this week surpassed the market value of Elon Musk's social media platform X, both because the value of that company under Musk has collapsed, and because of extremely volatile trading in Trump Media, which uses the ticker symbol “DJT.”
Meme stocks were a novelty during the pandemic but have become a reality today, like it or not, rising and falling on little else other than momentum and the enthusiasm of investors. Shares of Trump Media have more than doubled in 2024, though the company's losses rise exponentially every year and its debt continues to soar.
Why are shares of Chewy under pressure?
In a filing late Tuesday with U.S. regulators, Gill revealed that he had liquidated his entire stake in Chewy, more than 9 million shares at one point, which had made him the company's third-largest stakeholder.
As with other Gill investments, he had been dropping potential hints on X. In early September, he posted an image from the “Toy Story” film franchise of a child dropping a toy with the face of a dog superimposed on its head. Chewy uses dogs in a lot of its marketing materials.
Gill has not posted to the account since.
How is the company Chewy doing?
In its most recent quarter, Chewy topped Wall Street earnings expectations and its revenue rose 2.6%. Shares are up almost 13% this year, which is better than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but far below year-to-date advances on the S&P 500.
Industry analysts have been raising their projections for Chewy's profits, and most see sales growth accelerating next year.
How has the environment for meme stocks changed?
Meme-stock companies have more shares trading in the market than they did in 2021, which could lessen the chances of what's called a “short squeeze."
A short squeeze is a relatively rare event that can yield eye-popping profits for people riding the wave. When investors bet a stock's price will go down in the future, they “short” it by borrowing shares and selling them. Later, if the price does indeed fall, the short sellers can buy the stock, return the borrowed shares and pocket the difference.
GameStop in March had roughly 305.9 million shares of its stock trading in the market, more than four times the number of shares it had in March 2021. That means it is more difficult to move stocks like GameStop on momentum alone.
Such a short squeeze likely contributed to GameStop's thrilling ascent in 2021, but the SEC's staff said it was a small fraction of the overall purchases and that GameStop's stock stayed high even after short sellers had gotten out of their trades.
What are the risks of joining in?
If you want to take a chance on meme stock like Trump Media, you need to strap in and hope others share your enthusiasm.
Shares jumped 4% Monday, 8% Tuesday, and then plunged more than 20% Wednesday.
Shares are still positive this week and if that holds, that gain would make it a six-week winning streak. Yet over a seven-week stretch from late July to early September, the stock tumbled every week.
That said, shares in Trump Media are up 130% this year, seeming to rise and fall with the ups and downs of the former president's campaign, but there are few industry analysts that see a reason, based on economic fundamentals, to risk the investment.