Will he come in a suit or with his crooked cap and dressed in his T-shirt with the cat face with glasses that made the fame of this YouTuber specializing in the stock markets called "Roaring Litty" ("roaring cat")? ?
Keith Gill will be both the star and the intruder at the highly anticipated hearing of the US Congress, Thursday, February 18, to understand the ins and outs of the GameStop affair.
>> GameStop: when stock market internet users turn down the speculators' cackle
The 34-year-old will be alongside celebrities from the world of finance such as Kenneth Griffin, CEO of Citadel, one of the most prestigious American investment funds, or Vlad Tenev, the founder of Robinhood, the app number 1 for stock marketers.
And they probably won't look at him with much sympathy.
From “Roaring Kitty” to “DeepfuckingValue”
Because Keith Gill is considered the “mastermind” of the movement of amateur traders who had bought en masse, in January, shares of the video game brand GameStop.
This stock market frenzy had cost financial pros who speculated on the collapse of this share.
What a long way for this financial analyst since the now famous video about GameStop, posted on YouTube in July 2020. At the time, he was only “Roaring Kitty” (“roaring cat”), a YouTuber keen on Stock exchange that wanted to explain to the world why it was buying shares of the video game store group by the thousands.
The action then cost only $ 5.
He had taken refuge in the basement of his house, not far from Boston, so as not to disturb his daughter of barely two years old during her nap, and ignited in front of the camera for a title that did not interest no one.
Is this how legends are born?
Almost two years later, his video has been viewed nearly a million times, the Security Exchange Commission (SEC, the gendarme of the Stock Exchange) seeks to know if there is nothing illegal, the elected officials Congress called on him to explain himself and hundreds of thousands of anonymous people from the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit consider him the “OG” or “Original Gansta”.
That is, the alpha trader of the Wall Street Cubs pack that led the assault on hedge funds.
“I hadn't planned any of this,” Keith Gill told The Wall Street Journal, in his first media interview at the end of January.
He ensures that his only interest is to unearth the small stocks which appear to him undervalued on the stock market and to bet on their increase.
The runaway of January 2021, which turned into a kind of class struggle between a third estate of stock marketers and the great princes of Wall Street, would only concern him very far.
There is no ideology in his approach.
“He has always been drawn to money,” his mother told The Wall Street Journal.
Legal problem on the horizon?
On Reddit, where Keith “Roaring Kitty” Gill calls himself “Deepfuckingvalue” (in reference to his penchant for going into a stock's value), he has multiplied the posts about his earnings curves thanks to GameStop.
He had started, in September 2019, by provocation.
To show he had the guts to invest where no one else would, he explained in one of his videos.
Very quickly, another WallStreetBets user criticized him for betting “$ 53,000 on such a company”.
Keith “Deepfuckingvalue” Gill then went on to prove he was right.
When other members of this community began to imitate him, he concluded that there might be something to be done.
And what a blow!
“It was at this point, towards the end of 2020, that I realized that there was a chance that the enthusiasm generated by GameStop and my posts could lead to exactly what really happened,” admits- he at the Wall Street Journal.
He had, however, not anticipated that the SEC and the authorities would take an interest in his case.
When he started promoting his investment strategy, his mother “asked him if it was legal, and I said yes,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
But the Stock Exchange Constable is trying to determine if behind all the messages posted on Reddit, there might not be a coordinated effort to manipulate the GameStop share price.
The Massachusetts authorities, meanwhile, are investigating a possible breach by Keith Gill of his obligations to his employer at the time, the insurance company MassMutual.
He was, in fact, not supposed to build a portfolio outside of his job, the company confirmed to investigators, notes the New York Times.
The Keith Gill, who will appear before Congress on Thursday, bears little resemblance to the exuberant “Roaring Kitty” of the YouTube videos of 2019. If on Reddit, he is a “fucking legend”, as one of the users of WallStreetBets at the New York Times, this case is far from over for him.
Was it all worth it?
Last I heard, the rush on GameStop brought him three million dollars, the Wall Street Journal confirmed at the end of January.
But since then, the company's action has taken a big plunge and maybe it doesn't have much left ... except the prospect of getting into legal trouble.
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