By Manya Saini, Suzanne McGee and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed

(Reuters) – GameStop shares rose on Thursday following a cryptic post by meme stock influencer Keith Gill, who rose to fame after his online persona and bullish bets on the video game retailer sparked a trading frenzy among small investors.

Gill posted on the social media platform The stock closed up 6%.

Gill, known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and “DeepF***ingValue” on Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets, was a key figure in the so-called “Reddit rally” that saw GameStop shares climb around 1,600 at one point in January 2021 % rose, crushing hedge funds that had bet against the video game retailer.

Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ:), noted that this is characteristic of a pattern that has developed in GameStop trading: The stock price will rise, and then when it calms down a bit or pulls back, Gill’s “roaring” sounds Kitty.” “Persona is usually created with a social media post.

“We have seen this pattern again recently; The stock was at $21 in early November, but then rose to about $30 around Thanksgiving, only to give back most of those gains from the last few days.”

About 300,000 GameStop options contracts had changed hands as of 2:14 p.m. (1914 GMT) on Thursday, about 1.5 times faster than usual, according to options analysis firm Trade Alert.

The stock’s 30-day implied volatility – how much traders expect the stock to move in the near term – jumped to a three-week high of 132%, up from 93% in the previous session, data showed.

Contracts betting on the stock to trade above $30 by Friday were the most actively traded options, with about 32,000 traded by late afternoon.

“ANIMAL SPIRITS”

Gill resurfaced on social media in early 2024, after a three-year hiatus that resulted in a flood of enthusiastic messages from his followers, many of whom have likened the social media phenomenon to a David taking on the Goliaths of Wall Street and won.

“The resurgence in popularity of meme stocks tends to follow an overall resurgence in market enthusiasm and animal spirits,” said Art Hogan, market strategist at B. Riley Wealth Management. “Whenever markets reach or approach all-time highs, that particular part of the speculative side of stocks tends to resurface.”

The 2021 meme stock rally was sparked by Gill’s posts on the WallStreetBets subreddit about the profits he made on his investments in the heavily shorted company.

The rally spread to other heavily shorted stocks, including AMC Entertainment (NYSE:), as Reddit users banded together to pressure bearish hedge funds, costing them billions of dollars in losses and drawing scrutiny from U.S. regulators .

The entire episode inspired Craig Gillespie’s 2023 film “Dumb Money.”

Other so-called meme stocks also traded higher on Thursday following Gill’s post. Shares of the unit software (ETR:) closed up 5%, while movie theater chain AMC, another retail investor favorite of 2021, rose 6%.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if believers weren’t distracted by other things. “Crypto has stolen GameStop’s reputation lately,” Sosnick said.

The video game retailer’s stock is up about 76% so far this year. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has surged more than 130% to surpass $100,000 earlier on Thursday, boosted by optimism about easing regulatory headwinds, marking a stunning rally for the world’s largest cryptocurrency.