(Reuters) – GameStop (GME) shares jumped 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 triggering a trading frenzy among small investors.

Gill posted a picture of a Time magazine cover with a computer screen on the social media platform

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.

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.

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 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, 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.”

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York; Editing by Alan Barona)