### RIDING THE WAVE: HOW ROARING KITTY'S RESURGENCE IS SHAKING WALL STREET AGAIN

The swirling seas of the stock market are roiling again, and if you could read the waves, you’d see a familiar one beginning to crest, heightening the possibility of another Wall Street tsunami. This wave is being driven by a meme. This time, the pufferfish is a Wall Street investor named Keith Gill whose online persona is known as Roaring Kitty. Gill is back on social media, and announced live on his stream on Friday that he is once again doubling down on GameStop shares. ‘This is the final round. This is the showdown,’ he said. It feels just as much like a showdown between David and Goliath as it did back in January 2021.

#### THE INITIAL SPLASH: ROARING KITTY'S COMEBACK

Ever since it went silent in 2020, the Roaring Kitty Twitter account hasn’t tweeted a word. But when it suddenly popped back to life at the start of the year, the aftershocks spread across the financial world. Even just hinting at GameStop in his tweets created waves of excitement and speculative investment – a reminder of the power of the wave to excite and motivate. The anticipation was magnified by a news item that Gill would be streaming live online on his YouTube channel.

#### THE WAVE GATHERS MOMENTUM

During the countdown to the live stream, we saw a visceral move in the market. GameStop’s stock, lifted no doubt by mere speculation and, for the first time, the spectre of a rally that had died before it could fully take root, jumped nearly 40 per cent and a handful of other meme stocks rose along with it, most notably AMC Theatres. Despite the tumult of the January trading, the power of social media and its associated big-brand advocates remains intact – reshaping dynamics in financial markets.

#### A TSUNAMI OF SUPPORTERS

The prospect of Roaring Kitty’s analysis has driven prices, but also forged a diehard online following. Gill has drawn many new followers to his YouTube channel, where his subscriber base has risen to more than 724,000, and his fans bear testament to his exhaustive analyses and long streaming sessions as they camp outside his digital soapbox. Gill’s ecstatic return to the digital limelight has fomented a fresh wave of hype and investment into the stocks he streams.

#### A SEA OF UNCERTAINTY

Regardless, apart from the uproarious speculation, it’s unclear what Gill’s real goal is, and whether Gill is conducting a valid analysis. Stock-market entities are watching Kitty’s every move following the waves he created with the Hertz ordeal, and will be looking for evidence of manipulation. GameStop’s stock is riding another wave of speculation and rumour. Not one to shy away from controversy, Roaring Kitty seems to relish the spotlight, and the conflict with the forces that be.

#### THE BROADER IMPACT OF THE GAMESTOP WAVE

Gill’s return and the market frenzy around it underscored a broader, longer-term trend: retail investing is growing in importance to the stock market, as evidenced by the flood of new, social-media-enabled individual investors taking up trading through free, commission-free apps from brokerages such as Robinhood. These termites have shown that they can bite their institutional overlords and change the rules of stock markets forever. We may be entering an era where the financial trading game is less a Wall Street chess match than a game of Pong. This raises complex questions about market regulation, the power of crowd investing, and how retail markets might change.

#### EXPLORING THE DEPTHS OF THE WAVE

This resurgence runs deeper than the Roaring Kitty phenomenon might suggest, with Wall Street itself potentially undergoing an overhaul in light of its implications. It could also inspire a new generation of investors to plunge into the unforgiving ocean that is the stock market.

#### UNDERSTANDING THE WAVE

The wave is the literal effect of Roaring Kitty’s actions – the ripple of change engulfing the stockmarket and, metaphorically, sending a wave of change through investments worldwide. The stockmarket is unpredictable – a single Tweet can create a tsunami of activity. And here, I hope to have provided a nerdy and yet gripping story of the effects of new technology, a kind of subversive energy that blends social media and the spirit of rebellion to make waves that can either lift or crash hundreds of fortunes.