The trader known as DeepFuckingValue on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum has become the face of a movement standing up against Wall Street hedge funds. But it didn’t start out that way.
When Keith Gill bought his first shares of GameStop in 2019, he never intended to start a revolution.
A self-characterized value investor, he just saw a deeply unloved stock that he believed was a good value and had been unfairly punished by the stock market.
He posted his trades to the the Reddit forum WallStreetBets under the user name DeepF—ingValue, and was initially met with ridicule for investing in a failing business model.
But a year and a half later, he was adopted as their hero and inspired an entire generation to turn the investing world upside down.
This is the story of how one man fought the Wall Street establishment and turned a $50,000 investment into more than $40,000,000.
Who Is Keith Gill? Humble Beginnings
Keith Gill is probably best known by his online pseudonyms, Roaring Kitty on YouTube and DeepFuckingValue on Reddit.
But before he became an internet folklore hero, Keith Gill was an average guy. According to a Wall Street Journal interview, the 34 year old lives in a suburb of Boston with his two year old daughter. Until recently he worked in marketing for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.
He developed an interest in the stock market after college as a way to make extra money, drawn to the complexity and challenge of stock picking. His investment philosophy focused on picking “value” stocks that were beaten down or otherwise out of favor.
It Was the Summer of 2019…
In June 2019, Keith placed his first investment in GameStop.
Under the user name DeepF—ingValue, he posted a picture on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets of his trading account: an initial investment of $53,566.04.
He was initially derided by other Redditors on WallStreetBets. Commenting on his first post, one user wrote:
This dude should sell now. 85% of Wall Street thinks they’re gonna miss earnings… Plus either way their gonna be negative earnings for first time. That ship is sinking.
GameStop – The Next BlockBuster?
To understand the contrarian nature of Keith Gill’s investment in GameStop, you have to understand the narrative of the company.
GameStop operated thousands of retail stores that bought and sold games and gaming equipment. With the entire video game world moving online, their business was drying up, and profits were moving in the wrong direction.
GameStop, so its detractors proposed, was part of a dying industry. It was quickly on its way to becoming the next BlockBuster, who couldn’t adapt to a world with instant online access to movies and TV shows.
But digging into the financials and underneath the media headlines, Keith saw an opportunity for a struggling retailer to innovate and find its place in the new world of online gaming.
YOLO
Keith embraced his role as a contrarian value investor and began posting monthly screenshots of his GameStop trading account.
Until recently, the now-infamous trader was known only anonymously on Reddit as DeepF—ingValue, and on social media as Roaring Kitty.
He started a YouTube channel called Roaring Kitty, where he shared details of his stock trades, investing philosophy, and of course his thoughts on GameStop.
Whether riding high or facing five-figure losses, he continued to hold his investment and share his “GME YOLO Updates” on Reddit – a personal net worth statement of sorts. GME refers to the GameStop stock ticker, and YOLO for “you only live once”.
His initial goal was not to inspire a mass revolt against hedge funds or to make millions on a single trade. He just saw an opportunity to invest in a company he thought could be turned around and was being unfairly punished by the market.
While many investors are looking for ways to double their money, Keith had bigger ambitions.
Looking back his goals actually turned out to be extremely modest. From a comment on one of his earliest GME YOLO Updates, he wrote about his expectations for returns.
I will say, given the risk I’ve taken on, I’m shooting for at least 10x on the position. 15-20x would be terrific. 20x+ is possible but not worth seriously entertaining right now.
Little did he know, his position would be up over 800x six months later.
The Short Squeeze
Long before the GameStop mania set in and sent the price skyrocketing from $17.25 to $325 in the first month of 2021 alone, Keith Gill saw the opportunity for a “short squeeze”.
Without getting into too much technical detail, shorting a stock involves “borrowing” shares of the stock and selling them in the hopes of buying them back in the future at a lower price.
For example, hedge funds would sell GameStop shares at, say, $10 with the expectation that the stock price would decrease. They could then buy them back at $7 a share, pocketing a $3 profit.
There is of course a downside to this strategy. Not only are you paying interest to borrow the initial shares you sold, if the price goes up you can theoretically lose an infinite amount of money. At some point your capital dries up, and you would be forced to buy the shares back at a much higher price, causing huge losses.
In August 2020, Keith posted a video to Roaring Kitty entitled “The Big Short SQUEEZE from $5 to $50? Could GameStop stock (GME) explode higher??”
In the video, he highlighted the fact that there was an unprecedented amount of short interest in GameStop, which was pushing the price down.
The stock was trading at a little under $5.00 at the time and had the highest percentage of short interest of any stock in the entire market – over 100%! That meant that if the stock price started to rise, there would be enormous buying pressure on the part of hedge funds to cover their short positions before they lost too much money.
He posited that given the strength of the overall fundamentals, any good news – an announcement of a new strategy, or a quarterly earnings beat – could send the stock skyrocketing as market bulls piled on and forced the short sellers to cover their positions at higher and higher prices.
Keith Gill’s First $1 Million Net Worth in GameStop
Shortly after Keith posted the video in August, GameStop stock started to rise due to a number of small pieces of bullish news:
- Activist investor and co-founder of Chewy.com Ryan Cohen started buying millions of shares
- Optimistic reports about securing credit and shoring up liquidity
- Significant earnings beat in October 2020
There was nothing earth-shattering, but the market’s confidence in GameStop began to rise, and so too did the share price.
All the while, Keith Gill had been adding to his position.
At the end of September, he owned 10,000 shares of GameStop stock and another 5,000 long call options worth over $1.3 million, with a total net worth gain just shy of $1 million.
The sentiment in the Reddit WallStreetBets forum had completely changed, and he became admired for his courage to hold through the hard times (at one point he had lost over half his initial investment).
He began to post his GME YOLO updates more frequently, and other people latched on to what he was doing and wanted to replicate his success.
Through the Fall of 2020, GameStop continued its upward climb, and by the end of the year it was trading at around $19, about 4X what it was in August when the bull run started.
On WallStreetBets, Keith (DeepF—ingValue) became regarded as a hero, and many users posted that they were buying shares along with him.
Staying strong! Picked up some more shares on the dip. Here’s to a crazy 2021 🚀🚀🚀
Just bought 50k in shares and options and posted about it! Let’s gooo
Get ready for a 2021 rollercoaster my dude. We’re all in this together!
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GameStop Reddit Mania
By early January 2021, what started as a value play by one investor on WallStreetBets had become a rallying cry to millions of followers.
Buying GameStop morphed from a good investment thesis to full out warfare, as small retail traders seized on an opportunity to continue squeezing the hedge funds who were shorting the stock.
The hedge funds, such as Melvin Capital and Citron Capital, were seen as colluding to try to bankrupt GameStop and make a quick buck through shorting the stock.
And it just so happened that they had taken such an irresponsibly large short position that it wouldn’t take much pressure to force them to endure massive losses.
The narrative shifted to one of David vs. Goliath, reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis where the big hedge funds were bailed out and the small retail investors were left holding the bag.
HE’S STILL IN, I’M STILL IN
Throughout the meteoric rise of the GameStop’s stock price, Keith continued to post his stock account updates.
Each post was followed by multiple comments of “HE’S STILL IN, I’M STILL IN“. The Reddit community was following his lead, buying and holding even as prices shot up to absurd levels. The mission was at stake – and selling meant the hedge funds would win.
On January 27, 2021 the GME YOLO Update from DeepF—ingValue showed Keith Gill’s total net worth in GameStop just shy of $48,000,000, a 4,420% gain.
The next day, RobinHood and other stock platforms halted trading on GameStop, allowing selling but not buying. To the Reddit community this was a slap in the face and clearly favored the hedge funds who desperately needed the price to fall.
By the end of the day, GME had fallen from a high of $497 to close at $197. Keith’s portfolio lost almost $15 million in a single day, but he continued to hold.
The stock rallied again Friday, January 29th and his month end update was up again to $46 million.
Keith Gill (DeepFuckingValue) Net Worth Updates
After this article was published, the GameStop story continues to unfold. Keith’s total porfolio value will keep changing with swings in the stock.
Here are the most recent updates:
On 2/1/2021, the DeepFuckingValue Net Worth update posted to Reddit was $35,794,795 after the stock price fell from $325 to $225.
On 2/2/2021, the DeepFuckingValue Net Worth total was $22,171,317 after GameStop stock fell again to $90.
As of 2/3/2021 the total portfolio value was $22,425,567. GameStop closed at $92.41 per share.
On 2/19/2021 Keith Gill’s net worth in GameStop was $17,397,953 with GameStop at $40.59 per share. His portfolio included 100,000 shares of stock and 500 call options.
On 4/16/2021 Gill’s exercised his call options and bought another 100,000 shares of GameStop. At the close, he had 200,000 shares at $154.69 each. His total GameStop account (including cash) is valued at $34.4M.
Did DeepFuckingValue Sell?
As of his latest post on 4/16/2021, DeepFuckingValue has NOT sold his GameStop stock. While he did sell part of his position in January and holds about $13 million in cash, he owned 100,000 shares of GME stock and 500 Call Options. When his call options expired, he bought additional stock and now hold 200,000 shares.
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How Much Did Keith Gill Make?
At it’s peak, GameStop stock traded at $483.00 per share and Keith Gill made over $46 million in stock and options value. Now that his infamous 4/16/21 call options expired, he now owns 200,000 shares of stock worth more than $34 million .
While the stock continues to bounce around, it has fallen from it’s all-time highs and Keith Gill’s portfolio value had fallen as low as $17 million per his net worth updates before recovering to >$30 million.
Lessons Learned From $50,000 to $46 Million
Regardless of what will surely be wild gyrations in the GameStop stock price over the coming days and weeks, Keith has moved enough into cash to stay a wealthy man.
One of the lessons to take from his story is that of perseverance even in the face of adversity. When he began his GameStop investment, he was ridiculed for putting so much money into what was supposedly a failing company.
Even when he was losing money and the pressure was growing to sell and move on, he stood by his convictions.
His original thesis hadn’t changed. The stock fundamentals hadn’t changed. So he continued to hold and accumulate more shares.
He wasn’t looking to make money fast or a cut and run with a quick payday. He was in it for the long haul.
He was eventually handsomely rewarded, and many of his early detractors turned into raving fans. While not every investment will pay an 800x return, this one did. And Keith Gill had the courage to stay in the fight to the very end.
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Andrew Herrig is a finance expert and money nerd and the founder of Wealthy Nickel, where he writes about personal finance, side hustles, and entrepreneurship. As an avid real estate investor and owner of multiple businesses, he has a passion for helping others build wealth and shares his own family’s journey on his blog.
Andrew holds a Masters of Science in Economics from the University of Texas at Dallas and a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University. He has worked as a financial analyst and accountant in many aspects of the financial world.
Andrew’s expert financial advice has been featured on CNBC, Entrepreneur, Fox News, GOBankingRates, MSN, and more.