GameStop shares rise 13 percent after Keith Gill doubles stake

GameStop stock rose 13.3 percent Monday after Keith Gill, the popular online trader behind last month’s frenetic rally, announced he had doubled his investment in the struggling retailer.

Shares of GameStop opened Monday at $46.8 and closed at $46 even. GameStop closed at $40.68 per share Friday. Gill announced on Reddit after the market closed Friday that he purchased another 50,000 shares of the company to bring his total investment to 100,000 shares.

Gill, a Massachusetts financial adviser better known on Reddit as “deepf—ngvalue” or YouTube as “RoaringKitty,” is widely credited with planting the seed that turned into a massive rally in GameStop shares. The company’s share price rose roughly 1,800 percent in January, peaking at $483 last month before collapsing.

Gill told a House panel Thursday that his early Reddit posts making the case for investing in GameStop were nothing more than an attempt to share a potential opportunity with other amateur traders that spiraled out of control. Critics of the GameStop rally say Gill and other prominent Reddit users could be culpable for market manipulation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced last month it is probing for any potential manipulative practices surrounding the GameStop frenzy, but securities attorneys say the public nature of the rally makes it difficult to allege a conspiracy.