Rep. Maxine Waters wants Redditor Keith Gill behind GameStop frenzy to testify at hearing
Roaring Kitty might be going to Congress.
US Rep. Maxine Waters wants Keith Gill — the Reddit user who helped ignite GameStop’s unprecedented stock rally — to testify at a congressional hearing about the recent retail investor revolution.
The House Financial Services Committee chair said she has Gill on her list of potential witnesses along with executives from GameStop, Reddit and Robinhood, the investment app that drew fire last week for temporarily blocking trades of stocks that rookie traders popularized on social media.
“We are going to have all the players,” Waters, a California Democrat, told the Cheddar news network Wednesday. “We’ll have the young man there from Reddit who — his name is Keith Gill — who basically started this mania. We will hopefully have some hedge fund representation there.”
“They have not confirmed all of my list yet, but I want him,” Waters added.
Waters didn’t say what she wants to ask Gill at her panel’s virtual hearing on the GameStop saga, scheduled for Feb. 18. But she indicated she’d grill Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev about his company’s decision to limit trading on certain stocks, which sparked bipartisan outrage last week.
The House panel also plans to probe the practice of betting on a stock decline, or short selling, which came under criticism amid GameStop’s bizarre climb as hedge funds shorting the stock clashed with day traders betting on its rise.
“I think there’s resentment against short selling, I think there’s resentment against hedge funds being able to borrow and to drive down the price of stock,” Waters told Cheddar. “And so I think that, you know, that that will be looked at, as well as Robinhod will be looked at.”
Known as “DeepF—ingValue” on Reddit and “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube, Gill, 34, has become a figurehead of the populist investor revolt that drove GameStop’s share price to staggering heights last week — up more than 1,600 percent at one point.
The Massachusetts man is a celebrity on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, which has pumped up GameStop and other beaten-down stocks. And the YouTube channel where he outlined how heavily Wall Street had bet against the video-game retailer has 365,000 subscribers.
Despite recent losses, including $13 million on Tuesday, Gill claims he’s racked up a $7.8 million gain on his GameStop bet, which reportedly started with a $53,000 investment he made in 2019.
Gill did not immediately respond to a message sent to his Reddit account Thursday morning.