GameStop is soaring again! Live streaming crashes servers, shareholders' meeting postponed

The concept stock representative of retail investors, GameStop, had to postpone its annual shareholders' meeting due to live broadcast issues.

On June 13th, Eastern Time, GameStop was scheduled to hold its annual shareholders' meeting on Thursday. However, as many people wanted to watch the meeting online, tens of thousands of people flocked to Twitch, YouTube, X Channel, and individual chat rooms of small investors. This resulted in the company's website crashing multiple times and the live broadcast failing. After about an hour of turmoil, the company had to announce that the meeting would continue once the issues were resolved.

Media quoted a customer service representative who was in charge of the live broadcast of the meeting as saying, "Our servers couldn't handle the huge traffic of people trying to watch this meeting, a level of traffic we don't usually see. When people tried to enter the live stream page, many received error messages indicating that the page couldn't load. The technical team is working hard to resolve this issue and recommends interested individuals to try logging in every 5 to 10 minutes."

Moreover, the enthusiasm of retail investors remains high, as GameStop's stock price soared on Thursday, rising by nearly 14.6% at the time of writing.

Retail investor "leader" Keith Gill's position suspected to have shrunk?

News of Keith Gill's position had once driven GameStop's stock price to soar to over $45 earlier this month, followed by a slight decline. During this period, the company took the opportunity to raise $2.14 billion by selling shares, stating that this money would be used for company operations, possibly including acquisitions and investments. As the expiration date of options contracts approaches, there has been ongoing speculation in the market about whether Gill will exercise the options to receive shares or choose to close out.

Traders are closely watching Keith Gill (known online as "Roaring Kitty")'s movements, as if he starts selling in large quantities, it could lead to a drop in the company's stock price.

According to media reports, the GameStop call options held by Keith Gill experienced a significant decline in the late trading session on Wednesday and during Thursday's trading, indicating that he may have sold some of his positions, reducing his bet on GameStop.

Specifically, in the late trading session on Wednesday afternoon Eastern Time, the trading volume of GameStop call options with an expiration date of June 21st and a strike price of $20 surged to 93,266 contracts, more than nine times the average trading volume of 10,233 contracts over the past 30 days. Most of the trades were completed in the last half hour of trading, making it the most active option of the day. However, during the trading process that day, the intraday prices of these option contracts dropped by over 40%, while GameStop's stock price also plummeted by 16.5%.

After 11:30 am Eastern Time on Thursday, the trading volume surged again, with most large trades at or near the buying price, indicating significant selling pressure. By midday, the contract became the most popular again, having changed hands 41,230 times. The $20 call option, which closed at $6.40 on Wednesday, surged by 11% in early trading on Thursday along with GameStop's stock price, with a trading price range between $6 and $8.50, still higher than Keith Gill's claimed average purchase cost of $5.6754It is currently unclear whether this large transaction was indeed made by Keith Gill, but options traders say that given his large holdings of such contracts, he may have been involved in these trades. According to screenshots shared by "Roaring Kitty" on Monday night, he holds 120,000 of these options contracts. However, as of Thursday morning, the number of open contracts for these options has dropped to 111,818, below "Roaring Kitty's" initial 120,000.

Christopher Jacobson, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna International Group, analyzed that the surge in trading volume and changes in open positions on Wednesday indicate that if Gill is indeed the holder of these call options, he may have at least partially closed out his position.

As of Thursday morning, despite ongoing speculation about whether he has closed out his positions, Gill has not commented on his recent trading activity or his holdings. The specific impact of these trades on the stock price remains unclear at this time