The celebration continues? "Lead Big Brother" GME doubles its position to become the company's fourth largest shareholder

After selling a large amount of GME call options, the "leader" Keith Gill increased his bet on this popular "Meme stock".

In a Reddit post on Thursday, Keith Gill (known online as "Roaring Kitty") updated the latest status of his GME holdings:

Screenshots show that he currently holds 9.001 million shares of GME stock and over 6 million USD in cash.

He has sold some/all of the 120,000 GME call options expiring on June 21, while buying an additional 4.001 million shares of GME stock.

His total holdings have increased from 5 million shares at the beginning of the week to 9.001 million shares, and his cash on hand has sharply decreased from nearly 30 million USD to 6.3 million USD.

On June 2, the first day he disclosed his holdings during the 2024 Meme stock frenzy, his portfolio consisted of 5 million shares of GME stock and 120,000 call options.

GME stock surged 14% on Thursday, closing at 29.12 USD, but fell over 2% after hours. Based on Thursday's closing price, Keith Gill's holdings exceed 262 million USD.

It is worth noting that the 9.001 million shares seem to hold special significance for loyal GME retail investors. This number happens to be equal to the shareholding of GME Chairman and CEO Ryan Cohen at the end of 2020, just before the "Meme stock" frenzy erupted.

According to GME filings, after a 4-for-1 stock split in July 2022, Cohen's holdings increased to over 36 million shares, and he has continued to increase his holdings in the open market.

According to the latest FactSet data, Gill's additional shares make him the fourth largest shareholder of GME, holding a 2.1% stake. GameStop recently completed the issuance of 750,000 shares, raising over 2 billion USD.

From Gill's recent actions, it appears that he has invested a significant amount of his cash reserves into this round of buying. In a Reddit post earlier this week, he revealed that his cash on hand had sharply decreased from nearly 30 million USD to 6.3 million USDPreviously, Gill broke his three-year social media silence in March, sparking a frenzy. On Wednesday afternoon, the trading volume of call options expiring on June 21st with a strike price of $20 for GME suddenly surged, remaining high on Thursday, leading to speculation that Gill may be selling options positions. Gill had previously claimed an average purchase cost of $5.6754 for options.

It is currently unclear how Gill obtained this position. He could sell all 120,000 call option contracts and use the proceeds to buy additional shares, or he could sell part of the options positions and exercise the remaining part early.

There are indications that Gill may have exercised some call options to offset the cost of increasing his holdings, but it is not clear from his screenshots whether most of his position growth came from exercising.

For example, his cost basis (reflecting the average cost of the entire position) has risen from slightly above $21 per share when he initially shared updates earlier this month on the Superstonk subreddit to over $23 per share