The WSJ reports (gift link for paywall) that E*Trade is thinking about kicking Keith Gill — better known as Roaring Kitty or DeepFuckingValue — off of its platform. Gill is largely credited with driving the GameStop stock price to unrealistic levels, as evidenced by a PE ratio of 1,320 on June 4, 2024.

E*Trade is asking whether or not Gill manipulated the stock price, presumably via his Reddit and Twitter posts, especially after he resurfaced after silence for three years.

It is possible that Gill will find himself under an SEC investigation for this very question, especially now that he has 120,000 GameStop options worth $289 million. Gill will probably respond along the lines of, (1) he can’t be held responsible for what hundreds or thousands of amateur investors do, and (2) out of 306 million shares outstanding his portion is tiny and unable to influence the market.

But at this point his following is loyal and many will follow his lead, which will affect the stock price, where volume now exceeds 25 million. For comparison, Apple has 15 billion shares outstanding, approximately 50 times more than GameStop, with a trading volume of 62.5 million, which is less than three times that of GameStop.’s. Or more simply, Gill tweets and GameStop trading volumes goes through the roof.

It’s clear that Gill can significantly influence GameStop trading.

I don’t know if Gill is acting in good faith or not, I do know that he is in a position where he can influence this stock, and probably dozens of others that have prices low enough and some other measure of volatility that can be exploited by amateur traders. He may not have always had the influence, but he now does whether he realizes it or not.

In other words, he has a responsibility to be prudent in communications that will impact the stock price.

It made me think of Elon Musk, another figure who is able to significantly influence stock prices with a tweet. He often seems clueless that his has such power. Again, I don’t know if this is in good fatih. Like Gill he didn’t always have that kind of power. In many of his actions, he seems unaware that the repercussions of his behavior, as the world’s richest man, are orders of magnitude greater than anyone else’s.

In other words, he has a responsibility to be prudent in communications that will impact the stock price.

Neither man seems to understand what their influence is, or if they do, understand the idea of prudence. (Or perhaps don’t care, I don’t know.)