This month’s meme stock frenzy has a new captain in third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said Tuesday he bought a large stake in GameStop, broadly appealing to the social media-happy traders who frequently pour into stocks like GameStop.
Forget Roaring Kitty, there’s a new face of the meme stock movement: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the ... [+]
Kennedy said he purchased $24,000 worth of GameStop, buying what would amount to about 1,200 shares at the stock’s share price at the time of his post to X.
Like many other recent investors in GameStop, Kennedy’s purchase appeared to have less to do with the fundamentals of the stagnating brick-and-mortar video game shop, but rather as a statement against institutional investors, especially those engaged in short selling, trades which profit if a company’s share price goes down and thus bet against the success of companies.
Kennedy said he backed the “retail rebellion” and vowed to “punish predatory short selling to the moon” if his longshot presidential bid is successful, with the “to the moon” assertion a reference to memes popular on retail investor-heavy forums like Reddit’s WallStreetBets.
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Shares of GameStop rallied more than 4% in the hour following Kennedy’s post, though it’s unclear if the movement was tied to Kennedy’s relatively small purchase, considering the stock’s high volatility.
Kennedy got in on the GameStop craze as the mania from last week’s flash rally grinded to a halt, as shares are down about 67% from their peak last week. Surprisingly, Kennedy isn’t the only presidential candidate getting in the mud with both meme stocks. Former President Donald Trump, who is also the GOP’s presumptive nominee for the November election, is the owner of a roughly $5 billion stake in Trump Media, the Truth Social parent company that experts classify as a meme stock akin to GameStop, considering its valuation is completely divorced from its company’s profile and its shares tend to gain or loss value more rapidly than more vanilla companies’ issues.