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The man behind the GameStop stock market frenzy is a former college track star

Keith Gill, the small-time investor who initiated this week's mayhem on Wall Street, holds multiple school records in cross country and track and field

Even if you don’t pay much attention to the stock market, this week it was impossible to ignore the online frenzy surrounding the videogame company, GameStop. In what turned into a battle between small, first-time investors and the financial elite of Wall Street, a number of large hedge funds lost billions of dollars as stocks of the failing company soared. According to an article in the Daily Mail, the man behind the mayhem was Keith Gill, a former collegiate track and field and cross country runner with a few accolades to his name.

Photo: Stonehill College

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Gill, who lives in Boston with his wife and young daughter, is also a YouTuber who goes by the name ‘Roaring Kitty’. The 34-year-old financial advisor owns his own company named after his YouTube channel, called Roaring Kitty LLC, which supposedly provides ‘investment advisory services’. He has also referred to himself online as ‘The Wizard’ and is responsible for the DeepF***inValue Reddit posts that sparked the buying frenzy for GameStock stocks.

Gill graduated from Stonehill College, a Division II Catholic liberal arts institution in Easton, Mass., in 2009. According to the school’s website, Gill is ‘one of the most decorated runners‘ in the history of the school’s cross country and track and field programs, and was their first (and only) male student-athlete to earn All-America honors for cross country and indoor and outdoor track & field. In 2006 he finished fifth at the All-Northeast-10 Conference, third at the All-East Regional Championships, and 35th at the NCAA Division II Championships.

On the track, Gill was named the Indoor Athlete of the Year in 2008 by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association (USTFCCCA) after he won the 1,000m at the New England Championships in a time of 2:24.73. That time remains a school record, and Gill also holds the school records in the 800m and the mile, with PBs of 1:52.00 and 4:03.43, respectively.

On Wednesday, the runner-turned small-time investor prophet posted a screenshot showing that his initial investment of $754,991 was now worth nearly $50 million, but tables turned on Thursday, when the trading app Robinhood restricted purchases of GameStop stocks, causing the shares of the company to drop by 50 per cent. We’re not sure how this affected Gill’s financial gains, but according to the Wall Street Journal, he wants to use some of his earnings to build a track in Brockton, Massachusetts.

https://twitter.com/erinstrout/status/1355179489148370945

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