A sell-off in GameStop shares intensified in afternoon trading Wednesday, and that coincided with a spike in trading volume in the call options that meme stock leader “Roaring Kitty” owns.
The last time Roaring Kitty, whose legal name is Keith Gill, disclosed his portfolio was Monday night, showing he still owned 120,000 call options contracts with a strike price of $20 and an expiration date of June 21.
GameStop calls with the exact strike price and expiration traded a whopping 93,266 contracts Wednesday, more than nine times its 30-day average volume of 10,233 contracts. The price of these contracts dropped more than 40% during the session, while the stock plunged 16.5%.
It is unclear if it was indeed Roaring Kitty behind the large volume, but options traders said he could be involved given he is such a large holder of those contracts.
Options traders have speculated that Gill would have to sell his calls prior to expiration or roll the position into another call option to avoid having to raise a huge amount of cash to exercise them on June 21.
Wall Street has been watching for hints he was unloading the position because it could knock the price of the stock.
For Gill to exercise the calls, he would need to have $240 million to take custody of the stock — 12 million shares bought at $20 apiece — which is more than he has shown publicly in his E-Trade account.
CNBC’s “Fast Money” will be discussing the GameStop move at 5 p.m. ET.