On June 12, 2024, traders worked in the trading floor of GameStop at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, the United States.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
game station A customer service representative for the company hosting the live broadcast told CNBC that the annual shareholder meeting was interrupted Thursday due to computer issues, with the server crashing due to the overwhelming interest in the live broadcast.
The conference was scheduled to take place on ComputerShare starting at 11 a.m. ET, but when people tried to access the event, many received “The page cannot load,” according to a post on social media site Error message accessing this event.
The annual meeting was held at 11:48 a.m. ET and “immediately adjourned… due to technical difficulties that prevented shareholders from attending the meeting,” according to a YouTube livestream by an unaffiliated user who claimed to have copied the feed. According to the news, GameStop said it would provide an update on the event’s rescheduling “as soon as possible.”
GameStop could not immediately be reached for comment.
A ComputerShare customer service representative told CNBC on the phone that they were seeing “a huge number” of issues with people trying to access meetings.
The representative stated that ComputerShare’s servers appeared to be unable to handle the traffic the conference was receiving and were not adapting to the number of accounts. They added that ComputerShare’s technical team is working to resolve the issue and advised interested parties to try logging in “every 5 to 10 minutes.”
The disaster comes as a new wave of meme stocks surges after Keith Gill, known online as “Roaring Kitty,” returned to posting on his social media account after disappearing for more than three years. Gill gained notoriety in online trading circles for his big bets on the stock, sparking a frenzy among retail traders.
GameStop shares surged 14% on Thursday, another volatile day.
GameStop announced Tuesday that it raised more than $2 billion in a recent market share sale as the video game company capitalizes on the meme resurgence. GameStop said it intends to use the funds for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.
Traders have been keeping a close eye on Roaring Kitty’s position as his aggressive selling could impact the stock’s price.
The sell-off in GameStop stock suddenly intensified late Wednesday afternoon just as trading volume in call options held by Roaring Kitty surged. A call option gives the buyer the right to purchase stock at a specific price during a specific period of time. If stocks rise above the so-called strike price, their value increases.
On Wednesday, trading volume for GameStop calls with a $20 strike price and expiring on June 21 was as high as 93,266 contracts, more than nine times its 30-day average volume of 10,233 contracts.
The price of these contracts fell more than 40% intraday, while the stock price plummeted 16.5%.
Roaring Kitty has 120,000 of these phone contracts, according to a screenshot he shared Monday night.
It’s unclear whether Roaring Kitty was indeed behind the large trading volume, but options traders said he may have been involved given that he is the majority owner of the contracts.
As of Thursday morning, open interest (the total number of asset contracts that have not yet settled) for these calls had fallen to 111,818 contracts, already below Roaring Kitty’s initial level of 120,000 contracts.
As of noon Thursday, more than 42,000 such contracts had changed hands.
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