If Keith Gill, the stock-picking influencer known as Roaring Kitty, isn't the luckiest man in the world right now, then it's certainly Nathaniel Popper. A former reporter for the New York Times who covered the rise of crypto and retail trading, Popper has a new book out this week called The Trolls of Wall Street, which chronicles the history of the Wall Street Bets movement and meme stock craze that burned bright during the pandemic—and then seemed to fizzle out.
When Popper and I spoke in late May, it seemed that the once omnipresent stocks popularized by online communities like GameStop and AMC were a distant memory, save for a few enigmatic memes posted on Twitter by Gill, the most prominent GameStop evangelist. Then Gill made his triumphant return as Roaring Kitty on YouTube, posting his first livestream in three years.
