Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles on March 18, 2024.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the third-party challenger to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, said Tuesday that he had invested $24,000 in the meme stock GameStop, in an effort to show solidarity with retail investors over large, institutional funds.
“My administration will support the Ape retail rebellion and enact aggressive Wall Street reforms,” Kennedy Jr. wrote in a social media post. “To match action with words, I just invested $24,000 in GameStop.”
Calling themselves “apes” to flip the label Wall Street gave them, “dumb money,” this group of retail investors helped trigger explosive rallies in 2021 for shares of the struggling video game retailer GameStop and the movie theater chain AMC.
The apes were motivated in part by a desire to buck bearish Wall Street analysts’ grim assessments of the companies’ long-term prospects.
Last week, investors briefly revived the meme stock phenomenon after “Roaring Kitty,” the man who led the GameStop frenzy in 2021, reappeared online for the first time in years.
Kennedy Jr. is actively courting undecided voters with a fringe political brand that could appeal to some anti-establishment meme stock investors.
Kennedy Jr. has made obscure statements about his investment record. In July 2023, the candidate said he had not invested in bitcoin, even though financial records showed he owned at least $100,000 worth of the cryptocurrency.
His campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for confirmation of the GameStop investment.
Hours after Kennedy Jr.’s post, Trump’s campaign announced that it would now accept cryptocurrency donations, also appearing to court votes from investors who oppose the traditional financial system.
“Today’s announcement reflects President Trump’s commitment to an agenda that values freedom over socialistic government control,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.