Meme Stock

A meme stock is a publicly traded company whose share price is driven primarily by viral attention and coordinated buying among retail investors on social media, rather than by the company's underlying financial fundamentals. Hype spreads through internet memes, jokes, and shared enthusiasm, often producing extreme volatility, short squeezes, and price swings disconnected from traditional valuation. The phenomenon is closely tied to the rise of commission-free trading apps and large online investing communities.

Reddit is the birthplace of the modern meme-stock movement, centered on the subreddit r/wallstreetbets. In January 2021, users there helped trigger a dramatic short squeeze in GameStop (GME), whose price rose roughly 1,500% over two weeks and peaked near $483 intraday on January 28, inflicting heavy losses on hedge funds that had bet against it. The episode—which also swept up stocks like AMC and BlackBerry—demonstrated how coordinated retail investors organizing on Reddit could challenge established Wall Street players, and it prompted trading halts, congressional hearings, and lasting scrutiny of brokerages and market structure. The term "meme stock" entered mainstream financial vocabulary as a result, and r/wallstreetbets remains a closely watched barometer of retail sentiment.