A New Kind of Market Research
The platform at the heart of this, Reddit, has even become an investment itself. In a move dripping with irony, the company went public, allowing you to invest in the very forum that orchestrates these market convulsions. It’s a bit like betting on the sanity of the asylum's inmates. The WallStreetBets community now has more than 15 million members. When that many people turn their attention to one stock, the old rules of analysis simply go out the window. Forget price to earnings ratios, the new metric is social media sentiment. Are people excited? Are they angry? That, it seems, matters more than a healthy balance sheet.
Critics were quick to dismiss this as a fleeting fad, a lockdown induced fever dream that would pass. They were wrong. The conditions that created the 2021 mania are still very much in play. These companies often carry high short interest, making them permanent powder kegs waiting for a spark. And with commission free trading and fractional shares, anyone with a smartphone and a tenner can join the fray. The casino, it appears, is now open to everyone. This entire saga, from the initial short squeezes to the ongoing social media chatter, has become a distinct investment theme in itself. You can see this reflected in baskets like the Reddit's Revenge, which group these companies together.
