Meme stocks are back from the dead

Last yearspachodl sp was tough for all investors, but ones that hang out on Reddit suffered more than most. The Roundhill Meme exchange-traded fund, which tracks meme stocks, fell from $70 a share to $25. Fellow travellers in the covid-19 bubble, including non-fungible tokens (which use blockchains to sell digital artefacts) and s (blank-cheque initial public offerings), also collapsed, leaving apes (retail investors) with few options but to (hold on for dear life) or cut their losses.Proclamations of the death of meme investing may, however, have been hasty. Meme stocks are now shooting past the rest of the market, which has itself surged. The meme index is up by nearly 60% this year, outperforming the & 500 by 40 or so percentage points. Returns on individual holdings are more bonkers still, even if some stocks have risen from a low base. Shares in SoFi, a fintech firm, have doubled; the market capitalisation of Palantir, a software-maker, has nearly tripled; stocks in Carvana, a car retailer, are up by 800%. Apes are going all in, some with their entire 401k retirement plans. There is no clearer evidence of a bull market.