Will Roblox’s thriving virtual economy make it the next meme stock?

ONE PORTENTSEARS of a meme stock being born is when the company gets a pseudo-ticker on , an online forum on Reddit. Roblox, an American video-game platform, has earned the tag $. But Redditors aren’t mixing it up with a stodgy old department store. Roblox’s digital currency, Robux, sounds like Roebuck, of Sears Roebuck fame. Get it?Roblox ticks other meme-stock boxes, too. The kids are into it, just as they were into , an ailing bricks-and-mortar gaming retailer whose share price has soared this year. Unlike GameStop, however, Roblox is all the rage with venture capitalists, Wall Street bankers and other supposedly hard-headed types. The firm’s private valuation soared from $4bn at the start of 2020 to $29.5bn in January, when it raised $520m. It is so flush with cash that it has decided to go public on the New York Stock Exchange via a direct listing, without drumming up fresh capital. Its shares ended their first trading day on March 10th 54% higher than the reference price, giving the firm a market capitalisation of $38bn.