Death, taxes, and popular stocks of yesteryear soaring for no good reason.
It happens like clockwork in the five years since a small army of everyday investors banded together online to pump a flailing video game retailer and sink a whole hedge fund in the process.
Now, not only has a new meme stock emerged, but we’ve got a new folk hero at the center of it, posting YouTube videos and sharing well-honed theses on forums across the internet like he’s the second coming of Roaring Kitty.
Dimitri Semenikhin — posting as Capybara Stocks on Reddit, YouTube, and X — is the latest in a lineage of traders whose bullishness is cheered by individuals and feared by short-sellers.
Keith Gill was the first, but we’ve seen others in just the last few months. Eric Jackson, while not a retail trader, has been welcomed into their ranks as he’s helped kick off a bullish run in Opendoor stock this summer that has been egged on by the “diamond hands” crowd.
Meme stocks come and go, but some are more enduring than others. GameStop’s rise in 2021 sparked rapid rallies in mostly forgotten names like headphone maker Koss and 2000s-era mobile darling BlackBerry. Opendoor this summer ignited a surge in completely random stocks, including GoPro, Krispy Kreme, and Kohl’s.
In the last few years, during the periodic spasms of meme madness, a few stocks have emerged as the ones that start it all. They jumpstart the wider rally, but their gains are also bigger and, in the case of GameStop, more enduring. GameStop is up 522% in five years. How’s BlackBerry doing? (Spoiler: it’s down 10%.)
So, here’s the theory. GameStop, Opendoor, and Beyond Meat show that just one investor skilled enough to show their work — and put their money behind it — is the most powerful catalyst a prospective meme stock could have.
“I like the stock,” Kith Gill famously proclaimed. It didn’t necessarily matter why, although his fundamental thesis centered on the fact that he saw Gamestop as chronically undervalued, due to its high cash reserve and low debt ratio.
But ultimately, it was his persona that mattered most. He posted at length about GameStop online, he was fun to watch on YouTube, and was irreverent but authoritative when grilled by the suits in Congress.
