New York It's been a little more than a year since the meme mania in GameStop began. It's shaped up to be, to put it extremely mildly, a wild ride for it and other meme stocks like movie theater chain AMC ever since.
GameStop and AMC are up sharply from a year ago, but they're off to a brutal start in 2022. Shares of GameStop have plunged nearly 35% in January while AMC has plummeted more than 40%. These two stocks caught fire in early 2021 as so-called memes -- companies with rabid followings among individual investors -- took off. Much of their success could be attributed to traders who were fans of the brands, maybe even more than the stock fundamentals.
Fund manager says meme stock phenomenon is not a fad 01:58Some experts argue that the rise of meme stocks is a good thing, if for no other reason than it helps to democratize the market. More Millennials and Gen Z members have started to realize that investing can be a way to build long-term wealth.That said, many of these younger investors have more of a short-term trading mentality, particularly regarding stocks like GameStop and AMC and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.