The Wall Street Banker Behind Litquidity On The Business Of Memes, Robinhood Trading Phenomenon And More

Finance is a tough, but rewarding career.

That’s according to the founder of the finance meme account Litquidity, an anonymous Wall Street banker in his late 20s who uses social media as a creative outlet.

Litquidity’s founder decided to start the media brand in 2017 to share humor drawing on his time in investment banking and venture capital. 

At the outset the founder thought the page would be small — a few thousand followers — given the content niche that was being featured. 

Litquidity's follower count now totals 531,000 on Instagram and 96,300 on Twitter.

“I thought, 'how many people would actually be interested in following investment banking humor and anything Wall Street-related?'” the account's founder told Benzinga in a conversation held in the wake of volatility on Wall Street surrounding stocks like GameStop Corporation GME and Rocket Companies Inc RKT. 

“I started [Litquidity] at my private equity job, as I was reflecting on the time I spent in investment banking, and the culture.”

'I Wanted My Memes To Stand Out': Though Litquidity’s founder has a seemingly typical Wall Street background, he told Benzinga he's a creative at heart.

“I’ve always had kind of a creative outlet. I grew up playing several instruments and was in a band, and I also just created electronic music on the side — tracks like Avicii.”

After becoming deeply immersed in finance, the Litquidity founder said he looked to new, social outlets.

“I wanted to craft some sort of image or brand around [Wall Street],” he said. “I knew what’s typically expected of people working in this field: attention to detail and clean formatting [and] high-quality work output. I wanted my memes to stand out from the general, low-quality, fuzzy images.”

Litquidity's Evolution: Litquidity's founder said he's used lessons learned at work to create and market content. 

“I thought about positioning. If someone were to create a graph on where things fall on a quadrant, I could be up on the right.”

Success came fast, he said. 

“There was growth every single year. In my first year, I gained 40,000 followers,” he said. “I started trying to push the market to see how I could keep growing this and getting it in front of more people.”

After realizing his content was too targeted for Wall Street professionals, Litquidity's founder said he decided to make his posts more relatable and fun.

“Since then, it’s grown exponentially. Right around the start of the pandemic, I went from like 230,000 followers to over 300,000 in a month or two, and continued to grow through the pandemic.”

Litquidity's growth is mostly due to the zero-commission, gamified trading revolution pioneered by brokers like Robinhood, the meme account's founder said, as well as retail investors looking for ways to engage with the outside world during a pandemic. 

“Over the last year, the whole retail trading phenomenon has picked up, with Robinhood traders spending stimulus money and everyone trying to get into the market,” Litquidity's founder told Benzinga.

“I don’t think it’s a fad, but I think there’s definitely a lot more people in the market than there will be when we get a sense of normalcy.”

Litquidity's Twist On The Finance Newsletter: In positioning his account for the future, Litquidity’s founder said he’s looking to educate investors and Wall Street professionals about finance trends, as well as to demistify market unknowns.

Litquidity’s solution is Exec Sum, a daily newsletter that curates major news spanning Wall Street to Silicon Valley, with a touch of humor and memes.

“The goal of the newsletter is to create a way for industry professionals, first and foremost, to stay on top of the market. It comes down to what’s moving the general stock market — rates, stimulus, vaccines — and putting it in a very concise manner.”

All the content featured is actionable, he said.  

“I never really found a newsletter that did it all for me,” he said. “Now, people get the news, but then they also get jokes about the news they can share with their colleagues.”

Litquidity Going Forward: Eventually, Litquidity will become a full-time gig for its founder, he told Benzinga. 

“On the surface, a lot of people think, ‘hey, why would you leave a high-paying, stable Wall Street job to make memes on the internet?’ Obviously, that’s top of mind to me, and I would never be that quick to do that if I don’t have a business built behind it.”

Litquidity’s earnings from advertisements and other monetization efforts will soon eclipse its founder's earnings at a financial institution.

“Right now, it’s just about building the audience. Building something that’s a go-to if you’re in banking, private equity or venture capital.”

Litquidity may also branch into other lines of business like podcasts, as well as money management, given the founder’s knowledge in direct-to-consumer brands and fintech, he said. 

“I’ve been presented with opportunities to invest in seed-stage startups where my value is one, being an investor; two, knowing a lot of people; and three, having a massive audience.”

To learn more about Litquidity’s content offerings, as well as opportunities for collaboration and business development, click here.