ETFs to Ride Meme Mania Resurgence: Will the Rally Last?

Meme stocks roared back on Monday after the return of "Roaring Kitty" or Keith Gill, a social media influencer who sparked the 2021 meme stock rally on social media after a three-year break. Roaring Kitty, on X.com, tweeted an image of a person sitting forward in a chair holding a videogame controller — a popular meme among gamers that signifies "things are getting serious."
The post has attracted considerable attention, amassing over 10K retweets, 24K quote tweets, 94K likes and more than 19 million views, highlighting its widespread appeal and significance. Investors flocked to the companies with relatively poor fundamentals, which retail traders had piled on in 2021 to boost their share prices. The rally is reminiscent of the 2021 meme stock frenzy.

Meme Stocks on the Move

Shares of GameStop Corp. GME, the world's largest video game retailer, more than doubled following the post. Its trading was halted eight times due to volatility. The stock added about $6 billion in market value in less than an hour as traders pumped Gill's return to tweeting as a sign that the memo stock boom is back.
Other meme stocks also surged. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. AMC rallied nearly 80%, marking its most substantial single-day rise since June 2021 and the third strongest in its history. Headphones maker Koss Corp KOSS soared 38%, while Hertz Global HTZ rose nearly 12%. The newly listed Reddit RDDT jumped as much as 14%. Beyond BYON — the new name for Overstock that acquired meme darling Bed Bath & Beyond last year — jumped more than 18%.
Given this, investors could tap the meme mania resurgence with the ETFs targeting these stocks like VanEck Social Sentiment ETF BUZZ and SoFi Social 50 ETF SFYF.
VanEck Social Sentiment ETF (BUZZ)
VanEck Social Sentiment ETF offers exposure to 76 large-cap U.S. stocks, which exhibit the highest degree of positive investor sentiment and bullish perception based on content aggregated from online sources, including social media, news articles, blog posts and other alternative datasets. This is easily done by tracking the BUZZ NextGen AI US Sentiment Leaders Index.
VanEck Social Sentiment ETF has amassed $61.3 million in its asset base while charging 75 bps in annual fees.
SoFi Social 50 ETF (SFYF)
SoFi Social 50 ETF follows the SoFi Social 50 Index and is composed of the top 50 most widely held U.S. listed stocks on SoFi Invest, where the companies are measured by the number of accounts that invest in that stock. Consumer cyclical is the top sector, accounting for 29.7%, while technology (28.9%) and communications (24.1%) round off the next two spots.
SoFi Social 50 ETF has amassed $15.5 million in its asset base and charges 29 bps in annual fees.

Will Meme Frenzy Continue?

Meme stocks refer to the shares of a company that has become popular on social media platforms due to heightened social sentiment rather than the company fundamentals, resulting in a surge in volumes and share price. Thus, these are considered speculative.
Meme stocks are triggered by small traders who cause a short squeeze on the stock. Short squeeze is a term used by market participants to refer to a phenomenon where short sellers in a stock, who have placed their bets on its fall, rush to hedge their positions or buy the stock in the event of an adverse price movement in order to cover their losses. This leads to a sharp rise in demand for shares and a huge rally in share price.
Investing in these stocks is a risky choice and could result in heavy losses. This is because when excitement surrounding the stock cools down, it could lead to a freefall in share price and investors could end up losing their capital. The fundamental health of these companies is seemingly not sound.
GameStop cut a number of jobs to reduce costs in March and reported lower fourth-quarter revenues amid rising competition from e-commerce firms and weak consumer spending. The stock saw a negative earnings estimate revision of 11 cents for the fiscal year (ending January 2025) and 14 cents for the fiscal year (ending January 2026) over the past 60 days. Its earnings are expected to decline 83.3% this fiscal year but increase 900% in the next.
GameStop shares were flat prior to the latest rally on a year-to-date basis and had risen about 60% in the past month. With the latest rally, GameStop is now up more than 180% in a month. The stock has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) currently.

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