The adherents of the
YOLO movement are a young bunch of diehard optimists believing in a single stock and its future performance, pitching in all the chips they have, while hoping for the best.
The meme phenomenon has spread far and wide beyond the obscure dark and not-so-dark humor online boards into the financial market, with crypto meme coin tickers taking up the precious characters of Tweets posted by some prominent investors like Elon Musk. But it has recently overspilled into the conventional financial industry of Wall Street, taking on the form of the YOLO movement.
This bizarre phenomenon has seen stocks being pumped beyond even the most optimistic prices by online message boards in an almost coordinated tidal wave that swept across the booming market through 2020 and 2021.
With over 80% of investors in YOLO stocks being born in the late 1990s, their overconfidence in continued market growth is staggering, allowing them to take on leverage in the form of credits and debts to start investing in selected stocks. And though there is no actual asset class that could be termed YOLO, it pertains to companies that have posted immense gains and generated headlines during the pandemic lockdown period.
Among the most notable examples over 2020 to 2021 are AMC Entertainment
(AMC), which skyrocketed by over 2,000% in just under a year, and GameStop (
GME)– up 5,232% in the past year. Others in the league are Bed, Bath & Beyond (
BBY) with 328% gains, Blackberry (
BB) – 113% year-to-date, and others.
One of my nephews seems like a YOLO buying $100k Tesla stock( now 1.5 million) and Bitcoin as his investment but he always has his future inheritance to back him up.