Carleton English
Sure, some of the frenzy surrounding so-called meme stocks such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment has died down. Even Robinhood, the trading app that enabled much of this year's furious buying and selling, reported a surprise drop in users in its latest quarter, a sign that retail traders may be less engaged now.
Even so, there is still a sense that smaller investors -- including, of course, those on popular social media sites such as Reddit -- are here to stay thanks to tools that make it easier for anyone to trade. Plus, social media has made it helped communities gather to share their wins and losses.
In the last episode of Unboxed, a series that takes you behind the scenes of meme-trading, you watched me open a Robinhood account and compare it to the process of opening a brokerage account on Fidelity's platform. This week, I'm eager to try my hand at trading stocks that have become popular on Reddit's WallStreetBets forum, the group of the traders at the center of the meme trade.
When it comes to investing in individual stocks, any investor should spend time studying the company's fundamentals. And, to be fair, some meme-stock traders do just that. But for the purpose of this series, I'll be buying names that have become popular on Reddit without doing my own research first.
I found two trending names that intrigued me. One was a company that's relatively new to public markets and whose shares have tumbled since going public. The second, a firm with origins dating back to the 19th century, has seen its shares struggle over the past five years but surge this year as the economy reopened.
I bought shares of both and will track my performance in future epsides. Any profits made from these trades will be donated to the nonprofit Dow Jones News Fund.
So what did I buy? Watch the second episode above to find out. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel here to watch new episodes when they appear.
Write to Carleton English at carleton.english@dowjones.com