Although they may not age as well as a bottle of Bordeaux, you can think of the “meme” investments embraced by individual traders as coming in vintages. Each one gives you a flavor of a moment in 2021’s very weird market psychology.
The January vintage is best-known: GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and a handful of other hot nostalgia names that denizens of online chat boards were rooting for. The May vintage was all about Dogecoin, a virtual token bearing a shiba inu mascot that reached a record of about 74¢ that month. October 2021 moved on to a special purpose acquisition company tied to former President Donald Trump’s social network; November already has Avis Budget Group Inc. as well as Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.
