Wall Street says the meme stock is here to stay.
Born of lockdown boredom, no-fee brokers and social media chatrooms, the phenomenon drew in a new generation of traders, who fueled massive rallies by banding together to pump up the stock prices of companies Wall Street was betting against.
It had all the elements of a flash-in-the-pan trend, especially with the speculative excesses giving way to a bear-market beating. Yet Wall Street professionals and individual investors think it will become a permanent part of the market landscape: Nearly two-thirds of the 522 respondents in the latest MLIV Pulse survey expect some version of the meme stock mania to stick around.