The Latest Meme Stock Craze Is About Out of Gas

July 29, 2025 • 1 minute, 22 second read

In 2021, it was AMC and GameStop.

This year, it’s Kohl’s and GoPro.

They’re called meme stocks, as they’re driven by posts on Reddit’s WallStreetBets.

And bets they are.

While meme stocks sound innocuous, there is a critical factor that causes these names to get sudden interest from retail investors: a high level of short interest.

After all, if you’re short a stock and it starts to rise, you start to lose money on the trade.

That means if investors can engineer a move higher in a heavily-shorted stock, a squeeze could trigger as shorts buy to close.

That’s why heavily-shorted stocks, often unprofitable has-beens in the business world, have periods of strong performance.

That’s been the case the past few months:

Turn Your Images On

Heavily shorted stocks have outperformed the past few months as the market has rebounded

This outperfomrance in stocks with high short interest suggests that the meme trade is just about played out – and that investors looking to make a quick buck following a few posts on Reddit may be in for a rude awakening.

The rise of meme stocks also suggests that traders are looking for quick moves that they can’t get in the big tech names following their multi-month rally.

It’s not a sign that the markets will crash, but another hint that stocks are overheated and due for a necessary pullback.

Don’t make a new leveraged trade right now – take any leveraged trade you have off the table.

~ Addison

P.S. As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

Ripple Effect

The Latest Meme Stock Craze Is About Out of Gas

Addison Wiggin

July 29, 2025 • 1 minute, 22 second read

market valuations Meme Stocks

In 2021, it was AMC and GameStop.

This year, it’s Kohl’s and GoPro.

They’re called meme stocks, as they’re driven by posts on Reddit’s WallStreetBets.

And bets they are.

While meme stocks sound innocuous, there is a critical factor that causes these names to get sudden interest from retail investors: a high level of short interest.

After all, if you’re short a stock and it starts to rise, you start to lose money on the trade.

That means if investors can engineer a move higher in a heavily-shorted stock, a squeeze could trigger as shorts buy to close.

That’s why heavily-shorted stocks, often unprofitable has-beens in the business world, have periods of strong performance.

That’s been the case the past few months:

Turn Your Images On

Heavily shorted stocks have outperformed the past few months as the market has rebounded

The rise of meme stocks also suggests that traders are looking for quick moves that they can’t get in the big tech names following their multi-month rally.

It’s not a sign that the markets will crash, but another hint that stocks are overheated and due for a necessary pullback.

Don’t make a new leveraged trade right now – take any leveraged trade you have off the table.

~ Addison

P.S. As always, your reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)

Beware: The Permanent Underclass

October 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Back in the Global Financial Crisis (2008), we recall mass layoffs were driving desperation.

Today, unemployment is relatively low, if climbing.

Affordability is much more of an issue. Food, rent, healthcare, and childcare are all rising faster than wages. Households aren’t jobless; they’re stretched. Job “quits” are at crisis-level lows.

In addition to the top 10% of earners, consumer spending is still strong. Not necessarily because of prosperity, but because households are taking extra shifts, hustling gigs, working late into the night, and using credit cards. The trends hold up demand but hollow out savings.

It’s the quiet form of financial repression. In an era of fiscal dominance, savers see easy returns clipped, workers stretch hours just to stay even, and wealth slips upward into assets while daily life grows harder to afford.

Is Tokenization Inevitable?

October 3, 2025 • Ian King

Last month, Nasdaq asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for approval to let tokenized stocks and ETFs trade on its main exchange.

If approved, these digital shares would sit side-by-side with traditional equities. Meaning, they would fall under the same U.S. securities laws that govern $50 trillion in annual equity trades.

And this rollout could begin as early as 2026, once the Depository Trust Company — the clearinghouse that settles every U.S. stock trade — updates its systems to handle digital tokens.

If it happens, this won’t be a small tweak to the machinery of finance. It’ll represent the first major step toward moving Wall Street onto blockchain infrastructure.

And we don’t have to imagine what it might look like…

Because it’s already happening.

The Myth of Productivity, Again

October 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

The launch of ChatGPT in October 2022 ended the pandemic-era bear market in stocks. The AI story has been the predominant narrative for three years now. The indexes on Wall Street are at historic highs, surpassing 2000, 1968, 1929… the last three tech-inspired bubbles.

But ChatGPT did something else. It brought the idea of “productivity gains” back into the economic conversation.

The Stablecoin Standard

October 2, 2025 • Mark Jeftovic

Stablecoins have proceeded rapidly from being a grey zone through which capital would traverse as it moved into or out of the crypto-economy, to becoming an extension, if not a nascent pillar, of the fiat money system itself.

Coinbase Head of Institutional Research David Duong sees the market cap for stables hitting $1/2 trillion by 2028 (which would be somewhere between a 4X and 5X from where we are now).

Demetri Kofinas recently interviewed Charles Calomiris, former Chief Economist at the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and it was eye-opening to hear someone of his stature speak so matter-of-factly about how the structure of the banking system is evolving in realtime.

Beware: The Permanent Underclass

October 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

Back in the Global Financial Crisis (2008), we recall mass layoffs were driving desperation.

Today, unemployment is relatively low, if climbing.

Is Tokenization Inevitable?

October 3, 2025 • Ian King

Last month, Nasdaq asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for approval to let tokenized stocks and ETFs trade on its main exchange.

If approved, these digital shares would sit side-by-side with traditional equities. Meaning, they would fall under the same U.S. securities laws that govern $50 trillion in annual equity trades.

And this rollout could begin as early as 2026, once the Depository Trust Company — the clearinghouse that settles every U.S. stock trade — updates its systems to handle digital tokens.

If it happens, this won’t be a small tweak to the machinery of finance. It’ll represent the first major step toward moving Wall Street onto blockchain infrastructure.

And we don’t have to imagine what it might look like…

Because it’s already happening.

The Myth of Productivity, Again

October 3, 2025 • Addison Wiggin

But ChatGPT did something else. It brought the idea of “productivity gains” back into the economic conversation.

The Stablecoin Standard

October 2, 2025 • Mark Jeftovic

Coinbase Head of Institutional Research David Duong sees the market cap for stables hitting $1/2 trillion by 2028 (which would be somewhere between a 4X and 5X from where we are now).