Wendy’s shares soar for a second day as retail investors pile into their new meme darling
Wendy’s Shares continued their rise for a second day on Thursday as retail traders continued to pile into the heavily shorted fast food chain.
The company’s shares rose another 9%, following a 25.7% gain in the previous session, the biggest gain since June 2021. The rise appeared largely disconnected from the company’s fundamentals and instead reflected a social media frenzy that has turned Wendy’s into the latest meme stock favorite.
“The Reddit crowd is taking over stocks,” Don Bilson, head of event-driven research at Gordon Haskett, wrote in a note.
“GameStop is arguably the OG of meme stocks. It earned that distinction during Covid, and credit for that goes to the army of monkeys who got their marching orders from Reddit’s WallStreetBets thread,” Bilson said. “This army is on the move again this morning outside Columbus, Ohio. This is the home and stocks of Wendy’s.”
The rally began Wednesday after Wendy’s announced the appointment of former Potbelly executive Steven Cirulis as chief financial officer and chief strategy officer.
Traders on Reddit forums have increasingly begun to portray Wendy’s as a company worth “rescuing” after years of underperformance by the stock market. A widely shared WallStreetBets post was titled “We must save Wendy’s” and urged merchants to get behind the restaurant chain.
Vanda Research on Thursday flagged Wendy’s as the most extreme case of abnormal retail buying; Net purchases were more than seven times current norms after the viral “Save Wendy’s” campaign spread across Reddit trading communities.
A Reddit user posted a screenshot showing a nearly $350,000 position in Wendy’s shares under the title “WEN to the moon – 350,000 YOLO,” and it received hundreds of comments and upvotes from other traders. Another post included a meme image that encouraged investors to “make those numbers go up,” joking that buying just one meal’s worth of Wendy’s stock meant “rookie numbers.”
— CNBC’s Nick Wells and Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
