Yong Social Finance

A Reddit post, a struggling fast-food chain, and a 25 percent pre-market surge You could almost hear the notifications pinging across trading apps late Tuesday night. Someone on WallStreetBets posted a rallying cry. The target was not a failing video game retailer this time. It was Wendy's. The fast-food chain with the square burgers and the sassy Twitter account. The stock had been in a slow, grinding decline for half a decade. A 73 percent drop over five years will do something to a community that loves an underdog and hates short sellers. By the time the opening bell rang Wednesday morning, Wendy's shares had ripped 25 percent higher. Volume exploded. The ticker lit up social media. The mechanics of a meme stock revival, dormant but never dead, snapped back into action like muscle memory. The post that lit the fuse The WallStreetBets post carried a title that could have been written in any of the meme stock golden ages: "We need to save Wendy's." It was ...