Do you know the stonks meme meaning? Chances are, if you’ve spent time researching investments or the stock market on social media platforms like Reddit or Twitter, you’ve come across the popular Stonks meme. If you’re up to date on your memes and internet lingo, you’ll instantly understand the irony and tongue-in-cheek meaning behind the image.
For those unfamiliar with the Stonks meme, it’s a digital image of the computer-generated character Meme Man dressed in a suit, standing in front of a fictitious stock market chart. An exaggerated orange arrow is pointing upwards, with the word Stonks in white underneath.
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Stonks Man Meme Introduction
What is the stonks meme meaning, and where did it come from? The meme first appeared on June 5th, 2017, in a Facebook group called Special Meme Fresh Posting. This account posts internet memes and other images and has a following of over 230,000 users.
While the initial posting only received about 3600 likes, the meme’s popularity took off as it was re-posted on other platforms all over the internet. Numerous high-level Redditors re-posted the image in various investment forums.
This was a driving force behind the Stonks meme going viral. When sifting through postings in Twitter or Reddit investment areas, the meme can often be seen when certain popular stocks drop in price. Or if the market, in general, has a down day.
Pop Culture and Trading
Memes are a pop culture phenomenon. Especially since social media has taken off in the magnitude it has. As a result, memes have made their way into the trading world.
In the past, the stock market consisted of men in suits, i.e., the stonk meme meaning. But with the internet came retail traders. And trading was no longer just on Wall Street. Now you see 20-somethings promoting trading on their social media accounts. It’s easier than ever to trade.
And with a young group coming into the trading world. Hence learning the stonks meaning. When I first saw it, I thought they misspelled stocks. And I’m in my early 30s.
Is Stonks Meme Malicious?
That’s not to say that the Stonks meme is mean-spirited or malicious. It’s a back-handed way of speaking about a novice investor or know-it-all person on social media.
There are certainly more callous images out there. However, for the most part, social media memes are meant to be lighthearted and even self-deprecating, an admission that most of us do not know what will happen in the financial markets.
What Does Stonks Man Mean?
What is the stonks meme meaning? Stonks isn’t a real word. Instead, it’s a play on the word stocks with the pronunciation of a presumed person of lower intelligence. Mispronouncing words is a popular form of humor and irony on the internet.
For example, it can be seen in other similar viral words like “small” (something very small and cute) and thick (a “thick” curvaceous person, usually female).
Stonks are used primarily as an ironic way of depicting a person who thinks they know a lot about investing and the stock market but doesn’t—this year provided a perfect confluence of events that has led to the Stonks meme going viral on social media. The 2020 pandemic has forced a majority of people to quarantine inside of their homes as we await a potential vaccine candidate to help slow down the spread of the virus.
This time increase in our homes has led to a massive influx of retail investors trying to invest their government stimulus checks for some potential quick gains. New traders have flocked to commission-free brokers like Webull and Robinhood droves.
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Financial Markets
In March of this year, financial markets worldwide crashed as we entered the first bear market in over a decade. The global economy officially entered into a recession.
However, the actual pain from the market crash was short-lived, and just a few months later, in July, the SP 500 and NASDAQ hit all-time highs.
This sudden and extremely volatile situation led to hordes of novice investors making fast gains on stocks that suddenly dropped in value after years of stability.
It truly was the perfect storm for investing to go mainstream. And for many people to begin posting on the internet how easy investing in stocks can be. Hence, the stonks meme meaning.
Many of these novice investors took to platforms like Robinhood to trade stocks, and unfortunately, that has given it a negative connotation from veteran investors.
Mega-performers this year like Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Zoom (NASDAQ: ZM), and Square (NYSE: SQ), as well as numerous potential coronavirus vaccine companies like Inovio (NASDAQ: INO) or Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) have provided unprecedented growth to investor portfolios like we’ve never seen before.
Wall Street Not Happy
Wall Street analysts and others criticized Portnoy for portraying a reckless investor whom many of his fans tried to mimic. Portnoy is famous for saying that “stocks only go up.”
And “if you treat the stock market like Monopoly, you can’t lose.” Despite what seemed to be misleading his followers, the heart of Portnoy’s shtick was a bumbling investor. One that lost money in the stock market so his fans don’t have to. Did he lose money? Sure. But he also gained a loyal following and audience in the Barstool ecosystem.
That only brought more value to his brand. Portnoy was famous for asking his viewers for Stonk suggestions or more Stonks as he interacted with the Davey Day Trader webcast viewers. He gave a new stonks meme meaning.
Stonks Meme Example
This is a chart example of the stonks meme GME in 2021. You’ll notice the Reddit users pumped the price of GameStop up to $120.75. It is currently trading at $16.69, which is a huge drop in price.
Stonks Man Meme in the Mainstream
The Stonks meme has become a regular part of investing on Twitter and Reddit. Posters on these forums use the image as a lighthearted way of commenting on the stock market. The meme has made it into our mainstream media as well.
There are specific products like a Youtoube Stonks meme bobblehead and even songs and music videos dedicated to the meme on YouTube. It’s never been easier for people to get involved in trading stocks.
The popularity of Robinhood and other mobile platforms is proof of this. With other advantages like fractional share purchasing and endless amounts of data, analysis, and tools available on the internet, we may be entering into a golden era of investing.
Usage in Pop Culture
Perhaps one of the more famous internet personalities who used the word Stonks regularly is Barstool Sports founder and president Dave Portnoy. He helped give the stonks meme meaning.
Portnoy had shifted from being an avid sports gambler to a self-professed day-traded during the pandemic. He even went as far as creating a new persona for himself called Davey Day Trader. Portnoy live streamed himself to his millions of fans as he humorously followed the stock market and tried to day trade his fortune. Portnoy’s mix of self-deprecating humor and charismatic personality has made him an internet sensation.
It resulted in his website, Barstool Sports, receiving millions of visits daily. At the time, Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ: PENN) owned Barstool Sports.
That vaulted the casino and gaming company shares up more than 240% during that time. Dave Portnoy purchased Barstool Sports from Penn for $1 in August 2023. Pen lost $850 million on the deal.
Do Stonks Only Go Up?
I’ve got a few popular answers about why stonks only go up. Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it can’t be because stock prices, like many complex phenomena, are subject to over-causation.
- A company’s revenues and earnings have increased.
- Positive catalysts like news stories or economic forecasts
- A cutting-edge new product or service promising to bring the company to new heights
- Perhaps a situation where a stock has a low P/E ratio or is trading at a deep discount to its intrinsic value.
- A shout-out by a famous analyst/celebrity or TV/social media investing guru. I will drop Elon’s name here; google Elon and Bitcoin, and you’ll know what I mean.
- A big institutional investor is accumulating a position.
If you’ve heard of Dave Portnoy, you’re very familiar with why stonks only go up. He got into the trading game during Covid, and stonks came to the forefront as he is a trendsetter.
Over Causation
Why do stonks only go up? Over Causation is a favorite term used by defense lawyers who invoke it to show that many factors besides their client’s (alleged) negligence might have led to a personal injury.
If, for example, they can show an employee’s fall from a ladder was “caused” by “other factors,” they likely can get their client off the hook. When I say “other,” it can be anything from an employee’s poor choice of footwear, bad ladder design, or perhaps recreational drug use.
For investors and traders who try to anticipate a stock’s future price, the over-causation principle can be vexing.
The lesson of the principle of over-causation is that stock price movements are more complex than many people think. Nothing guarantees that a stock will go up, not increasing revenues, no earnings surprises, no new contracts, not a dive in price that drops the P/E into the basement.
Why Stonks Go Up
Why do stonks only go up? The truth is that stocks go up in price because someone believes they can make money by buying them. And people’s reasons for that belief are all over the map. As you know, people are unpredictable, and you can’t reduce an over-caused behavior to a simple set of rules.
But the fact of the matter is, what goes up must come down. This means all good things must come to an end.
Stocks or stonks must also come down, as we cheekily refer to them. This may seem all doom and gloom, but you can make money on the ride down. And you can do this by shorting a stock. How fantastic is that?
Shorting stocks involves selling batches to make a profit and then buying them back cheaply when the price drops. By repurchasing it at a lower price, the short-seller pockets the difference. However, it is an advanced strategy that’s risky. It should only be undertaken by experienced professionals taught by experienced traders such as those in the Bullish Bears trade rooms.
Final Thoughts: Stonks Meme Meaning
The Stonks meme is a fun reminder that when it comes to investing, we all think we know what’s best regarding our money. It also shows how much the financial world and social media have crossed paths.
FinTwit, or financial Twitter, is one of the busiest areas of the social media platform daily. Many variations, such as the Not Stonks Meme, have popped up on FinTwit and Reddit. This depicts the Meme Man standing before a negative stock chart with an arrow pointing downwards.
The Stonks meme isn’t intended to be a malicious way of attacking someone. Instead, it’s a tongue-in-cheek way of reminding novice investors that the stock market carries inherent volatility that can cause stocks to fall or rise on any given day.
So next time the stock market falls or a popular stock that has been going up for months suddenly corrects, shrug your shoulders and say, “Stonks”!
Ultimately, there are more important things in the world than the rise and fall of stock prices. Remember, there are different types of memes, just like there are different trades; it’s all meant to be fun! Thanks for reading, and if you liked this article, be sure to check out our latest post on Tinder Stock for more humor!
Frequently Asked Questions
In internet slang, stonks are deliberate misspellings of stocks. It is often used to refer to such stocks—and finance more generally—humorously or ironically.
Stonks is a fun word that is the intentional misspelling of stocks. It's a slang word for uninformed trading decisions.
Stonks was started by the artist "Special Meme Fresh" in 2017. It's a fun way to refer to the word stock.
The word stonks became popular in 2021 during Covid. It refers to uninformed stock buying purchases from the Reddit community buying shares of companies such as GameStop and AMC.
Stonks is pronounced "St-On-Ks". The pronounciate is focused on the word "On".
