Meme stocks are back, and leverage is driving

The meme machine is humming again

Since markets bottomed in late March, the Roundhill Meme Stock ETF has ripped 82%, leaving the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 in the dust. In other words: the “risk-on” crowd didn’t just show up — it kicked the door open and started moving like it had a margin account and a Red Bull sponsorship.

Why the wild stuff is winning

Goldman Sachs says retail trading volumes are up 28% since mid-April, and margin debt is sitting at a record $1.3 trillion. That’s the kind of number that makes investors sit up straight, because borrowed money tends to amplify everything — gains, losses, and collective bad decisions.

The ETF’s biggest winners read like a power-user starter pack:

• Applied Optoelectronics surged as AI data-center spending kept the optics trade hot.
• SanDisk rode the memory supercycle.
• Bloom Energy got a lift from a Q1 double beat and a bigger 2026 revenue guide.

The catch: these stocks can fall harder too

Goldman’s real warning is that retail-heavy stocks don’t just pop more on good news. They also tend to get punched harder when earnings disappoint. In the firm’s sample of S&P 500 earnings since 2021, stocks with the highest retail trading share dropped an average of 2.8 percentage points the day after a negative surprise, versus 1.7 points for the least retail-owned names.

That’s the trapdoor under this whole rally. If you’re chasing the meme basket with borrowed money, the upside can look genius right up until the moment the market decides it wants its jokes back.

Big picture: this isn’t just a cute meme-stock revival — it’s a leverage-fueled risk appetite story, and those usually end the same way: very fast, very messy, and very expensive for the last people in the door.