Why the election felt like the 2021 meme stock rally — but way bigger

• The US election showed shades of the meme stock mania of early 2021.
• Elon Musk and Mark Cuban featured both times, traders bet big, and young men played key roles.
• "The target list has grown" from hedge funds to the broader establishment, one analyst said.

Elon Musk and Mark Cuban trumpet their picks and excite their followers on social media. Amateur traders scramble to place speculative bets. Disaffected young men post memes to rally support for their revolution against the elites.

That may sound like a description of the frenzied days leading up to the US presidential election this week. It could also describe the meme stock craze of early 2021.

The two events have striking similarities. Both featured celebrity billionaires championing their favorites. Musk tweeted "GameStonk!!" at the height of the short squeeze on GameStop stock in January 2021, then posted "Dogecoin is the people's crypto" a few days later, causing both assets to spike in price.

In September of this year, the Tesla CEO posted on X: "Unless Trump is elected, America will fall to tyranny."

Similarly, in February 2021, Cuban thanked members of Reddit's WallStreetBets forum for "changing the game" and "taking on Wall Street." Two months later, the "Shark Tank" star tweeted that dogecoin was the "one coin that people actually use for transactions."

Cuban threw his weight behind Kamala Harris going into the election, praising the Democratic candidate and criticizing Trump in several since-deleted X posts.

"It's certainly got hallmarks of the kind of vibes-based, personality-based cultish side," Neil Wilson, the chief market analyst at Finalto, told Business Insider about the election conversation this year.

Trading frenzy

Retail traders bet big on both occasions. They piled into beaten-down stocks, SPACs, crypto, and other high-risk assets in early 2021. Similarly, they plowed millions of dollars into Polymarket and other prediction-betting markets before the polls closed and Trump secured victory.

Stars emerged both times. Keith "Roaring Kitty" Gill became the face of the GameStop craze for ostensibly making tens of millions of dollars on the video game retailer's stock. A French trader known as Théo racked up similar profits betting on Trump via Polymarket.

Young men played an outsize role in both sagas. In 2021, they flocked to the WSB subreddit and other social media to share their stock picks, exchange funny memes, and post screenshots of their wins and losses. Their motives ranged from wanting to get rich quickly, to having a laugh, to fighting back against the Wall Street elite they saw as bullying the businesses of their childhood.

Winning men

Men under 30 rallied behind Trump en masse this year, framing his campaign as a common-sense revolution against an oppressive establishment, lying media, and unfair system. Along with memes, they used AI-generated artwork to paint Trump and those around him as superheroes and patriotic titans.

Trump and Musk galvanized young men with X posts, speaking to "manosphere" stars such as Joe Rogan, and promoting traditional masculine ideals. The upshot was a stark shift among men under 30 in favor of Republicans compared to previous elections.

"It is hard not to attribute momentum gains in Trump support among younger male voters to Musk's or Rogan's endorsements," Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert, told BI.

He likened the trend to Musk's touting of dogecoin, which boosted the dog-themed crypto. Wall Street traders watched the swings in election betting markets to assess the state of the presidential race and inform their investments, Malek added.

Memes with meaning

Naeem Aslam, chief investment officer at Zaye Capital Markets, told BI he saw "strong similarities" between the two events but with some twists this time.

"In 2021, WallStreetBets (WSB) aimed at the money bigwigs, rallying against hedge funds. But now, the target list has grown. It's not just Wall Street in the crosshairs. Washington, the media, and what many call the 'establishment' are all fair game," he said.

"The meme-driven buzz from 2021 has returned, but now it's mixed with a strong ideological element making today's speculative scene wider and longer-lasting."

Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social which counts the president-elect as its majority shareholder, unites several of these ideas. It became a proxy for Trump's chances at returning to the White House and has swung dramatically in recent days.

Tesla stock also surged 15% on Wednesday after Trump won, even as other clean-energy stocks tanked in anticipation of a less green administration. Malek said it was clear that "some sort of premium has been placed on the stock as a result of Musk's very public involvement in Trump's campaign."

"Tesla is by no means a meme stock, but its recent move certainly has notes of one," he added.

There are clear parallels between the meme stock mania of early 2021 and the social-media chatter and betting-platform activity going into the election. But it's worth acknowledging the difference in scale and stakes between the two episodes.

"One is selecting someone to run a country and make decisions that will affect millions of people's lives, the other is about a relatively small group of people hoping to make a quick buck," Dan Coatsworth, an investment analyst at AJ Bell, told BI.