Surprise New Meme Stock Emerges: Wendy's

Wendy's suddenly has a fan club Wall Street didn't see coming. Shares of the fast-food chain jumped another 9% in premarket trading Thursday, after soaring nearly 26% the day before, as individual investors on Reddit latched onto the stock as their newest cause, reports CNBC. Analysts say the move has little to do with burger sales and a lot to do with meme momentum.

Vanda Research called Wendy's the most extreme example of unusual small-investor buying this week, with purchases running more than seven times typical levels as a "Save Wendy's" push spread across Reddit's WallStreetBets and other forums. One user shared a roughly $350,000 bet on the stock under the headline "$WEN to the moon—350K YOLO," while others urged traders to "pump those numbers up."

The surge followed Wendy's announcement that former Potbelly executive Steven Cirulis would take over as both chief financial officer and chief strategy officer—but the stock's new meme status, not its new finance chief, appears to be doing the heavy lifting. It's similar to what happened to video-game retailer GameStop and cinema chain AMC several years ago, notes Reuters.