Video game retailer GameStop knocked off Tesla as the most searched-for stock in 2021, as the year of the meme stock comes to a close.
Retail investors searched for companies like GameStop and AMC this year, unseating more traditional investment darlings in the tech sector like Apple and Amazon, Semrush, a software company specializing in online visibility, found.
Here is the list of the most searched-for stocks of 2021:
Retail investors don’t have the help of “analyst research, expensive Bloomberg terminals, Wall Street gossip, and a firm grasp of company financials,” Semrush says in a note, which pushes newly minted (and oftentimes young) investors to turn to Google and social media platforms to determine their stock picks.
In the top 10 most searched-for companies, three did not make the list last year, with no year-on-year comparison available.
Most of the stock’s popularity originates from Reddit, where like-minded investors have come together to squeeze the share price of companies higher. On forum pages like WallStreetBets, Apple, Tesla, and GameStop are still trending, according to Quiver Quantitative, a data analysis platform.
However, enthusiasm for meme stock investing might be waning. The number of comments on the WallStreetBets forum has declined since January—when the GameStop short squeeze was in full swing—with average daily comments dropping from 70,000 to 10,000 since January 2021, Quiver Quantitative found.
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