The Federal Reserve’s signal that it could eventually raise interest rates — though not anytime soon — isn’t likely to stop the rise of meme stocks, analysts and investors said.
In fact, there’s not much the Fed will do that will affect meme stocks at all, market players told The Post.
“The ‘meme stock’ phenomenon has as much to do with gambling and ‘sticking it’ to the traditional Wall Street narrative and I don’t think that would be affected by actions of the Fed,” Ian Rosen, a partner at TIFIN Partners told The Post.
So for now, meme investors are likely to continue to pile in whatever the Reddit boards tell them to — most recently this week, Bed Bath and Beyond, which joined the ranks of AMC Theatres and Game Stop as the next darling of the Internet crowd.
The long-battered brick-and-mortar retailer rose nearly 60 percent over the week after it was picked as the next stock to be targeted by the retail investing crowd. (It’s still down about 50 percent over a five-year time frame.)
Another meme darling, AMC Entertainment, rose 17 percent over the past week — and is up almost 2,000 percent so far this year. Game Stop, meanwhile, the original Reddit board favorite, rose 14 percent over the week; it’s up more than 1,100 percent over the past year.
The broader stock market also climbed this week, hitting all-time closing records along the way: The S&P 500 closed up 2 percent on the week, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1 percent.
Some market watchers said stocks could face choppy waters over the next few months as the Fed begins tapering its $120 billion in monthly bond buys given the uncertainty of how that will affect markets overall.
But meme stocks likely will be insulated from any Fed-related ripples, they said.
“I don’t think meme stocks would be affected by actions of the Fed,” former StockTwits CEO Ian Rosen told The Post.
Rosen said meme stocks essentially function in an alternate universe — not buffeted by the news flow.
“People wish it was true that meme stocks would take a hit on The Fed news,” one hedge fund manager told The Post. “Investors want that volatility to stop happening, but I don’t think tapering is the thing that’ll do it,” he said of the up-and-down swings in Internet-board darlings.
