NEW YORK (AP) — A resurgence of meme stock interest has prompted the return of a one-stop fund for the volatile and quirky investments.
Roundhill Investments is launching a meme ETF, which is an exchange-traded fund consisting solely of meme stocks. Several of those stocks have ridden a wave of meme investment sentiment this year. The move comes two years after the provider of ETFs closed the fund because of slumping interest. The new fund trades under the “MEME” symbol.
Investors have been sporadically turning to meme stocks throughout 2025 in an effort to find bargains amid a very pricey stock market. The S&P 500 has had a busy year setting records. That has made it more difficult for investors to find stocks at lower prices that have potential for growth.
“Meme stocks started as a rebellion but have grown into a revolution,” said Dave Mazza, CEO of Roundhill Investments. "With MEME, we offer investors a tool to capture that power through an actively managed ETF that can rotate quickly into the stocks dominating the conversation today.”
The biggest weight in the ETF is Opendoor Technologies, which has had a volatile year. The real estate company’s stock was trading below $1 per share through early July, then surged above $3 that month as hedge fund manager Eric Jackson touted the stock on X. It fell back a bit, then gained more steam and closed above $9 on Tuesday.
Other heavyweights in the index include Plug Power, which focuses on hydrogen fuel cell technology, and data center company Applied Digital.
Meme stocks include companies with financial prospects that appear dim, but then gain ground for no seemingly fundamental reason. The stock gains are often fueled by online forums.
The stocks are often the target of “short sellers,” or investors betting against the stock. That sometimes prompts other investors to start buying the stock in an effort to get the people betting against the stock to do the same in order to cushion their own losses. This starts a cycle that further boosts the stock price.
It's a risky strategy and the gains can evaporate as quickly as they came.
Some of the more well-known meme stocks making big moves earlier this year included doughnut maker Krispy Kreme, camera maker GoPro and plant-based meat maker Beyond Meat.
The original meme stock is GameStop. In 2021, the company was struggling to survive and major investors were betting against the video game retailer. Investor Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty,” rallied other investors to join him in buying up thousands of GameStop shares, changing the trajectory of the stock.
FILE - Pedestrians pass a GameStop store on 14th Street at Union Square, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
FILE - Shown are Beyond Meat Beyond Burger packages at a store in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
MILAN (AP) — Milan’s storied Teatro alla Scala celebrates its gala season premiere Sunday with a Russian opera for the second time since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year, instead of drawing protests for showcasing the invader’s culture, a flash mob will demonstrate for peace.
La Scala’s music director Riccardo Chailly will conduct Dmitry Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” for the gala season opener that draws luminaries from culture, business and politics for one of the most anticipated events of the European cultural calendar.
Shostakovich's 1934 opera highlights the condition of women in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and was blacklisted just days after the communist leader saw a performance in 1936, the threshold year of his campaign of political repression known as the Great Purge.
The Italian liberal party +Europa announced a demonstration outside the theater as dignitaries arrive “to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by Putin’s Russia, and to support the Ukrainian people.’’
The party underlined that Shostakovich's opera exposes the abuse of power and the role of personal resistance.
Due to security concerns, authorities moved the protest from the square facing La Scala, to another behind City Hall.
Chailly began working with Russian stage director Vasily Barkhatov on the title about two years ago, following the 2022 gala season premiere of the Russian opera “Boris Godunov,” which was attended by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, both of whom separated Russia’s politicians from its culture.
But outside the Godunov premiere, Ukrainians protested against highlighting Russian culture during a war rooted in the denial of a unique Ukrainian culture. The Ukrainian community did not announce any separate protests this year.
Chailly called the staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth" at La Scala for just the fourth time “a must.’’
“It is an opera that has long suffered, and needs to make up for lost time,’’ Chailly told a news conference last month.
La Scala’s new general manager, Fortunato Ortombina, defended the choices made by his predecessor to stage both Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth” and Modest Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov " at the theater best known for its Italian repertoire, but which has in recent years showcased other traditions.
‘‘Music is fundamentally superior to any ideological conflict,’’ Ortombina said on the sidelines of the press conference. “Shostakovich, and Russian music more broadly, have an authority over the Russian people that exceeds Putin's own.’’
American soprano Sara Jakubiak is making her La Scala debut in the title role of Katerina, whose struggle against existential repression leads her to commit murder, landing her in a Siberian prison where she dies. It’s the second time Jakubiak has sung the role, after performances in Barcelona last year, and she said Shostakovich's Katerina is full of challenges.
“That I’m a murderess, that I’m singing 47 high B flats in one night, you know, all these things,’’ Jakubiak said while sitting in the makeup chair ahead of the Dec. 4 preview performance to an audience of young people. “You go, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I do this?’ But you manage, with the right kind of work, the right team of people. Yes, we’re just going to go for the ride.”
Speaking to journalists recently, Chailly joked that he was “squeezing” Jakubiak like an orange. Jakubiak said she found common ground with the conductor known for his studious approach to the original score and composer’s intent.
“Whenever I prepare a role, it’s always the text and the music and the text and the rhythms,'' she said. “First, I do this process with, you know, a cup of coffee at my piano and then we add the other layers and then the notes. So I guess we’re actually somewhat similar in that regard.''
Jakubiak, best known for Strauss and Wagner, has a major debut coming in July when she sings her first Isolde in concert with Anthony Pappano and the London Symphony.
Barkhatov, who has a flourishing international career, called the choice of “Lady Macbeth,” “very brave and exciting.”
Barkhatov's stage direction sets the opera in a cosmopolitan Russian city in the 1950s, the end of Stalin’s regime, rather than a 19th-century rural village as written for the 1930s premier.
For Barkhatov, Stalin’s regime defines the background of the story and the mentality of the characters for a story he sees as a personal tragedy and not a political tale. Most of the action unfolds inside a restaurant appointed in period Art Deco detail, with a rotating balustrade creating a kitchen, a basement and an office where interrogations take place.
Despite the tragic arc, Barkhatov described the story as “a weird … breakthrough to happiness and freedom.’’
“Sadly, the statistics show that a lot of people die on their way to happiness and freedom,’’ he added.
Stage director Vasily Barkhatov sits during an interview with The Associated Press prior to the dressed rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
A wig receives final touches ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
External view of Teatro all Scala ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Soprano Sara Jakubiak has her makeup done ahead of the dress rehearsal of Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
The stage is prepared ahead of the dressed rehearsal of the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, by Dmitri Shostakovich, at La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
