Top 100 Funniest Finance Memes & Moments

2020-2021, WallStreetBets

The rallying cry of an entire generation of retail investors who refused to sell no matter what. If your portfolio is down 90%, just hold tighter.

The diamond hands emoji combo became so ubiquitous that financial news anchors started using it on air without irony.

2020

When the Fed fired up the printing press during COVID, the internet responded with a cartoon of Jerome Powell making the printer go brrr while a crying wojak begged him to stop.

The original meme was based on a template called 'Haha Money Printer Go Brrr' and became the single most shared finance meme of the pandemic era.

January 2021

WallStreetBets vs. hedge funds in the trade heard 'round the world. GME went from $17 to $483 and broke the entire financial system for a week.

The GameStop saga spawned a congressional hearing, multiple documentaries, a movie starring Paul Dano, and permanently changed how Wall Street views retail investors.

2017

The low-poly businessman in a suit standing in front of a green arrow going up. One word. No explanation needed. Stonks.

The 'Meme Man' character originated from a Surreal Memes Facebook group, but his finance career as the Stonks guy made him immortal.

January 2021

Keith Gill (aka DeepF***ingValue / Roaring Kitty) said this to Congress with a straight face when asked why he bought GameStop. It became the most iconic four words in retail investing history.

Gill had been posting his GME position updates on Reddit for over a year before the squeeze, turning $53,000 into $48 million.

November 2019

A WallStreetBets user live-streamed himself discovering his Robinhood account was down $50,000 on a leveraged Apple put. The guttural sound he made — 'GUH' — became legend.

The trader had exploited what became known as the 'infinite money glitch' on Robinhood, using leverage on leverage. Robinhood patched it shortly after.

WallStreetBets classic

The go-to response when someone posts an absurdly long or unhinged financial thesis on Reddit. No matter how smart your DD is, sir, this is a Wendy's.

Originally from an Office episode where Michael Scott calls a Wendy's thinking it's a business contact, the phrase became WSB's unofficial motto.

2021

Borrowed from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this became the battle cry for retail investors banding together against institutional short sellers.

The 'ape' identity was so powerful that AMC's CEO Adam Aron started directly addressing shareholders as 'apes' in earnings calls.

2023

Someone literally created an ETF that inverses Jim Cramer's stock picks. The fact that it exists at all is the meme.

The Inverse Cramer ETF (SJIM) launched in March 2023. The companion Long Cramer ETF (LJIM) also existed, because apparently we needed both sides of that bet.

Barstool Sports / Dave Portnoy, 2020

Dave Portnoy declared stocks only go up during the COVID recovery rally, day-trading on camera for Barstool Sports. He was right until he wasn't.

Portnoy famously lost over $700K in a single day on airline stocks, shared the screenshot, and kept trading the next morning.

Timeless

Every 2% pullback in a bull market triggers an avalanche of 'buy the dip' memes. In a bear market, the dip keeps dipping, and the memes get darker.

The phrase dates back decades on Wall Street, but the meme version with the wojak buying progressively lower became a 2020s internet staple.

2021

Every Elon tweet about Doge sent the coin soaring. A single Shiba Inu emoji could move billions in market cap. The SEC was not amused.

Dogecoin hit an all-time high of $0.74 on the day Elon hosted SNL in May 2021, then dropped 30% during the actual show.

2013-present

A cryptocurrency created as a literal joke, based on a Shiba Inu meme, that somehow reached a $90 billion market cap. The joke became the investment.

Dogecoin was created in about 3 hours by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who intended it as a parody of Bitcoin speculation.

WallStreetBets tradition

The proud tradition of posting screenshots of catastrophic portfolio losses for upvotes and awards. The bigger the loss, the more respect you earn.

Some of the most upvoted posts in WallStreetBets history are loss porn, with users losing six and seven figures on options trades.

March 2008

Five days before Bear Stearns collapsed, Cramer told a caller not to pull their money out. The clip has been replayed approximately 47 billion times.

Cramer has argued the clip is taken out of context — he was talking about deposits, not the stock. The internet does not care about context.

WallStreetBets

Putting your entire life savings into weekly out-of-the-money call options and posting the screenshot. Either Lamborghini or ramen. No in-between.

The term YOLO was so commonly used on WSB that the SEC's official GameStop report actually referenced 'YOLO' trading behavior.

Eternal

Alien invasion? Priced in. Sun explodes? Priced in. The ultimate dismissal for any news, good or bad. Everything is always already priced in.

There is a famous copypasta listing increasingly absurd events that are 'priced in,' ending with the heat death of the universe.

WallStreetBets

When your options expire worthless, there's always a career opportunity behind the Wendy's dumpster. The unofficial backup plan for every WSB trader.

Wendy's social media team eventually acknowledged the meme, proving that no brand is safe from the WallStreetBets cinematic universe.

2021

The eloquent, three-word thesis posted every time a heavily shorted stock ticked up even 1%. Shakespeare could never.

Melvin Capital, the hedge fund most associated with the GME short, ultimately shut down in 2022 after losing 39% in January 2021 alone.

2021-present

When people realized Nancy Pelosi's stock trades consistently outperformed the market, tracking her portfolio became both a meme and a legitimate trading strategy.

Multiple apps and Twitter accounts now track congressional stock trades in real-time. The Pelosi tracker has hundreds of thousands of followers.

2021-2022

Cathie Wood's ARK Invest emails showing daily trades became appointment viewing. Buying more TSLA at the top? Classic Cathie.

ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) went from hero to meme as it dropped over 75% from its 2021 peak, making 'Cathie bought the top' a recurring joke.

Every bear market

Stocks down 5%? Healthy pullback. Down 20%? Very healthy pullback. Down 50%? Extremely healthy. The market is doing CrossFit apparently.

Financial advisors saying 'healthy pullback' on CNBC during genuine crashes has become its own drinking game.

Perma-bull classic

Posted after every market crash by someone who definitely did not actually buy. The spiritual cousin of 'buy the dip.'

This phrase peaked during the COVID crash of March 2020, when those who actually did buy the dip were rewarded with one of the fastest recoveries in market history.

2021

Stocks, crypto, NFTs, SPACs, housing — everything was in a bubble simultaneously. The memes wrote themselves when it all popped.

The combined crypto market cap, meme stock valuations, and NFT sales in 2021 created what economists called the broadest speculative mania since the dot-com era.

Crypto / WSB

Down 80%? Trust the process. Rug pulled? Trust the process. CEO arrested? Trust. The. Process.

Originally a Philadelphia 76ers basketball slogan, finance Twitter adopted it for diamond-handing positions that were clearly not going to work out.