The newest 'meme stock'... The signal for the market... Duck tales... SK Hynix is coming to America... South Korea loves leverage... The Iran war unwind is complete... A whole new ball game...
Long live the junior bacon cheeseburger...
In another sign of today's market sentiment, we have a new "meme stock" to report...
It's one near to my (Corey McLaughlin's) heart, given the number of junior bacon cheeseburgers and five-piece chicken nuggets I ate as a younger man.
Fast-food joint Wendy's (WEN) is enjoying the full WallStreetBets treatment – a la GameStop's (GME) short squeeze of 2021. Wendy's shares were up by as much as 40% this morning, before trading was temporarily halted for high volume. Shares closed today roughly 26% higher.
Over the past five years, Wendy's stock has fallen by more than 70%. It hit a 13-year low yesterday. But the company hired a new CEO, Bob Wright, last month, and announced a new chief financial officer, Steve Cirulis, yesterday. Both Wright and Cirulis worked at fast-casual sandwich restaurant Potbelly Sandwich Works.
The executives helped Potbelly shares rise by 500% during their time together before the company was acquired by RaceTrac in 2025. Now, they're charged with turning Wendy's debt-laden business around.
These moves – and the plight of the company – have drawn the attention of Redditors who are willing to gamble and are fond of the brand and its left-for-dead stock. But, at least today, the thesis isn't driven by any measurable financial logic...
Fast-food companies have been facing a lot of challenges in recent years, like price pressures and shifting consumer tastes. Still, I was a bit surprised to see Wendy's targeted for "dumb money" bets like GameStop, AMC Entertainment (AMC), and BlackBerry (BB) once were.
Wendy's has around 7,000 restaurants globally and about 5,600 in the U.S. I still visit occasionally, though now that I think about it, I rarely see a lot of other people there.
Herein lies the problem...
As Stansberry's Investment Advisory lead editor Whitney Tilson pointed out in his free daily e-letter today, the company generates a consistent $200 million in free cash flow, which it mainly uses to pay a 9% dividend to shareholders.
But Wendy's "main problem is the balance sheet, which is saddled with around $4 billion of net debt," Whitney wrote. He continued...
At this morning's price around $8, the stock is trading at roughly 14 times this year's estimates.
While that's below the 10-year average forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of 25.1 times, it's not cheap in light of the company's struggles.
I think this stock is interesting at $6, not $8. So let's see if today's foolishness fades...
We've seen companies in worse shape. But, as much as we want to see the company and its food survive (health consequences aside), we wouldn't recommend joining the Reddit gamblers on this one unless you're prepared to lose what you put into it.
Wendy's stock has a Stansberry Score of 53 out of 100, which includes an "F" grade for valuation.
As for the signal to take from this? It's another sign of bullish market sentiment.
This isn't close to the euphoria of meme stocks in 2021, which turned out to be a peak for tech stocks generally. But when Reddit folks have shown this sort of interest in single stocks since then, it typically has coincided with greedy times... followed by a breather for the overcrowded trades of the day.
Today, that would be AI and semiconductors. For a second straight trading session, these names took a breather. The tech sector of the S&P 500 and the VanEck Semiconductor Fund (SMH) were down slightly on a day when the major indexes were mixed.
But, still, the ducks are quacking...
We've written recently about quacking ducks. It's a reference to an old Wall Street adage, as our Dan Ferris explains...
When the ducks quack, feed 'em.
It's a bit of contrarian advice... Essentially, it's counseling investors to take the other side of a trade when crazed speculators clamor loudly – like ducks – for a particular security, pushing its valuation to absurd extremes.
Retail traders throwing money into a nonsensical bet on a favorite fast-food restaurant is one thing, but there are other bigger duck tales we can tell you about...
For example, Elon Musk's rocket/satellite/AI company SpaceX (SPCX) has had zero problems finding buyers for that bond sale we said we would take a pass on. It raised $25 billion in debt less than two weeks after raising $85 billion in its initial public offering.
SpaceX's stock price – down around 30% from its post-debut high – implies a $2 trillion valuation for the business. And the stock is about to be thrust into millions of investors' retirement funds and passive index funds, whether anyone wants it or not.
Elsewhere, South Korean semiconductor and memory chip maker SK Hynix, now the country's largest company, is planning to list shares in the U.S. on the Nasdaq exchange – via American depositary receipts – as soon as July 10. The company plans to issue almost 18 million new shares at a value of around $29 billion.
As we mentioned yesterday, SK Hynix shares have been leading a "Melt Up" in the South Korean stock market, which it dominates along with Samsung and Micron Technology.
SK Hynix stock accounts for roughly 40% of the South Korean benchmark index, and its shares are now up 340% in 2026, compared with 250% a month ago. What's the latest catalyst? Well, leverage...
If you think Americans like to speculate, check out South Korea...
The latest run-up in South Korean stocks can, in part, be chalked up to last month's launch of nearly a dozen Korean-listed leveraged exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") with exposure to SK Hynix or Samsung. Not only that, but Koreans are also using more and more margin to buy these ETFs, as Sherwood Media reported yesterday...
Data from the Korea Financial Investment Association shows that margin loans have been going straight up and to the right. Total assets in 11 Korean-listed ETFs that boast single-stock leveraged exposure to Samsung or SK Hynix in their fund names are up from under $3 billion since their launches less than a month ago, touching north of $10 billion heading into the most recent session.
Margin debt used to buy South Korean stocks hit a record level this month.
The unwind could be painful if – or when – it happens. Yesterday's 10% slip in South Korean stocks, which spilled over to the U.S. markets and various AI and semiconductor names, is an example.
Now, SK Hynix is seeking out tens of billions of U.S. dollars and weaving itself into U.S. markets more than ever before. Beware. As we shared via Dan a few weeks ago in a classic essay, "it's better to feed the ducks than be one."
The deck is cleared...
Underpinning today's jovial market is the apparent resolution to the war in Iran...
As of today, Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate prices are back where they were just before the war started. All the price hikes have been erased. The worst-case, extended, elevated price outcomes are off the table. For now.
As we quickly near the mid-point of the year, it's a whole new ball game. The market is on to the "next thing," which just might be what the Federal Reserve does – or doesn't – do about inflation.
Futures traders are giving a rate hike at the Fed's next meeting in July a 34% chance, and a roughly 65% shot by September. But that could change.
If the worst impacts of the war really are in the rear view, the pace of inflation should come down in the months ahead... giving new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh reason to hold rates where they are, and maybe eventually even lower them.
In any case, if the market finds reasons to back off rate-hike expectations in the second half of the year, it could be a tailwind for stocks... serve as even more feed for duck tales... and fuel the next leg of a bull market.
New 52-week highs (as of 6/23/26): Hawthorn Bancshares (HWBK), iShares Biotechnology Fund (IBB), LXP Industrial Trust (LXP), Travelers (TRV), and Invesco DB U.S. Dollar Index Bullish Fund (UUP).
A quiet mailbag today... Let us know what's on your mind at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin with Nick Koziol
Baltimore, Maryland
June 24, 2026
