Until recently, the concept of taking someone or something viral was mostly reserved for content creators and influencers on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc. However, last month, the phenomenon took on new life, as millions of users on Reddit and Discord effectively took this playbook to the stock market.

A number of years ago, I brought up a stock idea to our investment team because it looked undervalued to me at around $20. It had tumbled from the mid-50s a year or so earlier and was selling at a low price-to-earnings ratio. Due to the fact the S&P 500 had been rising for years, even back then, it was increasingly hard to find undervalued securities, but this company superficially appeared to qualify. The rest of my investment team was unimpressed, however.