Wendy's Is a Meme Stock Now and Honestly It Makes Sense
44% short interest, a 7.5% dividend, a new turnaround CFO, and one r/wallstreetbets thread with 23,000 upvotes. The Save Wendy's trade was inevitable.
In late June a thread titled Save Wendy's went viral on r/wallstreetbets, 23,000 upvotes and climbing, and WEN did what heavily shorted names do when the internet decides to adopt them: up roughly 25% in a session, another 10% pre-market the next day. Vanda Research flagged it as one of the most extreme cases of abnormal retail buying on record.
Here is the thing the finance-brained crowd keeps missing about this one: the meme case and the fundamental case are the same case. Short interest near 44% of the float. A 7.5% dividend yield that pays you to hold the line. A new CFO, Steve Cirulis, with an actual turnaround on his resume. This is not GameStop 2021, where the thesis was spite. This is spite plus a dividend.
Our house read: squeezes built on real yield and real short interest last longer than squeezes built on nostalgia, and they hurt the shorts more, because there is no obvious moment when the music stops. You can be early, you can be late, but the borrow fee is forever.
None of this is advice. All of it is entertainment. Most of it is a warning.