Original|Odaily Planet Daily(@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser2010 )
"Are you okay? Are you okay? If you're okay, have some Liuliu Mei!"
Once upon a time, a catchy slogan from actress Yang Mi brought Liuliu Mei into countless households. Now, after decades of accumulation, the company behind it has officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today, becoming the "first plum snack stock" on the market. It is reported that its issue price was 43.58 HKD, opening at 95 HKD, a surge of about 116% from the offering price of 42 HKD; it reached an intraday high of 127.50 HKD, a gain of over 190%; it has since retreated to 125 HKD, still up over 186%.
Contrary to what many expected, the sharp rise in Liuliu Mei's (06658.HK) stock price is not a revival of "new consumption, new retail, new snacks" concepts. Instead, it's because its initials coincidentally match "LLM" (Large Language Model), riding the wave of today's 45% surge by Zhipu AI (02513.HK).
Many have dubbed it the "authentic AI Large Language Model stock," attracting a flood of hot money and capital. Whether acknowledged or not, perhaps global stock markets are entering the "Stock Meme-fication Era."
A New Era for Global Stock Markets: When Stocks Collide with Memes
First, let's look at the basics of Liuliu Mei's IPO: This marks its fourth attempt to enter the capital market.
In 2019, its attempt to list on the A-share market was unsuccessful; in 2025, its two applications to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange lapsed; it wasn't until May 21 this year, after updating its filing for the third time and changing its entity name from "Liuliu Mei Group Co., Ltd." to "Liuliu Mei Co., Ltd.," that it succeeded in listing in less than a month. It must be said, sometimes a name can indeed seem like a mystical force.
According to the company's allocation results, the public offering portion of this IPO recorded approximately 6,586.73 times oversubscription. The final number of public offering shares was 1.1465 million, accounting for about 10% of the total global offering. It received approximately 180,500 valid applications, with about 11,465 applications accepted. The ratio for allocating one board lot was only 1.5%, meaning the probability of getting one lot was as low as 1.5%, indicating extremely fierce competition. For the international placement, Liuliu Mei received 2.64 times subscription. The final number of international offering shares was 10.3176 million, accounting for 90% of the total offering shares. Comparing this data, the heat of Liuliu Mei's IPO has surpassed that of Mixue Bingcheng, the "first bubble tea store chain stock" listed in Hong Kong last March, whose Hong Kong public offering was oversubscribed 5,258.21 times.
In other words, institutions were not optimistic but held 90% of the shares; retail investors were optimistic but only held 10% of the shares. The main driving force behind the opening surge came more from the open market's "dance between retail investors and market makers." And this is precisely the power of a "Meme stock"—converting the attention attracted by the meme into buying pressure in the capital market.
Some netizens even compared Liuliu Mei's opening performance to SpaceX's, finding its market gains far more dazzling.
It's worth noting that "Meme stocks" are not a new term but an objectively existing category in major capital markets like the US, Hong Kong, and A-shares. However, the "Stock Meme-fication Era" is undoubtedly the latest trend emerging in the last 1-2 years, driven in part by factors also related to the crypto market.
The earliest Meme stocks are lost to history, so let's discuss some representative individual stocks from recent years.
2021's Gamestop might be the starting point for many people's Meme stock enlightenment in the US market. Led by figures like Roaring Kitty, retail investors worldwide united against Wall Street institutions, forcing a short squeeze that led many brokerages and exchanges to halt trading to avoid the storm. Recently, news of Gamestop's potential acquisition of eBay also caused market fluctuations and a brief price spike.
Tesla and the recently IPOed SpaceX have also been viewed as a type of Meme stock, as these companies and their stocks are deeply tied to the highly topical "world's first trillionaire," Elon Musk. Before their businesses could provide strong performance proof, they were seen as "narrative-driven companies with sky-high price-to-dream ratios."
Before Donald Trump won the US presidential election in 2024, the A-share market showed early anomalies. "Chuanda Zhisheng" frequently topped trending lists, even hitting the daily limit up multiple times. That same year, when Trump was shot during his campaign, with his ear injured by shattered glass from a stray bullet, Goertek (whose Chinese name sounds like "cut ear") also saw its stock price surge during the session.
Last year, when Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated, defense stock Furihong briefly soared due to a patriotic pun where its name sounds like "capture Japan," pulling eight consecutive daily limit-ups and accumulating over 100% gains, becoming one of the short-term "hot stocks" in the A-share market.
Today's capital market, much like the crypto market with its fragmented attention and concentrated emotions, sees individual stocks and sectors that can trigger the widest discussion and attention becoming the "attention focal points" that stir funds and liquidity.
Liuliu Mei's surge is another example of the "Stock Meme-fication" era.
The Dawn of the Stock Meme-fication Era: Puns, Abbreviations, and the AI Era Dividend
With OpenAI and Anthropic's valuations nearing the trillion-dollar mark, companies and stocks closely related to the AI industry chain—including optics, communications, materials, and computing power—have entered an explosive phase:
- NVIDIA became the first listed company with a market cap exceeding $5 trillion.
- Micron, SanDisk, etc., saw their stock prices break new highs consecutively, with institutions raising their target prices.
- SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics' price fluctuations dictate the rise and fall of South Korea's KOSPI index.
- NVIDIA founder's comment about "seeing Marvell as a future trillion-dollar giant" caused Marvell (MRVL) stock to rise accordingly.
- Innolight (Zhongji Xuchuang) mentioned by the new stock god Serenity was misread due to translation as Inno Laser, causing the latter's stock price to surge 10% after 300 million in hot money flooded in.
In the great tide of "Stock Meme-fication," being related to AI,蹭上 (riding on) "large language model"热度 (heat), having homophones with popular stocks, or getting mentions from celebrities have all become reasons for market attention and the perfect stage for synchronized attention and capital influx.
"Trump concept stocks," "U.S. stock government concept stocks," "TACO-style trading beneficiary targets," etc., are also连带表现 (associated manifestations) of this industry trend. And this is precisely the common玩法 (playbook) of the "attention-intensive industry" highly推崇 (advocated) by the crypto market—the Meme coin赛道 (track).
However, the capital markets are different now, the rules are different, and the scale of funds and liquidity is also incomparable to the crypto market. After all, compared to the trading scales of the US, Hong Kong, A-share, Japanese, and Korean markets, the crypto market's overall size of less than $3 trillion seems somewhat pitiful.
SpaceX一跃成为 (leapt to become) a top 10 global asset upon its IPO, while相对地 (in contrast), BTC has fallen to the 17th position on that list. It must be said,数字层面 (on a numerical level)的对比 (comparisons) always look so残酷 (harsh)—over a decade of diligent development in the crypto industry couldn't match the市值体量 (market cap scale) of a single company's IPO.
Now, the emergence and increase of Meme stocks might have become an industry trend. Earlier, when Joyoung Company produced对应产品 (corresponding products) and saw its stock price rise due to the hot梗 (meme) "Hakimi North-South Mung Beans," it说明了一件事 (illustrated one thing): for the young demographic and investor群体 (groups) in today's society, investment targets that can trigger emotional波动 (fluctuations), attract market attention, and stir liquidity are more值得买入 (worth buying) objects.
Even if this短暂追逐情绪 (brief chase of emotions) is only temporary火热 (hot), for most people, "if you can't beat them, join them" is the better choice. Of course, objectively speaking, the emergence of Meme stocks does not mean one-sided benefits, like wealth creation effects or industry booms; sometimes, this process is also accompanied by negative phenomena like pump-and-dumps, one-sided harvesting, and emotional marketing.
Just like Liuliu Mei's opening surge, some angrily accuse it of拉高 (pumping the price) to "harvest韭菜 (retail investors)"; others分析认为 (analyze and believe) it might be because Liuliu Mei joined the "Stock Connect," allowing A-share market funds to buy, which pushed up its stock price. The truth, the reasons, are必定是 (certainly) multidimensional and chaotic. For us, perhaps all we can do is顺应 (go with) this trend of the times and寻找 (seek) our own path to致富 (wealth).
