Original|Odaily Planet Daily(@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser2010 )
"Are you okay? Okay? Okay? Then eat some Liuliumei!"
Once upon a time, a brainwashing commercial line from actress Yang Mi brought Liuliumei into thousands of households. Today, after decades of accumulation, the company behind it finally officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the "first stock of plum snacks" on HKEx. It is reported that its issue price was HKD 43.58, the opening price was HKD 95, a surge of approximately 116% from the offering price of HKD 42; the intraday high reached HKD 127.50, an increase of over 190%; it has now pulled back to HKD 125, still up over 186%.
But contrary to many expectations, the stock price surge of Liuliumei (06658.HK) is not a revival of the concepts of "new consumption, new retail, new snacks." Instead, its name initials coincidentally align with the hot topic of "LLM" (Large Language Model), riding on the wave of today's 45% surge in Zhipu AI (02513.HK).
Many call it an "authentic AI Large Language Model stock," attracting countless hot money and capital inflows. Whether acknowledged or not, global stock markets may be entering the "Stock Meme-ification Era."
The New Era of Global Stock Markets: When Stocks Collide with Memes
First, the basics of Liuliumei's IPO: This was Liuliumei's fourth attempt at a capital market listing.
In 2019, its attempt to list on the A-share market failed; in 2025, its two applications to list on HKEx lapsed; it wasn't until May 21 this year, after updating its listing application materials for the third time and changing its main entity name from "Liuliumei Group Co., Ltd." to "Liuliumei Co., Ltd.," that it successfully listed in less than a month. It must be said, sometimes naming can be a mysterious thing.
According to the company's allocation results announcement, the public offering portion of this IPO recorded an oversubscription of approximately 6586.73 times. The final number of shares offered publicly was 1.1465 million, accounting for approximately 10% of the total global offering. There were approximately 180,500 valid applications received, with about 11,465 applications accepted. The ratio of allotment for one lot application was only 1.5%, meaning the one-lot winning rate was as low as 1.5%, indicating extremely fierce competition for subscription. Regarding the international placement, Liuliumei received a subscription of 2.64 times. The final number of international offering shares was 10.3176 million, accounting for 90% of the total offering shares. Comparing this data, the popularity of Liuliumei's IPO has surpassed that of "the first stock of milk tea stores by outlet number" Mixue Ice City, which listed on HKEx in March last year with a public offering oversubscription multiple of 5258.21 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 free market play of "retail investors and market makers dancing together." And this is precisely the power of "Meme stocks"—transforming the attention attracted by memes into buying power in the capital market.
Some netizens even compared Liuliumei's opening performance to SpaceX, finding its market gains far more dazzling.
It is worth mentioning that "Meme stocks" is not a new term that recently appeared; they are an objectively existing category of stocks in major capital markets like the US, Hong Kong, and A-shares. However, the "Stock Meme-ification Era" is undoubtedly the latest trend emerging in the past 1-2 years, and its driving factors are also somewhat related to the crypto market.
The earliest Meme stocks are untraceable, so we'll only discuss some representative individual stock targets in recent years.
2021's Gamestop might be the starting point of Meme stock enlightenment for many in the US market. Led by well-known retail investors like Roaring Kitty, global retail investors united against Wall Street institutional capital, forcing a short squeeze that led many brokerage platforms and exchanges to "pull the plug" to avoid the storm. Recently, rumors of Gamestop acquiring eBay also caused market fluctuations and a temporary surge in its stock price.
Tesla and the recently IPO'd SpaceX have also been viewed as a type of Meme stock because both companies and stocks are strongly associated and deeply bound with the highly topical "world's first trillionaire" Elon Musk. Before the companies' businesses provided strong performance proof, they were considered "narrative-driven companies with sky-high dream valuations."
Before Donald Trump won the US presidential election in 2024, the A-share market had already started moving. "Chuanda Zhisheng" frequently topped platform trending lists and even experienced multiple limit-up days. That year, during Trump's campaign, an assassination attempt left his ear scratched by flying glass from a bullet. Stock "Goertek" (homophone for "cut ear") was also affected and saw a surge during trading.
Last year, when Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations deteriorated, the defense stock "Furi Shares" experienced a dramatic stock price surge due to the patriotic homophone pun "capturing Japan" (孚日 sounds like 'capture Japan'), pulling up for eight consecutive trading days, with cumulative gains exceeding 100%, becoming one of the short-term "monster stocks" in the A-share market.
In today's capital markets, similar to the crypto market with its fragmented attention and concentrated emotions, individual stock targets and sector themes that can spark the widest discussion and attention have become "attention foci" that stir up funds and liquidity.
Liuliumei's surge is also a prime example of the "Stock Meme-ification" era.
The Stock Meme-ification Era Begins: Homophone Puns, Abbreviations, AI Era Dividends
As the valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic rise close to the trillion-dollar scale, companies and stocks related to the AI industry chain—such as optics, communications, materials, and computing power—have successively entered an explosive growth period:
- 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 bullish price targets;
- The stock price fluctuations of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics dictate the rises and falls of South Korea's KOSPI index;
- A single statement from Nvidia's founder 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 issues as "Inno Laser," causing the latter's stock price to surge 10% due to an influx of 300 million hot money.
In the great tide of the "Stock Meme-ification" era, being associated with AI,蹭上 (catching the heat) of "large language models," having homophones with popular targets, or receiving mentions from celebrities have all become reasons for market attention and the best stage for the simultaneous influx of attention and capital.
"Trump concept stocks," "US stock government concept stocks," "TACO-style trading beneficiary targets," etc., are also manifestations of this industry trend. This is precisely the common play in the "attention-intensive industry" highly advocated by the crypto market—the Meme coin sector.
However, the capital markets are different now, the market rules are different, and the scale of funds and liquidity is also incomparable to the crypto market. After all, compared to the trading scale of the US, Hong Kong, A-share, and Japan/South Korea stock markets, the crypto market's total size of less than $3 trillion looks somewhat pitiful.
SpaceX, upon listing, immediately jumped into the top 10 of global major asset rankings. In contrast, BTC has fallen to the 17th position on that list. It must be said, numerical comparisons always look this cruel—over a decade of diligent development in the crypto industry is worth less than the market cap of one company's IPO.
Now, the emergence and increase of Meme stocks may have become an industry trend. The earlier incident where Joyoung Company produced corresponding products and saw its stock price rise due to the viral meme "North-South Mung Beans Hachimi" already illustrates one thing: for the younger generation and investor groups in today's society, investment targets that can trigger emotional fluctuations, attract market attention, and stir liquidity are more worthy of buying.
Even if this fleeting chasing sentiment is just a momentary frenzy, 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, such as wealth creation effects or industry booms. Sometimes, this process is accompanied by negative phenomena like pump-and-dump schemes, one-sided harvesting, and emotional marketing.
Just like Liuliumei's opening surge, some angrily criticize it as a "pump to dump" scheme; others analyze that perhaps it's because Liuliumei joined the "Stock Connect" program, allowing A-share market funds to buy in, that pushed its stock price up. The truth and reasons are certainly multidimensional and chaotic. For us, perhaps all we can do is go with the flow of this era and find our own path to prosperity.
