Shuli Ren

Meme mania is sweeping through the US stock market again, but this time it's trillion-dollar companies that can distort and sink entire equity markets, says Shuli Ren for Bloomberg Opinion.

Does it make sense to amplify exposure to a cyclical stock that is perhaps at an inflection point? This is the question that those bullish on memory chipmakers must ask themselves.

Meme mania swept through Wall Street in 2021. Retail investors gathered on social media and coordinated trading strategies to short squeeze high-profile hedge funds. Their success was more than financial; it was hailed as a David versus Goliath battle, a victory for the underdogs that toppled the almighty.

Michael Burry of The Big Short fame doesn’t buy the narrative that memory chipmakers have entered a supercycle. He has a point.

MICHAEL Burry of The Big Short fame doesn't buy the narrative that memory chipmakers have entered a supercycle. He has a point.

Can the circle be unbroken? Despite record earnings, the world’s largest memory chipmakers still have to prove that they’ve escaped the boom-and-bust cycles long known to the industry.

Talk about K-power. South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc. has raised $26.5 billion from the US stock market, the biggest first-time share sale by a foreign company. The question now is whether the trillion-dollar firm can satisfy competing demands from exacting stakeholders.

The chipmaker’s blockbuster US listing signals South Korea’s arrival on the global economic stage, but retail investors should tread carefully, says Shuli Ren for Bloomberg Opinion.

Don’t you feel bad for South Koreans who lost their shirts even as their national champion SK Hynix Inc. raised $26.5 billion from a blockbuster US listing? It’s the single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds that did them in.

Investors love an oligopoly. Imagine an industry dominated by a few large, long-standing players. They can earn outsized profits in boom times and avoid crashes thanks to rational capital spending. The existential questions, though, are whether these firms might turn on each other, and is the industry’s entry barrier high enough.