As Reddit lastly recordsdata to go public, the corporate wrote in its S-1 submitting that “meme inventory” schemes on r/WallStreetBets might pose a threat to traders.

The subreddit r/WallStreetBets, a neighborhood of retail merchants with 15 million members, describes itself as being “like 4chan discovered a Bloomberg Terminal.” It’s most well-known for coordinating a brief squeeze on GameStop inventory in 2021, a rebellious transfer that value hedge funds billions of {dollars}. The inventory was so risky, leaping greater than 600% inside days, that buying and selling was halted a number of instances. Retail merchants tried to duplicate the GameStop saga by investing in different closely shorted shares like AMC and Mattress, Bathtub & Past, solidifying this phenomenon of buying and selling “meme shares,” to blended outcomes.

In its S-1 submitting, the corporate wrote: “Given the broad consciousness and model recognition of Reddit, together with on account of the recognition of r/wallstreetbets amongst retail traders, and the direct entry by retail traders to broadly accessible buying and selling platforms, the market worth and buying and selling quantity of our Class A typical inventory might expertise excessive volatility for causes unrelated to our underlying enterprise or macroeconomic or business fundamentals, which might trigger you to lose all or a part of your funding in case you are unable to promote your shares at or above the preliminary providing worth.”

For Redditors who deal with retail investing like a type of web trolling, Reddit’s IPO could possibly be the last word meme. The corporate additionally wrote in its IPO submitting that it’ll invite Reddit customers and moderators to purchase inventory in its directed share program. This can be a uncommon transfer that will let neighborhood members purchase inventory on the identical worth as institutional traders upon IPO. Individuals can be granted precedence based mostly on their karma, which is a approach of measuring neighborhood contributions on Reddit.

However one more threat issue for traders is that Reddit “might not have the ability to obtain or keep profitability sooner or later,” it writes within the S-1. Regardless of its prominence in web tradition, Reddit has failed to show a revenue. In 2023, Reddit incurred a web lack of $90.8 million, including to the corporate’s cumulative deficit of $716.6 million.