“Investomania”
The SEC branded its public service campaign “Investomania,” a portmanteau of “invest” and a psychological condition commonly symptomatic of bipolar disorder that results in delusions and varied degrees of personal recklessness. This poor branding decision isn’t necessarily what triggered investors (though it otherwise didn’t help). It was the agency’s targeting of “memestocks,” and the implication that trading in them is, ipso facto, poor decision-making, which sparked outrage on FinTwit, a.k.a. Financial Twitter, and investor-meme-sodden subreddits like r/Superstonk.
