Internet Up In Arms Over SEC 'Memestocks' Video And Commercial Mocking Retail Investors

On Tuesday, the official YouTube channel of the Securities Exchange Commission, more commonly referred to as the SEC, uploaded a video titled "Investomania: Meme Stocks" in which a contestant on a gameshow decides to invest in meme stocks, loses all his money and gets hit in the face with a pie.

The other contestant decides to "do research first," to which the meme stock investor replies in a surprised manner, seemingly not realizing it was possible to do research before investing. The narrator then comes on to explain that you should always do research first and that by going to investor.gov, you can learn more about stocks.

This rather obvious attempt at framing meme stocks as a catchall term for bad investment choices made with little to no actual research didn't sit well with a large amount of the online retail investment crowd as the SEC's commercial received lots of backlash around the web in recent days. The video also disabled comments.

The @SECGov doesn’t even KNOW who #memestocks investors are. They think we are all just Reddit bros. We are parents and grandparents and students and front line workers and doctors and janitors and every human you can possibly imagine. And we aren’t fucking leaving. #amc #GME

— Eve (@EveVawter) June 2, 2022

This is a video from the official SEC's Youtube Page.

It seems to trivialize millions of retail investors, seemingly diminishes one of the most important market movements of 2021, and appears to poke fun at millions of average people joining the market.

Ouch. pic.twitter.com/l2WVwgy5Sp

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) June 1, 2022

“Memestocks” is a term we, along with so many of us, are guilty of using. It’s fun, calls attention to the subversive side of all of this, but as we’ve seen with the @SECGov’s video today, the term has entered the collective lexicon as a catchall 1/

— 🏴‍☠️ApesTogetherStrongDoc 🏴‍☠️ (@ApesTogetherDoc) June 1, 2022

This video series from the SEC is really just awful. The SEC is insulting the very investors it's supposed to be protecting and educating. But it's worse than that! For example, one of the videos is about margin investing.

— Dave Lauer (@dlauer) June 2, 2022

While some were calling attention to the video, others were trying to counter it. One theory behind why the video was made and what it means is that it's a panic button being pushed by the SEC revolving around what many believe to be an AMC or GameStop imminent short squeeze that could have detrimental effects on the rest of the economy.

Another thought on the video is that the SEC is doing this as a tactic to help control retail investors who are being manipulated, often by institutional investors, as stated by former SEC Branch Chief Lisa Braganca.

SEC could make a video about how it permits institutional investors to trade ahead of retail investor and use information they gather via dark pools to make $ at expense of retail investors. This is not like physics. There are no immutable laws requiring it be this way. /1 https://t.co/wtXkxyJHUV

— Former SEC Branch Chief Lisa Braganca (@LisaBraganca) June 2, 2022

Hedge Funds = Don’t buy AMC
Media = Don’t buy AMC
SEC = Don’t buy AMC

To me this is a MAJOR BUY ALERT for $AMC! They know the MOASS is inevitable and are trying to get as many people to bail as possible! Just BUY & HOLD!#AMC #AMCNOTLEAVING

— 🦍 APE MONEY 💎🙌 (@CryptoStockBull) June 1, 2022

Someone in the replies made an excellent point – why is the SEC even labeling a group of stocks as "meme" stocks? How do those issuers feel, having the regulator of capital markets actively urging investors not to buy their stocks? This is just nuts.

— Dave Lauer (@dlauer) June 2, 2022

Regardless of whether the video was made for the right or wrong reasons, it's still a government entity creating something that's against a rising internet trend that's exploded since the beginning of last year. As such, it means taxpayer money was used to fund a guy getting hit in the face by a pie for investing in GameStop, which has some curious about just how much it cost and how long it took to make.

Luckily, in America there's the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which means government documents pertaining to the creation of the video are able to be obtained by people who fill out the form and wait some time, which is already in process.

So now the SEC has 30 days to respond to my FOIA request (The amount of money it cost to produce the InvestoMania- Meme Stock Video -May 31,2022 and all relevant documents). Once again will keep you guys posted. #AMC pic.twitter.com/x5mRlhDqhK

— Ethan (@etanleibovitz18) June 2, 2022