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Here’s a fun paradox for you. An ETF can rally 35% in a year and still leave the majority of its investors in the red. That’s exactly what’s happening with the Roundhill Meme Stock ETF, ticker appropriately named MEME, which closed at $8.41 on July 9. That price sits roughly 15% below where it launched in October 2025.
In English: the fund is having a great 2026 on paper, but if you bought in at the beginning, you’re still waiting to break even. And if you bought during any of the hype-driven spikes along the way, you might be in even worse shape.
The second life of a meme machine
The Roundhill Meme Stock ETF isn’t new. Its original incarnation launched with much fanfare, then proceeded to fall 57% from its initial price before Roundhill quietly shut it down in December 2023. Rising interest rates and evaporating retail enthusiasm did what fundamentals couldn’t: they killed the vibe.
Roundhill relaunched the fund on October 8, 2025, betting that a new wave of retail speculation would revive demand for a packaged meme-stock product. That bet has partially paid off, with the ETF climbing approximately 35% year-to-date in 2026, including a 3.5% pop on July 9 alone.
The problem is that 35% gain started from a low base. The fund dropped significantly after its October relaunch, meaning all that upward momentum has been spent clawing back losses rather than generating profits for launch-day buyers.
What’s actually inside this thing
The MEME ETF holds roughly 10 stocks at any given time, with about 60% of assets concentrated in the top holdings. Current names include AST Spacemobile (ASTS), Terawulf (WULF), Lumentum Holdings (LITE), Bloom Energy (BE), Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI), and IREN.
The selection process doesn’t emphasize traditional fundamentals like earnings growth or price-to-book ratios. Instead, it screens for implied volatility and retail interest metrics.
The portfolio turns over nearly 5 times per year. For context, a typical actively managed equity fund might turn over 50% to 100% of its holdings annually. MEME is replacing its entire portfolio roughly every two and a half months. That level of churn means trading costs eat into returns, even before accounting for the fund’s 0.69% expense ratio.
With approximately $20 million in assets under management, MEME is tiny by ETF standards. This isn’t a product commanding institutional attention. It’s a niche vehicle for retail traders who want meme-stock exposure without picking individual names.
The timing trap
Roundhill CEO Dave Mazza has been upfront about the volatility risks embedded in this fund.
The 2021 GameStop and AMC short squeezes proved that retail traders can move markets in dramatic, unpredictable ways. They also proved that most participants in those moves end up holding the bag. The few who bought early and sold at the peak made fortunes. Everyone else became a cautionary tale posted on financial forums.
Olga Bitel and Will McGough, investment professionals who have commented on the meme stock phenomenon, have stressed the importance of looking past hype toward underlying fundamentals. Their point resonates here. Several of the ETF’s holdings have real businesses, but the fund doesn’t own them because of their balance sheets. It owns them because retail traders are talking about them.
The nearly 5x annual portfolio turnover also raises a structural concern for anyone holding the fund as a longer-term position. High turnover generates taxable events and friction costs that compound over time, making MEME a product better suited for short-term tactical trades than buy-and-hold strategies.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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