New fast-food meme stock surges 25% as retail traders pile in

Wendy's spent months trying to convince Wall Street its turnaround was real. Then Reddit took over.

Shares of the fast-food chain soared more than 42% intraday on June 24, 2026, briefly making Wendy's (WEN) the most talked-about ticker in retail trading circles.

The "Save Wendy's" campaign swept through WallStreetBets, and what started as an internet joke turned into a short squeeze.

But behind the fireworks, there is a real company with real problems. And investors piling in right now need to understand both sides of the trade.

Wendy's stock is down 70% from its all-time high and has underperformed the broader market by a wide margin over the past decade.

The stock is beaten down, the brand is widely recognized, and the jokes practically wrote themselves.

An Inc. report explained that for years, saying you were "behind the Wendy's" on Wall Street Bets was shorthand for losing everything in the market. That cultural shorthand gave retail traders a story they could rally around.

Stocktwits flagged Wendy's as its No. 1 trending ticker for most of the day the rally began, accounting for roughly 5% of all ticker views on the platform.

Messages using the WEN ticker jumped more t

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/fast-food-meme-stock-surges-220700067.html)