2021 hot stocks = everything tied to cheap money + retail speculation:
1. Meme stocks: GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, Bed Bath & Beyond. GameStop became the symbol after the Reddit short squeeze in Jan 2021.
2. EV / clean energy: Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, Fisker, Nikola, QuantumScape, ChargePoint, Plug Power. Many EV SPACs later collapsed 70–90% from peaks.
3. SPACs / IPOs: 2021 was peak IPO/SPAC mania. Big names included Rivian, Coupang, Roblox, Coinbase, UiPath, Affirm, Robinhood. 2021 had about 980 IPOs globally, roughly double 2020.
4. Cathie Wood / ARK-style growth: Zoom, Teladoc, Roku, Square/Block, Coinbase, Palantir, Unity, Twilio, Shopify. ARKK was the “disruptive innovation” proxy, but by late 2021 it was already down sharply as rates rose.
5. Crypto / fintech: Coinbase, Silvergate, Signature Bank, Marathon Digital, Riot Blockchain, MicroStrategy, Robinhood, Block.
6. SaaS / cloud: Snowflake, Datadog, Cloudflare, Asana, Monday.com, Atlassian, CrowdStrike, Zscaler.
7. Stay-at-home / reopening extremes: Zoom, Peloton, DocuSign first; then airlines, cruises, casinos, hotels during reopening rotation.
Meme, crypto and EV have no real earnings.
Even SasS/Cloud depends on future projection of rapid revenue growth, not near-term earnings.
The 2021 bull run is more like internet bubble in its essence.
And when interest rose, bubble burst.
2026 is different – it’s more about tech advancement.
In the current bull run, most companies have real near-term earnings and interest rate is 3%+.
Current interest rate is more in-line with inflation, while 2021 interest rate is obviously lower than inflation.
However, space and quantum can still make me feel more bubble-like.
