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Brooklyn Law Review

Sophie Abrams

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans who were stuck at home turned to social media forums in search of community and investing advice. Fifteen million (and counting) of them found community in r/wallstreetbets, a group on Reddit that banded together to drive up the prices of “meme stocks.” Bed Bath and Beyond was one stock that piqued retail investors’ interest after seeing billionaire investor Ryan Cohen take a 10 percent stake and activist role in the company. However, Cohen ended up being a large disappointment to his retail investor fans, as he subsequently sold off his stake in the company and caused large losses to ripple among r/wallstreetbets members. Shareholders brought suit against Cohen, and alleged that a tweet he sent with the �� emoji constituted a material misrepresentation under Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act. Anyone in the retail investing community would know that the emoji takes on a particularized meaning within the stock trading context: a stock is heading to the moon (i.e., increasing in price). The litigation brings securities law, emoji interpretation, and meme stocks to a crossroads. As such, this note argues for the need for an emoji interpretation reference tool for judges to use when they come across securities litigation that involves emojis. While In re Bed Bath and Beyond Securities Litigation may be the first case of its kind, it certainly will not be the last. Judges must be well-equipped to engage in emoji interpretation and impose liability for material misrepresentations caused by emoji use, and this note proposes a tool that will allow judges to do so uniformly and seamlessly: a meme stock-focused emoji lexicon similar to Black’s Law Dictionary.

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