Reddit (NASDAQ:RDDT) is one of the world’s most popular stock discussion platforms. The forum site/social media company has communities, known as subreddits, focused on all kinds of different topics. The stock market communities are particularly notable for their tendency to move markets. In 2021, Reddit communities like WallStreetBets were thought to have influenced trading in some well-known “meme stocks” like AMC and GameStop, to the point that those who’d been shorting these stocks got “squeezed,” and the shares entered an extreme speculative bubble.
So, getting a lot of attention on Reddit has the potential to send stocks parabolic. If you’re interested in speculating, rather than investing, Reddit signals could be one source of information you choose to base trades on. Whether such a strategy is sound is up for debate, but following it with a very tiny portion of your money could make for a fun experiment. In this article, I explore three Canadian stocks that are generating buzz on Reddit.
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POET Technologies
POET Technologies (NASDAQ: POET) is a Canadian semiconductor stock that is currently the #1 most mentioned stock on Reddit according to Ape Wisdom. The company develops topics technologies that are crucial for use in semiconductor manufacturing. Their best-known product is the POET Optical Interposer™, which lets semiconductor builders seamlessly embed photonics onto a single chip. The purpose is to create cost-effective solutions for data transmission.
As you can imagine, as a young and innovative company, POET Technologies trades at nosebleed multiples. At the time of this writing, it traded at 1,244 times sales! For a value investor like me, that is far too steep a price of admission to pay. Others may find POET enticing.
Bitfarms
Bitfarms (TSX:BITF) is a Canadian cryptocurrency mining company that is currently Reddit’s #32 trending stock. The company is best known for operating 14 Bitcoin mining data centres in Canada, the United States, and Paraguay. The company’s stock went on a big rally this past Monday, when it was announced that OpenAI would deploy a massive number of AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) graphics processing units in its data centres. According to Fool contributor Puja Tayal, this triggered massive bull interest in the data centre space, getting companies unrelated to OpenAI and AMD, such as Bitfarms, swept up in the momentum.
Perhaps BITF’s recent rally had nothing to do with the company’s fundamentals, but the fact that Bitcoin’s price is rising bodes well for BITF this year.
Barrick Gold
Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX) is a Canadian blockchain mining company that is currently Reddit’s #80 trending stock. As a gold miner, Barrick benefits from the considerable rise in the price of gold that has been observed this year.
Barrick is one of the world’s biggest gold miners and also a major copper miner. Its stock has risen an impressive 112% year to date due to the strength seen in gold prices globally. The company owns many productive gold mines and is among the most established players in its space. I can’t quite endorse the stock, but the company is certainly an important player in its space.
Foolish takeaway
Should you invest in trending Reddit stocks? Investing in such stocks just because they are trending on Reddit probably isn’t a good idea, but lists of Reddit stocks, such as those on Ape Wisdom, can provide ideas for stocks to research further. They’re as good a place to start as any.
