But are their influence really more than retail investors ? Especially the ones from wallstreetbets / robinhood who came after / during the pandemic. At the end of the day all these people only bought options, nothing special.
Buying options is still visibility, encouraging would-be traders to register on Robinhood and buy some amount of stock. For instance, my old college mate, a current PhD candidate, joined Robinhood and started trading around March. And of course, when he asked me for recommendations, I told him to play safe and go with the S&P stocks and resilient tech stocks. Then of course, he went full on WSB mode, and now he's "eating tendies while his wife is hanging out with her boyfriend".
Amazon's not a meme, and Tesla's not a safe bet.
I agree though that due to what appears to be a bubble, these investments aren't that safe at the moment. It appears that these type of stocks have benefited recently by retail investors entering the market and piling in. ( https://thehill.com/policy/finance/510796-are-trading-apps-p... -- though, as the article points out, the Robinhood investor bubble is smaller than the effect of the Fed's QE etc. ) Under normal valuation, Tesla at this point I don't think would be considered "speculative" -- risky, but not as risky as some. But a P/E ratio of 1000+ even after this recent dip is IMHO pretty difficult to justify.
r/wallstreetbets is pretty unreal to me -- many people are focusing on high-risk options on these heavily valued stocks, and (by the comments) appear to be putting a lot of their "eggs" in only one or two "baskets", to use the popular phrase. It's not ending well for some of them, judging from some of the posts.
The kind of options plays on WSB are insane tbh. I don't mind putting my eggs in one or two baskets, as long as they are stocks of steady companies, but options? No way.