Retail Investing Is A 'Structural Force': Roundhill CEO Says MEME ETF Reflects Market Shift

The meme trade may have started as a rebellion — but in Roundhill CEO Dave Mazza's eyes, it's now a revolution with structure.

In a conversation with Benzinga, the CEO of Roundhill Investments discussed the firm's relaunch of the Roundhill Meme Stock ETF (NYSE:MEME), a fund designed to capture the social-media-fueled momentum driving today's retail-driven markets. The ETF, unveiled on Wednesday, marks a comeback for Roundhill's meme investing concept, this time with an actively managed strategy that Mazza believes can keep pace with the internet's ever-shifting attention span.

"We see retail investing as a structural force, not a passing fad," says Mazza. "The combination of transaction-free trading, real-time data, and community-driven investing has permanently changed how markets move."

According to Mazza, retail investors now consistently make up roughly 15–20% of daily U.S. equity trading volume, even during calm markets. This is a sign that the crowd's influence has become a permanent feature of modern market structure.

From Fandom To Factor

In 2025, the term "meme stock" has outgrown its Reddit roots. Mazza defines it as a company that captures online investor attention and becomes part of the cultural conversation — where social sentiment, trading activity, and narrative momentum intersect.

"Retail participation has matured," he explains. "It's now shaping how liquidity forms and how narratives develop around themes like AI, crypto, and quantum. MEME exists to reflect that evolution in an investable form."

Lessons From MEME 1.0

Roundhill's earlier MEME ETF, launched in 2021, was discontinued in 2023. Mazza calls that phase a necessary step in refining the concept.

"The first version of MEME followed a rules-based index that relied purely on quantitative screens," he says. "That structure could pull in stocks that didn't truly reflect retail-driven behavior — names that fit the data but not the spirit of the trade."

This time, MEME is actively managed and rebalanced at least weekly, allowing the portfolio to stay aligned with genuine meme dynamics as market sentiment shifts.

"It was both timing and evolution," Mazza adds. "The new MEME reflects a more mature retail landscape and a refined methodology that can adapt as new themes emerge."

Inside The Second Innings

At launch, MEME's top holdings include Opendoor Technologies (11.9%), Plug Power (10.7%), and Applied Digital (8.7%) — all recent fixtures of retail-driven volatility.

Mazza says the ETF blends quantitative and behavioral signals — implied volatility, trading activity, and social sentiment — to identify where retail energy is most concentrated.

"Retail participation has become a market factor in its own right," he notes. "One that traditional style frameworks like growth and value simply don't capture. MEME provides diversified exposure to that factor by systematically identifying where retail sentiment and trading activity are driving price discovery."

For Mazza, meme stocks have evolved beyond the headline-fueled chaos of 2021.

"Meme stocks have evolved from a moment of disruption into recognition that retail sentiment itself is a market factor," he says. "It's distinct from traditional classifications like growth, value, or size. Retail investors now shape liquidity, drive narrative cycles, and influence capital flows in ways that can't be ignored."

He adds, "MEME gives structure to that behavior by treating sentiment as a measurable and investable force, not as market noise. It's about capturing a modern driver of returns that traditional frameworks weren't built to explain."

For investors, Mazza sees MEME as a structured way to access the unpredictability of retail momentum without taking on concentrated single-stock risk. And for traders wary of getting caught on the wrong side of a crowd surge, it may even serve as a hedge against short exposure in the most volatile names.

The retail crowd isn't going away. And with MEME, Roundhill is betting it's time Wall Street stopped treating it like a fad.

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Image created using artificial intelligence via Midjourney.