Retail investors talked up five hot stocks this week (Jan. 2 to Jan. 9) on X and Reddit's r/WallStreetBets, driven by retail hype, AI buzz, and corporate news flow.
GME announced a massive, fully performance-based compensation package for CEO Ryan Cohen on Jan. 7. The board granted him options to purchase up to 171.5 million shares at $20.66 each (potentially worth ~$35 billion if fully vested), with no guaranteed salary, bonuses, or time-based equity—everything is “at-risk” and tied to ambitious milestones like growing the company’s market cap from $9 billion to $100 billion and achieving $10 billion in cumulative EBITDA.
Some retail investors were seeing GME’s news as a chance to pump up the retail favorite stock.
Source: Reddit
The stock had a 52-week range of $19.93 to $35.81, trading around $20 to $23 per share, as of the publication of this article. It declined by 33.70% over the year and 7.30% in the last six months.
The stock had a weaker price trend in the short, medium, and long term with a solid growth ranking, as per Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings. Other performance details are available here.
Nvidia
NVDA CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the Vera Rubin AI platform at the CES 2026 keynote this week and announced the Alpamayo family of open AI models/tools for autonomous vehicles, enabling Level 4 reasoning autonomy—with the first Mercedes-Benz CLA rollout in the U.S. this year. Also, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress reinforced the message that the company’s $500 billion AI visibility has increased since the company’s GTC conference in October.
Some retail investors were betting on NVDA to hit $190 apiece.
Source: Reddit
The stock had a 52-week range of $86.63 to $212.19, trading around $184 to $186 per share, as of the publication of this article. It returned 36.15% over the year and 13.61% in the last six months.
Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings showed that the stock had a stronger price trend in the short, medium, and long terms, with a strong quality score. Additional performance details are available here.
Alphabet
Alphabet surpassed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in market capitalization for the first time since 2019, reclaiming the second spot globally (behind Nvidia) with a valuation hitting ~$3.89–3.96 trillion mid-week. This milestone, fueled by strong 2025 performance gains, is the best among the Magnificent Seven. On Jan. 8, Google rolled out major Gemini 3-powered AI enhancements to Gmail, including AI Overviews for email/thread summaries & search queries, personalized “Help Me Write” (learning user style), proofread tools, suggested replies, and other things.
Some retail investors seemed wary of taking a position in GOOG at these levels.
Source: Reddit
The stock had a 52-week range of $142.66 to $330.54, trading around $329 to $330 per share, as of the publication of this article. It was up by 68.77% over the year and 83.50% over the last six months.
It maintains a stronger price trend over the short, medium, and long terms, with a poor value score, as per Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings. Additional performance details are available here.
Tesla
Elon Musk revealed Tesla would cumulatively spend ~$10 billion on Nvidia hardware for AI training by year-end, but noted costs would likely double without its in-house AI4 chips. Musk also teased the extreme-performance Tesla Roadster as a “cool demo,” prioritizing thrill over safety. Tesla also announced its plans to build its own 2nm chip fabrication facility amid broader in-house silicon pushes. Lastly, it recorded 13.2% jump in Chinese sales during December.
Some retail investors were confident that TSLA would rebound.
Source: Reddit
The stock had a 52-week range of $214.25 to $498.82, trading around $435 to $436 per share, as of the publication of this article. It rose 10.40% over the year and 47.29% over the last six months.
The stock had a stronger price trend in the medium and long terms but a weak trend in the short term, with a moderate quality ranking, as per Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings. Other performance details are available here.
Strategy
MSTR disclosed a massive $17.44 billion unrealized fourth quarter 2025 loss on its digital assets due to Bitcoin’s ~25% quarterly decline (reversing prior gains), while announcing it acquired 1,286–1,287 BTC for ~$116 million between late December 2025 and Jan. 4, boosting total holdings to 673,783 BTC. Also, MSCI announced it would not exclude digital asset treasury companies (like MSTR) from its global indexes “at this time.”
Retail investors who were bullish on MSTR were calling out the bears.
Source: Reddit
The stock had a 52-week range of $149.75 to $457.22, trading around $165 to $167 per share, as of the publication of this article. It was down by 49.08% over the year and 59.81% over the last six months.
According to Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings, it was maintaining a weaker price trend over short, medium, and long terms, with a poor value ranking. Additional performance details are available here.
Retail focus blended meme-driven narrative with earnings outlook and corporate news flow, as the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq largely witnessed mixed market action during the first full week of 2026.
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