Who Is The Croat From ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City'? Everything We Know About His Past With Negan
In Touch rounded up everything fans need to know about The Croat (Željko Ivanek) ahead of season 2, which is set to premiere on AMC on May 4, 2025.
The Croat is the primary antagonist of TWD: Dead City season 1 and the terrifying leader of a group of survivors known as the Burazi in Manhattan, New York. He is known for his sadistic leadership style and his proclivity for torturing his victims.
Prior to the beginning of season 1, he kidnaps Maggie's teenage son, Hershel (Logan Kim), in an attempt to obtain information about Negan and potentially reunite with him.
Željko is a Slovenian-American actor who has been working professionally in television and film since the early 1980s. Over the years, he's collected a wide array of guest roles in hit shows, such as The X-Files, Murder, She Wrote, Frasier, LOST, ER, 24, The West Wing, True Blood and more.
He's had major roles in Heroes, Madam Secretary, Oz and The Walking Dead: Dead City.
Fans may also remember him from his work in film, including Argo, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Last Duel.
Very little is known about The Croat's history prior to the outbreak. His nickname – as his real name has not been given in the show – and his use of Croatian implies he is from Croatia.
He also shares that he once had a family, a wife named Mia and three children – Nika, Hana and Filip. After the outbreak, he left them hiding in an abandoned post office while he went out to search for food, but when he returned, he discovered his family had all been killed and eaten by another group of survivors.
It's revealed in the first episode of season 1 that The Croat is a former member of Negan's disbanded group of survivors known as the Saviors.
In a behind-the-scenes look into TWD: Dead City that aired on AMC+, Željko explained that it wasn't until The Croat met Negan that he began 'rebuilding' himself following the loss of his family. He said it was also when his character gained the 'determination to never be vulnerable in that way' again.
While with the Saviors, The Croat utterly idolized Negan. He served as an interrogator for the group, but he fell out of Negan's good graces when he directly disobeyed his order and tortured and murdered a young girl he believed to be a scout from another community.
'Let's just say there were a lot of psychos in my crew back then, but he always stood out as being an exceptionally insane son of a bitch,' Negan recalls to Maggie in the episode 'Old Acquaintances.'
Disgusted and realizing that he could never be trusted, Negan tried to shoot The Croat back then, but he missed and ended up shooting off his ear as he ran away.
Despite their complicated past, The Croat appeared truly excited to see Negan again years later and even seems to look at him as a father figure, despite being older than him.
'The Croat's a complicated character, because, on one hand, he's looking for safe harbor,' Željko shared in AMC+'s behind-the-scenes interview, noting that The Croat wants to 'find a way to no longer be vulnerable in the world.'
The change he undergoes after meeting Negan 'becomes a strength,' Željko added. 'But it also becomes what makes him scary.'
Warning: Spoilers ahead for season 2!
Trailers and sneak peeks reveal The Croat seemingly setting up Negan as a big bad leadership figure again – this time with the Burazi.
In one clip, he tells Negan that he brought him a gift and gives him a new version of Lucille, a barbed-wire covered bat and Negan's famed weapon of choice in the flagship series. Longtime viewers recall the original Lucille was cracked and then burned in season 10 of TWD, making her return an especially exciting development for fans.
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USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
'Happy Gilmore 2' is absolutely wonderful
The legacy sequel has transformed itself into one of the ugliest reanimations in modern Hollywood, the crass puppetry of a once-beloved corpse dancing to the same song-and-dance that made it so cherished in the first place. Shame-soaked nostalgia dollars flutter about like ugly butterflies in a trash garden, destined to put on the same "dead dog and dead pony" show for fearful audiences afraid of any ounce of originality until the unforgiving entertainment machine runs out of caskets to mine and the whole movie world falls off a cliff. And then there's Happy Gilmore 2. Leave it to Adam Sandler, perhaps the most beloved American entertainer this side of Mickey Mouse and Tom Hanks, to putt the golf ball through the most byzantine mini-golf fun house from Hell and nail the shot to keep himself under par. Happy Gilmore 2 is just baked with too much love to reek of what dooms its colleagues. In one way, you could view Happy Gilmore 2 as a triumph of affable stupidity, a sequel so awash in the hallmark Sandler rage-man physical comedy that it manages to feel fresh... if only because Hollywood has practically abandoned the genre entirely for "comedic" superhero movies that smirk at the screen as if any insinuation of comedy at all is some sort of naughty cooke jar-snatching that big daddy corporation didn't see while reading the newspaper... the kind that would make even Wade Wilson blush. Last summer's Deadpool and Wolverine actually owned its identity of being a straight-up comedy as opposed to something dreadful like Thor: Love and Thunder (shutters in Zeus), but even then, it was still a Deadpool and Wolverine movie. Marvel putting out the biggest comedy of the decade so far just feels wrong, even if the movie was indeed funny. Yes, a Happy Gilmore Netflix movie in 2025 replete with countless cameos from golf professionals, Sandler regulars, podcast hosts and sportscasters plays to the broadest audience possible. The humor is wack-a-mole wide, the callbacks to the original so plentiful and obvious that you can almost count this as a double-bill on Letterboxd with just one sit on the couch. However, everything feels hand-stitched, as if an entire community of people who love Happy got together and crafted a big quilt to wrap themselves in nearly 30 years later. The warmth radiates from the screen. Unlike a big-budget Hollywood legacy blockbuster where nostalgia cuts the checks and the corporate "reverence" for what came before feels AI-generated to appeal to the most shameless part of our brains' art-processors, Happy Gilmore 2 feels pleasantly overstuffed out of adoration. Sure, most of the film is flatly ridiculous, the lowest-hanging fruit basket being passed around for everyone to take one and pass it down. Characters punch and choke each other out of sheer glee; another drinks hand sanitizer to get a buzz. One man on a beach thinks he's watching a Happy Gilmore golf match on television, but in reality, it's just a rock in a makeshift box. One character goes to the bathroom in a mailbox. Like all of Sandler's movies, the cheap joke is the best joke, and the school cafeteria belly laughter is real and wonderful. Think about the star for a moment and where he is now. After years and years of pushing it away, Sandler's recent forays into auteurism have fulfilled the tantalizing promise of Punch-Drunk Love and Funny People. Even in his screwiest of comedies, he showed off the volcanic range and crestfallen heart of a truly generational actor. Uncut Gems in particular felt like an answered prayer. Watching the Sandman getting sandbagged down with heartless 2010s Netflix comedies made you question if he had finally just settled. The grand pleasure is that Happy Gilmore 2 shows that even a new Sandler Netflix comedy can make you scream-laugh to the point of waking up your dog and bothering your neighbors. By plowing shamelessly into the original film beat-for-beat but still awakening something oddly profound on the passage of time with how so many of the 1996 film's actors have departed from this golf course for the other, Happy Gilmore 2 plays as both a Happy Madison fan convention smorgasbord and a group hug for the past, present and future. Happy Gilmore 2 also arrives like a godsend in a world where studio comedies have fallen to the wayside. Consider that modern comedy has mainly shifted into other genres and into the indie space, where witty banter and situational ironies tend to rule the day. They're incredibly funny, but the other side of the spectrum, the kind that studios used to pump out in the summer with the Sandlers of the world for mass appeal, have nearly gone extinct. Perhaps that makes a big, doofy Happy Gilmore sequel all the more commendable with its themes of mourning the people we've lost and saving the traditions we care about while we have them. The film's villain is a tech-bro who wants to turn golf into a glitzy rizz-fest with color-run fireworks and brash stunts to appeal to the TikTokers and Twitch streamers who don't have time for the love of the game. As much as you absolutely cannot read any supremely deep text in a movie where a honey-drenched Travis Kelce gets attacked by a bear in Bad Bunny's "happy place" dream, you feel the Sandler-dad wisdom trying to slap around the young'uns a bit to appreciate the old ways and cherish the familial bonds that keep them aflame. Happy Gilmore 2 is the funniest movie of the year so far by default, if only because no other movies really try to go for laugh-a-minute comedy like this any longer. The new Naked Gun movie will surely challenge it, but why can't the audiences of today get their own Happy Gilmores and Frank Drebins to cherish anew? It's an unfortunate irony that the surest bet at getting a major comedy project off the ground in 2025 is to dust off an old character and put a new shine on them to appeal to nostalgic business sense. No, Happy Gilmore 2 can't stand shoulder-to-shoulder with its predecessor because that's outright impossible. However, it can bundle in the laughter in equal measure and mess around so much with the very nature of a legacy sequel that some of its most shameless callbacks feel inspired, almost a parody of its serious brethren. Yes, there is infinitely more integrity with Chubbs Peterson having a son who works at a mini-golf course who also has a fake hand than whatever the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hook was with Shea Whigham being Jon Voight's kid out of nowhere. Those two movies mirror each other. Tom Cruise's sacrifice-for-the-movies adrenaline and Christopher McQuarrie's James Cameron/Brian De Palma-tinged set-piece excellence go blow-for-blow with Sandler's ageless comedic timing and immaculate facial expressions and his and co-writer Tim Herlihy's masterful ability to mine nonstop gags out of the most ludicrous visuals. Watching Cruise's underwater submarine ballet in the latest Mission: Impossible is incredible; watching golfer John Daly try to drink booze out of an antique cuckoo clock is, too. Where Happy Gilmore 2 succeeds and the latest Mission: Impossible fails all has to do with the approach. The latter is bound to sincerity in its most cringey throwbacks because it's downright, well, impossible to wink a bit at the audience at how silly this all is. A Sandler comedy has the freedom to have its nostalgia cake and throw it across the room to instigate a food fight. During a scene at a graveyard, headstones of characters long gone from the original start popping up in spades. A few of those would have induced eye-rolls; a bunch of those, even of the most random side characters, makes for great meta-humor. Comedies give you the ability to check yourself a bit, as the wedgie-giving ombudsman comes in to readily acknowledge a lot of this is looney tunes. A streak of sadness dyes the current, as the reason Happy falls off the golfing map is the kind of shock revelation a Happy Madison production probably doesn't aim for 10 years ago. The world kept spinning while Gilmore was swatting golf balls with a hockey goon's might, and it wasn't always kind to our favorite golfer like we might have hoped. Dad-Sandler has always been the most sentimental version of himself, and his kids aging right in front of his eyes and starting to leave the nest seems to weigh on him and his renewed take on Gilmore. This and Wes Anderson's excellent The Phoenician Scheme both dive into similar subject matter with equal gusto, of a father reckoning with his children and his place in providing for them. There's a world-weariness to Happy this time around in the way Sandler carries him that both compels the film's most jarring narrative choice and grounds some of the film's far, far sillier antics. That approach gives Sandler's performance added gravitas and the entire film around him a paternal watchfulness that would've played as unearned earlier in his filmography. There is no doubting Sandler's commitment to the project as you might could have in the past; he's all in, and so is everyone around him. The older Sandler has gotten, the more his traveling-theater approach to making movies has taken on new meaning. Even in his biggest comedic misfires, the community Sandler keeps with him on his Happy Madison projects has always endeared. He takes care of his own, and that love shows through here more so than in any other project he's ever worked on. The rampant cameos would be gratuitous if the people staffing them didn't seem so genuinely thrilled to be there. Christopher McDonald's Shooter McGavin getting dragged back into the fold would feel forced if McDonald didn't treat the role like it was the true opportunity of a lifetime. There's no way in heck Verne Lundquist wears that blazer in the film's third act if he's not tickled to be back in this world. 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Most certainly; all of Sandler's comedies have been to a degree. However, it's still so much better than so many other films like it. The world is a better place when Sandler is making comedies like this. Hubie Halloween felt like a nice change of pace, and Happy Gilmore 2 feels like the grand return to that high-wire fire hydrant style of Sandler funny business. It's painfully fully and surprisingly wistful for its place in time. We need Sandler to keep tapping into his dramatic potential; it's why his decision to work with Noah Baumbach again on Jay Kelly is so encouraging. However, we also need Sandler firmly planting his feet in the comedic worlds where he's the smartest idiot in the room with a heart of gold, and we all love him for it. Watching Sandler succeed with everyone cheering him on as those signature Happy Gilmore needle drops hit might make you just a wee bit misty... and not because it's an uncaring algorithm programming "Nostalgic Feelz" for the most basic audience possible. When it's earned and it's real, there's nothing like going back to your happy place with the people you love.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Actors Who You Forgot Are Singers Too
In the golden days of American cinema, actors were expected to be masters of their crafts — catch that? Not craft, but crafts. If they harbored dreams of seeing their name in lights, then they had better be prepared to act, dance, and sing for their supper. Nowadays, things have definitely changed, and we don't expect our actors to be delivering Grammy-winning performances or our singers to be dipping their toes in the dramatic — which makes it all the more impressive when they do. From Scarlett Johansson to Robert Downey Jr., we'd forgotten these stars had singing talent to match their acting skills, and it's a blast from the past to revisit their musical stylings. There are plenty of working actors today, famous and not-yet-so-famous, who call themselves multi-hyphenates — Lady Gaga has proudly crossed over from singing into acting with her lead role in A Star Is Born, and recent rumblings indicate Selena Gomez is hoping to make a similar transition. Stars like Emily Blunt or Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy to hide their singing talents away for their long, successful acting careers before dazzling us with a final act reveal. It's fun to discover new talents in celebrities we're already excited about watching, and we guarantee you'll want to check out these music careers you forgot existed. Read on for all the actors whose singing skills you may have overlooked. A version of this article was originally published in February 2021. More from SheKnows John Legend, Reese Witherspoon, & More Stars Whose Kids Don't Like Their Parent's Singing Best of SheKnows All About Conor Kennedy, RFK Jr.'s Private Son Who Was Once Linked to Taylor Swift 16 Times the Celebrity Death Rule of Threes Actually Happened The Best Photos of Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne's Kids Growing Up Over the Years Margaret Qualley Margaret Qualley: she can dance, she can act, and yes, she can sing. With the help of her music producer husband Jack Antanoff, QUalley released music in July 2025 under the alter ego of Lace Manhattan. She released the songs 'ODDWADD' and 'In the Sun She Lies,' both of which will be in Ethan Coen's upcoming film Honey Don't! Angelina Jolie Did you know that Angelina Jolie will be singing opera for her role in Maria? This'll be the start of her singing career, and we can't wait. Kristen Wiig For co-writing 'Harper and Will Go West' with Sean Douglas, Kristen Wiig is earning Oscar buzz for being a songwriter, and singer now. Along with that, she's written numerous songs on Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, some of which she sang. Keke Palmer Keke Palmer has shown off her vocal chops in a few movies over the years including her work in Joyful Noise and Grease! Live but fans might still be surprised to know she's released a few albums too. Her first was in 2007 titled So Uncool and it charted at number 85 on the Billboard R&B charts, per NBC. Over the years, she's continued to release new music, including her two EPs in 2020 titled Virgo Tendencies, Pt. 1 and Virgo Tendencies, Pt 2. Most recently, Palmer announced her new girl group, Diva Gurl, alongside three other singers. 'Pre-Save our 1st single #SOB today!' Palmer wrote on Instagram. 'Prepare to be slayed on June 21st #DivaGurl.' Tiffany Haddish Tiffany Haddish surprised her followers this week when she announced her new single, 'Woman Up.' 'Really, it's an all-the-way-around song because everybody has their dual sides,' Haddish told Entertainment Tonight. 'I'm like an onion; sometimes you catch me out in public and put a camera in my face, I'm like, 'La da.' Sometimes you put a camera in my face and catch me outside [and] I'll be like, 'Listen, I'm not in the mood right now.' There's different levels to it.' Haddish has also released a few singles over the years, including 2023's 'Till The Club Close' and 'Too Much' in 2020. Kate Hudson Kate Hudson first dabbled in music in her 2021 appearance in musical-movie Music, which was written by Sia. The actress, who is perhaps best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in Almost Famous or her iconic rom-com hit How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, officially stepped into music in 2024 with two singles, Talk About Love and Live Forever. Shortly after, on May 18, she released her first-ever album, Glorious. Zendaya Acting, dancing, singing, being a fashion icon; we don't think there's anything Zendaya can't do. Most recently, the Emmy-winning actress made everyone gasp as she surprised fans with a performance of 'All for Us' and 'I'm Tired' with Labrinth at Coachella. She can really do it all! Lily James Lily James, who already showed off her singing chops in Cinderella and Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, just released a new single for her upcoming movie What's Love Got To Do With It? 'It was an absolute pleasure working in the studio with both [composer] Nitin [Sawhney] and Naughty Boy,' James told Daily Mail. 'Music plays a huge part in the film, and I'm thrilled to contribute to this amazing single alongside some incredible artists.' Could this be the start of a new career direction for James? Jeremy Renner Marvel's very own Hawkeye can do much more than throw arrows, he can sing too! In addition to a few singles, Jeremy Renner's first EP The Medicine dropped in March 2020. Hailee Steinfeld At just 14 years old, we knew Hailee Steinfeld was the real deal when she was nominated for an Oscar for her role in True Grit. Since then, Steinfeld's proved she can do much more than acting and that she's an incredible singer too! In addition to some hit singles like 'Let Me Go,' 'Love Myself' and most recently 'Coast,' she also released her EP, Half Written Story, in 2020. Hugh Laurie After learning how talented Hugh Laurie is, you'll be left wondering why House never had a musical episode. Laurie has released two blues albums over the years: Let Them Talk and Didn't It Rain. Robert Pattinson Following his stint in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Robert Pattinson was sure he was going to head into the music business. 'I really thought I was gonna do music at that point,' he shared with GQ in 2022. 'I don't know where I had the, kind of, belief in that because there was absolutely no one saying that there's a music career on the table. But I was doing a lot of gigs, constantly doing open mics all the time. And then…I ran out of money, basically.' Fortunately, Pattinson was cast in the Twilight films, for which he got to show off some of his music talents with two songs on the movie's soundtrack. Jared Leto Jared Leto rose to fame on the '90s teen drama My So-Called Life. But once the series wrapped, he and his brother, Shannon, formed the group Thirty Seconds to Mars. The band has put out albums since the early 2000s, all while Leto's been building his impressive acting career, winning an Oscar for his role in Dallas Buyers Club along the way. One of the band's most famous songs is their 2009 single 'Kings and Queens.' Emmy Rossum Long before she was Fiona Gallagher on Shameless, Emmy Rossum was training at Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus. Once her acting career took off, Rossum was still able to put her singing skills to use with her role as Christine Daaé in the 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. Three years later, she released her first album, followed by another in 2013. Emily Blunt Oppenheimer's Emily Blunt has captivated us with her work in period pieces, modern romances, and adventure films — but where she really shined the brightest is when she sang in the cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods as the Baker's Wife and as the titular character of our collective youth, Mary Poppins, in Mary Poppins Returns. Eddie Murphy One of, if not the, most successful comedic actor of our time, Eddie Murphy has a repertoire filled with modern day classics. The man who brought us Coming to America, Beverly Hills Cop (I, II, and III), 48 Hours (I and II), Boomerang, the Shrek trilogy, iconic stand-up specials that set the bar for what comedy could be, and years on SNL, can also sing. He's released five (music) albums starting in 1985 with single 'Party All the Time' which reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It's still very much a non-guilty pleasure. Robert Downey Jr. Oscar-winning Oppenheimer star Robert Downey Jr. released an album of eight original compositions and two covers back in 2004. We're partial to the opening track, 'Man Like Me.' Kristen Bell Kristen Bell is really known for her voice (her acting voice, that is), and for good reason. She voiced the hidden narrator on Gossip Girl, she's acted in TV hits like The Good Place and Veronica Mars, and in films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall…but back to that whole voice thing. She's also the voice of Anna from Frozen and Frozen 2, the mega-popular film series that finally brought her singing chops to light. Nicole Kidman This Australian megastar is such a talent that it's really not all that surprising that she can also sing. I mean, we challenge you to name a film or TV mini-series she's been a part of where you weren't blown away by her performance. Go ahead. We'll wait. In her HBO monster hit The Undoing, she sang the theme song, a haunting cover of The Mama and The Papa's 'Dream A Little Dream of Me.' David Hasselhoff No list of actors who sing would be worth its weight in salt without the inclusion of The Hoff. Yes, he's a legend because of The Young and the Restless, Knight Rider, and Baywatch, but with his 1988 single 'Looking for Freedom' he reached new heights of fame, particularly in Germany, with a song so big he performed it live at the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve in 1989. Rita Wilson Surely you know Rita Wilson as an actor from films such as Sleepless in Seattle, It's Complicated, and Volunteers, or as a one of the producers of the highest grossing independent film of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She's also a singer-songwriter who's released four country-tinged albums starting with 2012's covers project AM/FM which includes a lovely version of Glen Campbell's 'Wichita Lineman.' Scarlett Johansson She's won a Tony (in 2010 for her performance in the revival of A View From the Bridge), is a bonafide superhero (thanks to her role as Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), and has been appearing in critically acclaimed films since she was 12 years old. But did you know she also has two albums? Yup. Her solo LP Anywhere I Lay My Head (an album of Tom Waits covers) came out in 2008 and the following year she and Pete Yorn released their collaborative collection Break Up which is 100% worth checking out. Zooey Deschanel You probably know Zooey Deschanel from her Globe-nominated performance as Jess in the TV hit New Girl and in films such as 500 Days of Summer, Almost Famous and Failure to Launch. But, in addition to acting, Zooey is one half of indie pop band She & Him (She's the She, M. Ward is Him). They've released six albums in total – three original, one of covers, and two for Christmas (A Very She & Him Christmas and Christmas Party). Zoë Kravitz It was inevitable that Zoë Kravitz would become not just a star but a multi-hyphenate by virtue of her parentage (Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz) but she has proven herself to be a formidable actress with commendable performances on TV in Big Little Lies and High Fidelity and in films like the Divergent series. She's also the frontwoman of R&B electropop duo Lolawolf, named for her younger half siblings (awww), Lola and Wolf, who have released two albums, including 2020's Tenderness. Donald Glover From writing on TV for 30 Rock to starring in Community and Atlanta to films such as Magic Mike XXL and a little-known series called Star Wars where he portrayed a young Lando Calrissien, Donald Glover has proven to be a serious talent. He records under the pseudonym Childish Gambino and has released six albums to date. 'This Is America,' his Grammy Award-winning single and music video, is a poignant critique of gun violence and racism in the U.S. that debuted at number 1 on the Billboard charts. Jada Pinkett Smith She's been acting in TV and film for 30 years (Menace to Society, Set It Off, the Madagascar films) and is most recently known for hosting The Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch with her mom and daughter. But did you know she's also the lead singer in a nu metal band? Yup. Jada's band Wicked Wisdom has been around since 2002 and has toured with Britney Spears and Ozzy Osborne. Know anyone else that can say that? William Shatner To one generation, he will always be Captain Kirk. To another, he's Denny Crane of Boston Legal. And yet to another, he's the Priceline spokesman. He is all of these things, but he is also a man who has released what might be the strangest set of spoken word albums ever, starting in 1968 and continuing to his latest album, Blues, which was released in 2021. Included in his catalog are covers of U2's 'In A Little While' with Lyle Lovett, Robert Johnson's classic 'Sweet Home Chicago' with Brad Paisley, and the unforgettable opening to his 2004 William Shatner Has Been LP which opened with Pulp's 'Common People.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
From Krispy Kreme to GoPro, has meme-stock trading frenzy returned?
Shares in struggling retailers and ageing consumer brands surged, as amateur traders cast aside Wall Street's skepticism and mobilized online. It's like 2021 all over again. But the latest meme-stock rally could be even bigger than its predecessor four years ago, when investors piled into recognizable but unloved stocks, such as the video games retailer GameStop and the movie theatre chain AMC, according to the founder of the Reddit forum that helped whip up the frenzy. Retailer Kohl's, camera firm GoPro, fast-food chain Wendy's and doughnut chain Krispy Kreme each staged rapid rallies this week, driven by abrupt surges in trading volume reminiscent of the the meme-stock craze of 2021, when social media memes boosted a collection of struggling stocks, triggering extraordinary and volatile leaps in value. Actress Sydney Sweeney helped bring clothing retailer American Eagle Outfitters into the mania after it was announced the Euphoria and White Lotus star would front the brand's latest marketing campaign. The company's shares surged about 10% in trading on Thursday. Meme stocks are 'about to leap-frog in size and scope and scale, so that retail traders are going to redefine what matters', according to Jaime Rogozinski, founder of the wallstreetbets Reddit forum behind many of the volatile rallies. 'The world of finance is clearly changing, with blockchain technologies encroaching, and AI agents that trade on their own,' he said. 'And the collective of retail traders is adapting along with it.' Rogozinski founded wallstreetbets in 2012, but said Reddit ousted him as a moderator in 2020. His bid to sue the social media company for trademark infringement was dismissed by the US court of appeals for the ninth circuit last month. The forum's users home in on stocks and share their own research. 'It's a decentralization of power of who can be financial analyst,' said Noor Al, a moderator on wallstreetbets. 'Great ideas can now come from anyone, anywhere. 'We're seeing the power of retail push stocks, sometimes to the tune of billions of dollars, through the power of ideas, the power of community and the power of the people,' he added. The meme-stock craze of 2021, which produced stars such as Roaring Kitty, was a product of the Covid era, when many amateur traders were stuck at home and flush with pandemic stimulus cash. Whether this latest frenzy produces similar winners is not yet clear. Kohl's finished the week up 32%, GoPro was up 66% and Krispy Kreme was up 41%. The rallies show some investors are willing to take on more risk, as stocks scale record highs and the market, dominated by big tech, becomes harder to beat. Often, meme-stock bets are unbound from economic fundamentals, as investors move to support a brand for romantic or ideological reasons. Donald Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group, home to Truth Social, is valued at more than $5bn on quarterly revenue of about $1m. The wallstreetbets ethos 'has always to some extent been about flaunting and exploiting the ironies, relevance or irrelevance' of the stock market, said Rogozinski, who pointed to Wendy's, the hamburger chain, as a good example. 'Wendy's has always been a meme that goes back a decade. It brings a smile to my face, because on Reddit there's always been this thing where they say: 'Sir, this is a Wendy's.' 'It's an inside joke, and I don't even get where it started. It's just a meme,' he added. The stock's fleeting rise – it rallied 10% in two days, but finished the week broadly flat – shows some retail investors do not necessarily care about the typical factors that drive the market, such as tariffs and war in the Middle East. 'It's this ability for us to almost make fun of the financial system.' Long-term institutional players will always get the last laugh, Rogozinski conceded, because prices will return to normal valuations. 'But in the short term there's lot of money to be had with this volatility, and the fact that stocks are able to move up and down with such ease is but a mere showcase for how the financial system needs a facelift in relevancy.' Related: Bed Bath & Beyond sees 'meme-stock' surge – but is it too little, too late? While current market conditions do not replicate the low interest rates and retail investor buoyancy of the Covid era, market records and a robust economy have made meme stocks attractive once again for some. 'You see all these indications where this is full-blown meme mania,' Brent Kochuba, founder of derivatives-data firm SpotGamma, told Bloomberg. 'The macro economic environment really favors the retail and speculative plays,' agreed Al. 'I think were only going to see more speculation and excitement. It's a good time to tune in, because retail players can react and provide insight faster.' Days traders are not necessarily bothered by a company's financial performance, said Rogozinski. 'You have this activist, elective investor who is saying, 'I don't care what the financial statements look like, I don't care what the discounted cashflow is, I like the food, I like the video-game store, I like the meme. So dude, you can go back to Excel spreadsheets if you want, but I really like the chicken tenders,'' he said. There is now a 'third component' to investment, beyond supply and demand, he claimed, 'which is, 'dude, I don't care if you think it's going to go up or not, or if they have assets or liabilities. I care about this company and I'm going to help it out. I'm going to go buy my jeans from American Eagle.'' Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Melden Sie sich an, um Ihr Portfolio aufzurufen. Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten Fehler beim Abrufen der Daten
