Retail traders target Wall Street’s underdogs for the meme stock treatment. But Matt Krantz with Investors’ Business Daily says the spotlight doesn’t typically offer more than a short-term boost.

“Usually, it’s just an interesting spike, and then it turns around and crashes and it’s almost like there was an explosion that no one heard or everyone forgot,” Krantz said.

That includes notable exceptions, such as the original meme stock Gamestop, which is still being propped up by retail traders 5 years later.

There’s also the beleaguered movie theater chain AMC, which leveraged its 15 minutes into over a billion dollars in capital.

Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, says out of last month's social media stars: “One of them, GoPro, did get a benefit out of it.” The company’s share price had been hovering under a dollar, putting it dangerously close to getting booted from the tech-focused Nasdaq exchange.

Gordon said that would have made it a lot harder for people to buy and sell its stock.

“Well the meme frenzy pumped or hyped the stock price up over a dollar, it stayed over a dollar for ten days, and now GoPro is not gonna be delisted,” he said.

As for other recent meme stocks, Kohls, Krispy Kreme and American Eagle? Gordon said those are basically the same troubled companies they were two weeks ago.