So here’s a wild story for you: A 29-year-old business school dropout just accidentally triggered the most bonkers meme stock rally of 2025. And no, he’s not wearing a red headband or calling himself a cat.
Meet Dimitri Semenikhin, aka “Capyabara Stocks” on social media (yes, that’s capybara like the chill rodent). This guy posted what he thought was a pretty standard investment thesis about Beyond Meat being undervalued, and somehow retail traders turned it into a 1,300% stock surge in four days. Talk about unintended consequences.
“I never expected the amount of attention and following and interest that this investment would drive,” Semenikhin told Business Insider, probably while staring at his phone notifications in disbelief.
From Moscow to Monaco to Meme Lord
Dimitri’s got quite the backstory. Born in Moscow, raised in Monaco (fancy!), studied math at King’s College London, then started a joint MBA program between London Business School and Cambridge. But here’s where it gets interesting – he dropped out to launch a luxury yacht startup called Yacht Harbour in 2014. Because apparently regular startups weren’t bougie enough.
These days, he’s CEO of his family’s real estate development firm, Stroyteks Group, but still finds time to play around in the markets. His unconventional background actually helps him think differently about investments, he says. “It forces you to look at investment deals from both sides, as an investor and as an operator.”
The Thesis That Broke the Internet (Sort Of)
Here’s where things get nerdy: Semenikhin’s Beyond Meat call wasn’t some random YOLO play. He dug into a “fairly complex dynamic of a convertible note exchange” that Beyond Meat had recently completed. Basically, he thought other investors were misunderstanding what this financial move actually meant for the company’s value.
Translation for us normal humans: He found what he believed was a pricing mistake in the market and decided to bet on it. Classic value investing, just with way more memes than Benjamin Graham ever imagined.
“I Am Not a Cat” (Or Roaring Kitty)
As Beyond Meat stock went absolutely bananas, retail traders started flooding Semenikhin’s social channels, desperately hoping they’d found the next Keith Gill (aka Roaring Kitty, the GameStop legend). But Dimitri’s not having it.
He thinks the comparisons are “flattering” but insists this rally is totally different from GameStop. His reasoning? The Beyond Meat surge happened crazy fast, while GameStop took months to build up steam. It’s like comparing a sprint to a marathon – both are running, but totally different games.
That said, he’s definitely leaning into the energy. When Beyond Meat started losing steam on October 22, he posted a screenshot of his position with the caption “As for me, I like the stock” – a direct nod to Gill’s famous congressional testimony. So maybe he’s not Roaring Kitty 2.0, but he’s definitely learned a thing or two about meme stock theater.
The Reality Check
Here’s the thing about meme rallies – they’re fun until they’re not. By Thursday and Friday, Beyond Meat was getting hammered as reality set back in. Semenikhin admitted he was worried the whole thing had turned into an “options casino,” which is Wall Street speak for “people are gambling, not investing.”
But he’s sticking to his guns, saying he’s holding his Beyond Meat stake for the long term. Whether that’s confidence in his thesis or just really expensive stubbornness, we’ll find out soon enough.
The moral of the story? Sometimes a smart investment call can accidentally become a meme stock circus. And sometimes a guy just trying to share his homework ends up becoming the reluctant face of retail trading chaos. Welcome to 2025, where your LinkedIn post might accidentally move markets.