The rise of AMC stock is something everyone should be studying.

AMC has become a meme stock this year and millions of people have bought a small number of shares and are interested in AMC evolving and adapting to the current market conditions. What makes this situation worth study is that the CEO has publicly stated that the vast majority of shares are being held by millions of investors with a small number of shares each.

Normally large funds hold millions of shares and only put pressure on companies to meet quarterly financial goals. They don’t really care about what the company is doing or how policies impact customers. It is different with AMC. These retail investors are also customers who go to AMC theaters to see movies. They are motivated to improve the customer experience. The CEO says these investors are the owners of AMC and he is taking their lead because he works for them. Each of these investors are advocates for AMC which could be leveraged to get more people into their theaters or onto whatever new service the company offers.

Now that retail investors have shown how influential they can be, it demonstrates that corporations can be influenced and even controlled by everyday people. Just last week a major oil company was forced to replace 2 board members who are going to push the company to invest in renewable energy and accelerate their transition away from fossil fuels. While oil stocks have been declining the stocks have become more affordable for retail investors. They could target one of these oil companies and snap up a majority of shares across millions of retail investors and push the company to do more with renewable energy. There are growth opportunities in renewables and funding these efforts with oil money makes sense. Oil companies need to become energy companies because their revenues will only diminish as more EVs replace gas-burning vehicles.

I just bought a small number of shares, along with millions of other retail investors, and AMC has responded in a positive way. This is just a movie theater chain. If all these retail investors turn their focus to other corporations and strongly influence their decisions it would be very empowering. Instead of blaming corporations for problems we can all invest in changing them for the better.