This Wacky Tea and Stock-Market Meme, is Real

It's not every day you come across a social experiment on tea, especially when infused with the US Stock Exchange. The US Stock Market is also not everyone's first thought when thinking about tea, except for Chase.

Chase is a 27-year-old from Indiana, who currently works in Chicago for political campaigns, would tell you differently. After coming across one of the most bizarre tea-related vlogs on all of the internet, I spoke with Chase -- who runs a vlog named ''One David's Tea Share A Day' where he posts daily updates to, well, buying one share of David's Tea stock a day.

Yes, you read that right. Chase is vlogging his journey buying one share of David's Tea stock a day.

Chase started his series on April 16th, 2021, and is currently up to almost 200 shares of David's Tea Stock. "My plan is to go for at least two years, but will continue this project indefinitely," he continued. Chase also explained that this isn't a meme in the making, but instead, he's completely serious.

But why David’s Tea, you ask?

[Photo: Personal Tea Haul from David's Tea]

"When solidifying this project, David's Tea was the largest [retail] tea company in the US at the time," Chase claimed. He went on to say that even if it wasn't for David's Tea's rank in the US market, he's just simply a fan of them.

After speaking with David, I later spoke with 'CatsDrinkTeaToo' -- who requested I keep his identity anonymous. 'CatsDrinkTeaToo' is a tea-drinker on Instagram who has also been a licensed stock-broker for the past three years. When I asked Cats about the ability to have enough influence over the market by buying one share a day, it won't cut it.

"Theoretically it's a great idea but realistically, it won't happen," Cats said.

In regards to having any influence over the market for continually buying one share a day, Cats continued to say, "It's not large enough to influence the price."

He further explained that you'd need to buy roughly around 49-million dollars worth of David's Tea stock for where it's currently priced, and even at that, your influence would still be little-to-non existent. According to Cats, David's Tea is a low-traded stock and had around 280 exchanges the day I spoke with him.

Despite being a low-traded stock, Cats warned that market manipulation can happen at any time. He also warned that when talking about trading stock, you have to be careful to not convince others to buy alongside you because according to the SEC, doing so is market manipulation -- which is illegal.

However, according to Chase, he's very aware that he's walking a very thin line.

"I want to enjoy my journey and share tea with others. I'm not convincing them to invest in David's Tea, and never will, but I am trying to convince others to drink tea with me" he claimed.

While trying to avoid a financial influence, Chase wants to set a social one.

"Young people need to change companies from the top down," Chase said after explaining that he started this social-media series after wanting to show the youth that it's important to take charge of their financial future. He indicated that there's no other option, and due to the current state of the economy, making a change from the bottom-up isn't working.

According to Cats, the younger generation just simply isn't saving. And he's right.

According to a 2019 article from Forbes, Generation-Z can no-longer afford to buy a home, or save for retirement.

"It's an art project. I'm here for the long haul," Chase concluded as we ended our convo.

David's Tea became public on June 5th, 2015 on the US Stock Exchange, and has yet to respond for further comment.

-- The Oolong Drunk

"Blissfully Tea Drunk"