The retail trading crowd has found a new buzzworthy stock: IBM. Yes, your father's "Big Blue" IBM. Driving the news: Shares of IBM exploded in recent days, posting their best two-day showing in records stretching back to the early 1970s.Why it matters: IBM's surge shows how individual investors have become a market force, by coordinating purchases, touting positions on social media and boosting buying power with borrowed money, or margin.Several indications of meme-style trading are evident, with mentions of the stock on Reddit's Wall Street Bets up sharply while purchases of call options — bets that stock prices will rise that have become a favorite vehicle for retail traders — are soaring. What they're saying: "Take me to Valhalla," posted one trader on Monday, touting a $60,000 bet he made on IBM shares. He added that the position was "entirely margin," or made with borrowed money. Context: IBM has previously attracted attention with renewed plans to focus on its quantum computing research — quantum stocks have been favorites of retail traders in recent years. Still, the current rally also seems closely related to President Trump's unprecedented involvement, personally and as a matter of U.S. government policy, in the U.S. stock market. The intrigue: Months-old video of Trump praising IBM's CEO and hinting that the company's share price would soon go higher circulated widely on Monday. The comments were similar in tone to remarks the president made previously about other major U.S. tech companies — like chipmaker Intel, in which the U.S. government took a 9.9% stake last year, igniting a rally. Intel has more than tripled in 2026, enriching shareholders — potentially including the president himself. Recent disclosures of the financial holdings of Trump's investment portfolio show several purchases of Intel shares were made in March.Similarly, Dell, which has also been the subject of positive comments this year from the president — after CEO Michael Dell's philanthropic funding of the "Trump Accounts" program — has surged more than 250% in 2026. (Before those comments, disclosures show Trump's investment portfolio made a purchase of between $1 million and $5 million.) The other side: The Trump Organization has stated repeatedly that "neither President Trump, his family, nor The Trump Organization plays any role in selecting, directing, or approving specific investments. They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management of any kind," a spokesperson for the company wrote in an emailed statement. The bottom line: The reaction of IBM shares — on apparently little more than a dated snippet of video and a bit of online chatter — shows how traders have been primed by Trump's market interventions to try to piggyback on, and profit from, the next one.