An online community of retail investors, driven by Reddit and the ease of online commerce, spent the last week of January snapping up shares of companies in distress en masse, sending out prominent ones hedge funds in a pirouette. The frenzy has transformed struggling companies like GameStop, Blackberry and others into what some are calling “meme stocks” as crowdsourced investment dramatically raises their stocks.
Here are other companies seeing an explosive jump in their share prices.
AMC
Driven by attention on Wallstreetbets, the Reddit group fueling the GameStop craze, the movie theater chain saw its stock price rebound from $ 5 on Monday to more than $ 20 and then drop to $ 12.30 before the trade on Friday.
This is not the kind of action that investors would normally expect from a company that has been hit by coronavirus pandemic. In its most recent quarter, AMC lost $ 906 million. The company also reported a 92% drop in shareholding in the United States in the fourth quarter, compared to the same period last year, according to an SEC filing.
Earlier this week, AMC said it secured nearly $ 1 billion in new financing through equity offers and a new credit line, but its future will be determined by the speed with which the COVID-19 vaccines are distributed across the country. parents.
Blackberry
Shares in the Canadian company, which now focuses on selling cybersecurity software, started the new year at around $ 7. On Wednesday, the shares had shot up 255% to about $ 29, before dropping to $ 17, before the opening of US markets on Friday.
The vertical increase contrasts sharply with Blackberry’s gains in 2020. In its most recent quarter, Blackberry posted losses of $ 794 million. Once a cell phone sales champion, Blackberry left the market last year after its supplier announced it would no longer manufacture or sell Blackberry devices.
Blackberry said in a statement this week that it does not know what is causing the increase in its shares, adding that the company has made “no material changes to its business or matters that have not been publicly disclosed that could be responsible for the recent increase in the market price or trading volume. “
Bed Bath & Beyond
The household goods retailer saw its stock price rise from $ 18 per share in early January to $ 53 per share on Wednesday. But behind the bubble, the New Jersey-based company has been severely challenged by the pandemic due to store closings, as well as continued competition from companies like IKEA and Target.
The retailer’s sales began to plummet during the first wave of COVID-19 infections last year, with the company temporarily closing 90% of its stores in the United States and Canada between March and June. A month later, the company said that permanently close 200 stores and transition to a “digital first” operation. Some of these closed stores are being transformed into distribution centers – physical locations where online purchases can be picked up or packaged for shipping.
In its most recent quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond reported a net loss of $ 75.4 million. Still, CEO Mark Tritton said in a earnings conference call earlier this month that the company’s “buy online and withdraw in-store” strategy is looking promising in 2021.
“I think that at the total level of the industry, BOPIS as a muscle and a new methodology that is very accepted by the client, and we are benefiting from that too,” he said.
Naked Brand
Shares in the Australian lingerie seller started the week at 40 cents and then rose to $ 3.50. Reaching while it’s hot, the company announced on Thursday that it was selling millions of new shares in a move to raise $ 50 million.
Naked now joins a short but growing list of companies that Robinhood on Thursday restricted users from buying. Potential investors are angry, Naked CEO Chris Tyson told the Wall Street Journal. The company “saw a high level of frustration over the ability to trade freely with NAKD shares,” said Tyson.
Before this week’s inexplicable increase, Naked was at risk of being pulled out of Nasdaq because it spent much of 2020 trading for less than a dollar. In November, Nasdaq executives granted the company a 180-day extension to increase its price, which expires on March 24.
Nokia
Mobile phone setback Nokia had a day-high and fall in its share price on Wednesday, opening the day at nearly $ 5 a share and growing by nearly $ 10 a share at noon. The last time Nokia had a share price of $ 10? December 2010.
The Finnish electronics company issued a statement this week saying it did not know what caused the increase in its shares. Nokia is also on the current list of companies that Robinhood has blocked from buying from its customers.
Nokia is currently consolidated in several partnerships with several mobile technology companies, including Google Cloud and T-Mobile, to help build and expand 5G technology. However, the company faces fierce competition in the United States and abroad with Huawei in China and Ericsson in Sweden. Nokia’s new CEO, Pekka Lundmark, said in October that the company will do “whatever it takes” to be the global leader in 5G.
Commodities and cryptocurrencies
A “little squeeze” in the silver bar market became the hot topic of discussion on the subreddit Wallstreetbets, after which shares related to the precious metal saw its value rise suddenly on Thursday morning for no apparent reason.
First Majestic Silver, a Canadian silver mining company with the AG symbol, kept the stock price at around $ 14 per share for most of this month, but rose 21% on Thursday. Fortuna Silver Mines saw its share price rise 14% on Thursday to $ 7.62. The iShares Silver Trust, an exchange-traded fund that tracks silver prices, rose nearly 6% on Thursday to almost $ 25 a share.
“$ AG is essentially $ GME for silver,” posted a Reddit user on Thursday, comparing First Majestic Silver’s shares to GameStop, adding “Greater fluctuation sold in the industry, good leverage for silver and also surpassed the 10-year resistance. “
Silver is widely used in the production of jewelry and solar panels, one of the reasons why some analysts expect it to surpass gold in 2021.
Meanwhile, the Dogecoin cryptocurrency is trading at a high of $ 0.08, according to the largest crypto exchange in the United States, Coinbase. The historic boost comes a day after the subreddit SatoshiStreetBets, which calls itself crypto’s Wallstreetbets, coordinated an effort to buy Dogecoin.
“The world held Dogecoin for us between $ 0.05 and $ 0.06,” posted one user. “Now the United States is waking up. It’s time to buy and continue this rocket ride to the moon.”
Dogecoin started in 2013 and is based on a popular Shiba Inu dog meme called Doge. Dogecoin is not as popular as bitcoin or ether, but it has loyal followers. Dogecoin is now valued at $ 5.8 billion, according to Coinbase.