An online retail investor community, fueled by Reddit and the ease of online trading, spent the last week of January mass-capturing shares of troubled companies, sending prominences hedge funds in a queue. Frenzy has turned companies in difficulty, such as GameStop, Blackberry and others, into what some call “meme stocks” because crowdsourced investments are suddenly increasing their shares.
Here are other companies that are seeing an explosive jump in their stock prices.
I HAVE C
Amplified by the attention on Wallstreetbets, the Reddit group that fuels the GameStop mania, the movie chain saw its stock price rebound from $ 5 on Monday to over $ 20 and then returned to $ 12.30 before trading 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 the most recent quarter, AMC lost $ 906 million. The company also reported a 92 percent drop in U.S. share in the fourth quarter compared to a year ago, according to an SEC filing.
Earlier this week, AMC said it had secured nearly $ 1 billion in new equity funding and a new line of credit, but its future will ultimately be determined by the speed with which COVID-19 vaccines are distributed. in all the country.
blackberries
Shares of the Canadian company, which is now focusing on selling cybersecurity software, have started trading around $ 7 this year. As of Wednesday, shares had risen 255% to about $ 29, before returning to $ 17, before the US markets opened on Friday.
Vertical growth is in stark contrast to Blackberry’s earnings for 2020. In the most recent quarter, Blackberry reported losses of $ 794 million. Once the top seller of mobile phones, Blackberry came out of the market last year after its supplier announced that it would no longer produce or sell Blackberry devices.
Blackberry said in a statement this week that it does not know what is causing its stock to grow, adding that the company has not made “any significant changes in its business or business that have not been publicly disclosed that could explain the recent rise in market price or volume.” transactions. “
Bed Bath & Beyond
The retailer of household goods saw its share price rise from $ 18 per share in early January to $ 53 per share on Wednesday. But behind the bubble, the New Jersey company was hit hard by the pandemic, due to store closures, as well as ongoing competition from IKEA and Target.
The retailer’s sales began to decline during the first wave of COVID-19 infections last year, with the company temporarily closing 90% of its stores in the US and Canada between March and June. A month later, the company said it would permanently closes 200 stores and the transition to a “digital first” operation. Some of these closed stores are transformed into fulfillment centers – physical locations where online purchases can be picked up or packaged for shipment.
In the last quarter, Bed Bath & Beyond reported a net loss of $ 75.4 million. However, CEO Mark Tritton said in a earnings call earlier this month that the company’s “buy online and go store” strategy looks promising in 2021.
“I think that at the total industry level, BOPIS as a muscle and a new methodology that is very accepted by the client and that we also benefit from it,” he said.
Naked Brand
Shares of the Australian lingerie seller started the week trading at 40 cents and then rose to $ 3.50. Hitting while hot, the company announced on Thursday that it is 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 irritated, Naked CEO Chris Tyson told the Wall Street Journal. The company “saw a high level of frustration over their ability to freely trade NAKD shares,” Tyson said.
Prior to this week’s unexplained rise, Naked was in danger of being wiped out of the Nasdaq because it spent much of 2020 trading for less than a dollar. Nasdaq officials granted the company a 180-day extension in November to raise its price, which expires on March 24.
Nokia
Back at the mobile phone Nokia had a one-day rise and fall in the share price on Wednesday, opening the day at almost $ 5 per share and rising to almost $ 10 per share around noon. The last time Nokia had a $ 10 share price? December 2010.
The Finnish electronics company released a statement this week saying it did not know what caused its stock to grow. Nokia is also on the current list of companies that Robinhood has blocked customers from buying.
Nokia is currently partnering with several mobile technology companies, including Google Cloud and T-Mobile, to help develop and expand 5G technology. However, the company faces stiff competition in the US and abroad with Huawei in China and Ericsson in Sweden. Nokia’s new CEO, Pekka Lundmark, said in October that the company would do “whatever it takes” to be a global leader in 5G.
Goods and cryptocurrencies
A “brief push” on the silver bullion market has become the hot topic of discussion on the Wallstreetbets subreddit, after which shares of the precious metal saw their value rise sharply on Thursday morning for no apparent reason.
First Majestic Silver, a Canadian silver mining company with the symbol AG, maintained its share price of about $ 14 per share for most of this month, but then rose 21% on Thursday. Fortuna Silver Mines recorded a 14% increase in its share price on Thursday to $ 7.62. iShares Silver Trust, a publicly traded fund that tracks silver prices, rose nearly 6% on Thursday to nearly $ 25 a share.
“$ AG is essentially $ GME for Silver,” a Reddit user posted on Thursday, comparing First Majestic Silver’s shares to GameStop, adding “The biggest short float in the industry, a good lever for silver and just broke out over 10 years of resistance “.
Silver is used extensively 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 an all-time high of $ 0.08, according to the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US Coinbase. The historical power comes a day after the subreddit of SatoshiStreetBets, which is called the crypto Wallstreetbets, coordinated an effort to buy Dogecoin.
“People kept Dogecoin for us between $ 0.05 and $ 0.06,” one user posted. “Now the US 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 meme of a Shiba Inu dog named Doge. Dogecoin is not as popular as bitcoin or ether, but it has a loyal following. Dogecoin is now valued at $ 5.8 billion, according to Coinbase.