Midday Meme Stock Report for 6/23: Torchlight Energy, Clover Health, Workhorse, Nano Dimension

Early in Wednesday’s trading session, gainers among a set of meme stocks outnumbered losers by about three to one. The early leaders were not equities, but cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Dogecoin were up more than 30% and 17%, respectively. Meme stocks often slipstream cryptos although the relationship is not tight.

Torchlight Energy Resources Inc. (NASDAQ: TRCH) continues to give back the king-size 83% share price gain it saw between Thursday’s close and Monday’s. The stock closed down more than 29% on Tuesday and the shares were trading down another 30% in the noon hour Wednesday.

With the special dividend coming to shareholders of record at the close of business tomorrow, investors have to decide whether to hold on until the dividend amount is announced and paid or whether to sell now and then buy the shares later after Torchlight’s combination with Metamaterial is completed next week.

Clover Health Investments Corp. (NASDAQ: CLOV) added about 12.4% to its share price on Monday. If the stock can break through the $14.00 per share barrier, call options on 22,704 contracts will be in the money. There are not many put options in play on the stock any longer, indicating that there are few short sellers clamoring for a seat at the table.

After plunging by 93% for the year to date through mid-May, shares of Workhorse Group Inc. (NASDAQ: WKHS) more than doubled by June 9 and has now settled in to trade in a narrow range of around $15, a gain of around 94% since May 13. Options trading in Workhorse stock is heavily weighted to the call side for the June 25 contract expiration.

3-D printing systems maker Nano Dimension Ltd. (NASDAQ: NNDM) also traded higher in the noon hour Wednesday. The July 16 $10 call option was one of the 10 most heavily traded options contracts on Tuesday. Open interest on that contract exceeded 35,000 in the noon hour Wednesday. Short sales accounted for more than 16% of the total float as of May 28. At midday on Wednesday, the stock is trading at its highest price since late April.

Torchlight Energy stock traded down about 31% at $4.84 in the noon hour Tuesday in a 52-week range of $0.21 to $10.88. The high was posted Monday and average daily trading volume of around 25.3 million shares has jumped to more than 93 million so far today.

Clover Health shares are trading up about 8% at around $13.62 in a 52-week range of $6.31 to $28.85. Average daily trading volume is around 51.2 million shares and nearly 110 million have already been traded Tuesday.

Workhorse shares traded up about 5% at $15.27 in a 52-week range of $7.07 to $42.96. Average daily trading volume is nearly 19 million and about 12.1 million shares have been traded in the first half of Wednesday.

Shares of Nano Dimension traded up more than 4% in the noon hour Wednesday at $8.41 in a 52-week range of $1.31 to $17.89. Average daily trading volume is around 17 million shares and more than 20 million have changed hands so far Wednesday.