Investing

Meme Stock Report for 6/29: Clover Health, Playboy, Virgin Galactic

Paul Ausick

Published: June 29, 2021 1:49 pm

Last Friday, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) soared by 39% following the company’s announcement that it had received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to carry passengers into space. That is, ordinary (if very wealthy) people willing to pay a likely ticket price in the double-digit millions for the chance. There is not a lot of chatter on Reddit about the stock, but one investor noted that the Hotel Encanto in Las Cruces, New Mexico, (“the official preferred resort in Dona Ana County to service the astronauts and their families who will be traveling to Spaceport America”) is fully booked for the week after Independence Day. Whatever that signifies.

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Though maybe not yet a full-fledged meme stock, PLBY Group Inc. (NASDAQ: PLBY) might just need a little shove to make the grade. In March, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity said the company was among the most undervalued in the world. At the time, the stock traded at around $18, and Canaccord analyst Austin Muldow put a price target of $38 on the stock, along with a Buy rating. Shares closed at $37.92 on Monday and traded up on Tuesday. Since its IPO in mid-February, PLBY’s share price has tripled. Why PLBY thinks that’s a better name than Playboy remains a mystery.

Clover Health Investments Corp. (NASDAQ: CLOV) may be seeing some action due to a high level of short sales (about 37%) and a short borrow fee of nearly 92% (annualized). Any short seller willing to pay a fee that high in order to borrow shares of Clover Health has got to be virtually certain that the share price will fall. The retail investors in Clover Health appear to be determined not to let up on the shorts, at least not yet.

Virgin Galactic stock traded down more than 13% in the noon hour Tuesday, at around $47.70 in a 52-week range of $14.27 to $62.80. More than 53 million shares had traded so far, more than double the daily average of 26 million.

PLBY stock traded up about 8.7% to $41.21, in a post-IPO range of $9.85 to $63.04. The average daily trading volume on the shares is 3 million, and more than 2 million had changed hands in the first half of Tuesday’s trading session.

Clover Health traded up 7.3%, at $13.75 in a 52-week range of $6.31 to $28.85. The average daily trading volume is 56 million shares, a number already reached by the end of the noon hour Tuesday.