Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 7/1: Cellect Biotech, ContextLogic, Workhorse, Senseonics

Paul Ausick

Published: July 1, 2021 1:26 pm

As of noon on Thursday, the three major U.S. stock indexes were either slightly above or slightly below the break-even line. Trading volume was also muted somewhat, as the holiday weekend likely attracts more attention than stock prices.

After markets closed on Wednesday, ContextLogic Inc. (NASDAQ: WISH) announced company Chief Financial Officer Rajat Bahri will resign his position effective July 23. Wish, ContextLogic’s d/b/a name, has initiated a search to replace Bahri, but a departing CFO is never good news for a company’s stock price, and meme stocks are no exception. Wish’s stock had dropped by around 6% in the noon hour Thursday, after trading down as much as 6.9% earlier. Wish was not generating a lot of comments on Reddit either.

Electric van maker Workhorse Group Inc. (NASDAQ: WKHS) is generating more noise than Wish, but trading volume has been fairly light even for this popular meme stock. There is no news from the company, but retail investors had pushed the stock up to a one-month high over $17 on Tuesday. Today, many of them are buying the dip and encouraging others to do the same. Squeezing short sellers is the goal, but the stock needs more trading volume and that may have to wait until next week.

Medical technology company Senseonics Holdings Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN: SENS) also traded down about 6% in the noon hour. The stock closed at more than $4.00 a share on Monday, the first time it has done so since late February. About 7% of Senseonics’s float is sold short, probably not enough to mount a strong attack on short sellers, although buying the dip and then holding on is a popular strategy.

Cellect Biotechnology Ltd (NASDAQ: APOP) is an Israel-based firm that is developing a grafting platform to enhance the safety of regenerative medicine and stem cell therapies. The company is small (market cap of $15.1 million) and not especially liquid (average daily volume of 1.7 million shares). Neither is it a driver of comments on Reddit. It doesn’t even have its own subreddit. But on a day when not much is happening in the market, this qualifies as a meme stock.

In the noon hour Thursday, Wish was trading down nearly 7% to $12.25, in a 52-week range of $7.52 to $32.85. Trading volume was around 58 million shares, compared to an average daily volume of 51.4 million.

Senseonics stock traded down about 6.9%, at $3.58 in a 52-week range of $0.35 to $5.56. The average daily trading volume is about 31 million shares, compared with about 12.3 million traded so far on the day.

Workhorse shares were down about 6.3%, at $15.55 in a 52-week range of $7.07 to $42.96. About 7.3 million shares had traded thus far, compared to an average daily volume of 19.3 million.

Shares of Cellect Biotechnology traded up about 2.1% to $3.83, in a 52-week range of $1.65 to $7.15. The stock traded at $4.11, up nearly 10%, earlier in the morning. The average daily trading volume is 1.7 million shares, and about 950,000 had changed hands thus far Thursday.