Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 7/30: Nio, Robinhood, Tilray, Virgin Galactic

Paul Ausick

Published: July 30, 2021 1:20 pm

The overall market was trading lower at the noon hour Friday, partially due to the previous night’s weakish earnings report from Amazon and its impact on a number of other e-commerce stocks like PayPal, eBay and Etsy. Friday was also the last trading day of the month, and some portfolio managers were reconfiguring their holdings. Meme stocks were about evenly divided between winners and losers, with neither rising nor falling by double digits.

First the good news.

Chinese EV maker Nio Inc. (NYSE: NIO) has staged something of a comeback in the past week, posting a gain of around 2% so far, compared to a dip of about 0.2% for the S&P 500. Unlike other China-based companies that trade on U.S. exchanges, Nio makes stuff that people want to buy. It also supports the country’s manufacturing focus. Tech companies like Alibaba and DiDi are being painted by the government as just dashes for cash that need to be reined in.

Robinhood Markets Inc. (NASDAQ: HOOD) has gained honorary membership in our meme stock portfolio following its Thursday initial public offering. One interesting thing about the IPO was that retail investors bought less than $19 million (that’s right, million) worth of Robinhood shares Thursday. The IPO priced at the low end of the projected range, and the company reserved about 20% to 25% for users of its trading platform.

Now, the not-so-good news. Tilray Inc. (NASDAQ: TLRY) continued to retreat from a recent high of $16.67, after posting a surprise profit earlier in the week. Investors got another surprise, though: lower than expected quarterly revenue and a significant operating loss. The surprise profit of $33.6 million included $121.5 million in non-operating income related to a gain on a portion of the company’s convertible debt. You can do the math.

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) was coming down from a two-week high posted Thursday. Investors may be worried that the federal government will take up Blue Origin’s offer of a $2 billion discount for building a lunar lander for NASA. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos can afford to pay for that from loose change hiding in one of his couches. Virgin Galactic would rather compete with SpaceX and Blue Origin for the federal contracts.

Robinhood shares traded down about 3% in the noon hour, at $35.85. The two-day trading range is $33.25 to $40.25. Trading volume was around 28 million shares thus far on Friday.

Nio traded up about 5% to $44.75, in a 52-week range of $11.73 to $66.99. The average daily trading volume is around 65.7 million shares, and nearly 50 million have been exchanged on the day.

Tilray traded down about 5.6%, at $14.56 in a 52-week range of $4.41 to $67.00. The average daily trading volume is around 27.5 million shares, and 14.8 million had changed hands.

Virgin Galactic was down about 3% to $29.87. Its 52-week range is $14.27 to $62.80. The average daily trading volume is around 41.4 million shares. On last look, 5.7 million shares had changed hands on Friday.