Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 8/26: AMC, Canoo, GameStop, Meta Materials

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The three major U.S. indexes were giving back some of the gains they put up on Tuesday and managed to hold onto Wednesday. The second estimate of second-quarter gross domestic product growth came in at 6.6%, up from an initial 6.5% growth estimate. The weekly report on new claims for unemployment came in at 353,000, continuing a run at fewer than 400,000 new claims.

The stocks in our meme stock watchlist were also slightly skewed to the downside, but the losses were relatively moderate, as were the wins.

In the noon hour Thursday, Meta Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: MMAT) traded down, after adding around 29% in the first three trading days of the week. On Wednesday, the company filed a prospectus registering nearly 191 million shares that already had been issued in conjunction with the reverse merger that brought the company to the Nasdaq in late June. The shares were issued to shareholders in the predecessor company, Metamaterials, as exchangeable shares in a subsidiary of Meta called Exchangeco. Each exchangeable share may be turned in for one share of Meta Materials common stock. Meta also may redeem the exchangeable shares at some future time on a one-for-one basis. The company receives no cash from the shares.

To some investors in Meta, this might look like a secondary offering that increases the share count by 191 million. It is not. CEO George Palikaras responded to a tweet Thursday morning, confirming that the latest filing applies only to the already-issued exchangeable shares.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) was sliding a bit Thursday, following a small drop on Wednesday. The stock added 27.5% on Tuesday, and the giveback thus far was around 3%. Bloomberg said on Wednesday that retail investors are just taking a breather.

GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) posted a nice gain on Thursday. The only news is that the company is going to announce its second-quarter earnings results late Wednesday on September 8. For those cold-blooded retail investors who have been driving AMC and GameStop higher in the past few days, AMC short sellers were down more than $4 billion so far in 2021, while GameStop shorts are down more than $6 billion, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners.

Electric vehicle maker Canoo Inc. (NASDAQ: GOEV) also traded up in the noon hour Thursday. There was no news from or about the company. It is possible that Canoo was slipstreaming the big bump another EV maker, Lordstown Motors, got from its announcement in the morning that the company has a new CEO.

Meta Materials traded down about 4.3% in the noon hour Thursday, at $3.56 in a 52-week range of $0.42 to $21.76. The average daily trading volume is about 25 million shares, and only about 6 million had traded so far on the day.

AMC traded down about 3.2% to $42.55, in a 52-week range of $1.91 to $72.62. The average daily trading volume is more than 171 million shares, and 76.5 million had changed hands on Thursday.

GameStop traded up about 4.9% to $209.40, in a 52-week range of $5.02 to $483.00. The average daily volume is around 5.5 million shares, with more than 4.2 million traded on the day.

Canoo was up about 4%, at $7.80 in a 52-week range of $5.75 to $24.90. The average daily volume is around 4.1 million shares, and 2.2 million had been traded with about three hours left in Thursday’s regular trading session.

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