One of the defining characteristics of a meme stock is how much discussion it generates on social media, particularly on r/WallStreetBets and other Reddit groups focused on single stocks. Those discussions can sometimes get heated but, for the most part, commenters are encouraging others to buy or “hodl” as part of a drive to thwart the manipulations of hedge funds and big investment management firms that often hold substantial short positions in these stocks.
Does all that chatter help the share price? Here’s a look at the performance of 10 meme stocks that received the most mentions at WallStreetBets over the past 30 days.
The mention data is reported by Quiver Quantitative and includes two decidedly non-meme stocks, the SPY index fund and AMD. SPY tops the league tables by a factor of more than two with more than 15,000 mentions and gets more than four times as many mentions as AMD.
Trailing behind SPY in the number two position is GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), which amassed more than 6,300 mentions over the past 30 days. GameStop is one of the OG meme stocks, and it has gained more than 1,000% for the year to date, thanks to a now-legendary short squeeze in late January. For the month of August, the share price rose by about 35.5%.
The other OG meme stock, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC), has added nearly 2,000% to its share price so far in 2021. AMC has run up 6,288 mentions, and the stock price rose by 27.3% in August.
Clover Health Investments Corp. (NASDAQ: CLOV) stock has dropped more than 44% so far in 2021. The stock had more than 4,400 mentions and added 6.3% to its share price in August.
Robinhood Markets Inc. (NASDAQ: HOOD) ranked fifth in mentions with 4,289. Since coming public in late July the stock is up nearly 28% and shares added 26% in August.
Microvast Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: MVST) rang up 4,157 WallStreetBets mentions. Like Robinhood, the lithium-ion battery maker came public in late July, and the stock has added about 8.4% since then. The stock dropped about 1.7% in August.
Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: BABA) was mentioned 3,499 times in the past month. Shares traded down about 26% so far in 2021 and dropped 14.5% in August alone. The company’s difficulties with the Chinese government are sending investors to the exits, including Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest ETFs, which dumped its last 700 shares of Alibaba on Thursday.
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NYSE: PLTR) stock is up about 12.3% so far in 2021. The company had more than 3,100 mentions on WallStreetBets in the past month, and the stock price rose by about 21.3%. And speaking of ARK Invest, Cathie Wood has added 6.5 million shares of Palantir stock to ARK’s portfolio since the end of June. The value of that holding was around $986 million at Thursday’s closing price.
ContextLogic Inc. (NASDAQ: WISH) scored 2,756 mentions last month. Since the beginning of the year, the shares are down just over 60%. In August, the stock dropped about 27.5%.
COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna Inc. (NASDAQ: MRNA) had 2,460 mentions and an August share price gain of 6.5%. For the year to date, the stock is up 273.8%.
Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) generates enough chatter on r/WallStreetBets (more than 2,200 last month) to make the top 10 (excluding SPY and AMD). For the year to date, Tesla’s stock is up about 3.4%. For the month of August, Tesla added just over 7% to its share price.
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