The Nasdaq Composite lagged both the Dow Jones industrials and the S&P 500 indexes at the noon hour Monday. Energy stocks, including oil stocks, were driving the gains following a pronouncement from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that demand for oil will be higher next year than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the tech-heavy Nasdaq, Microsoft, Nvidia and Adobe were dragging the index and the sector lower. Apple traded up following last Friday’s decline, after a federal judge issued a ruling in the Epic Games suit against Apple that appeared at first to be worse for Apple. Now, investors aren’t so sure that they didn’t jump too soon to the wrong conclusion.

As we noted in our early morning look at the U.S. equity markets, the day’s big mover among wannabe meme stocks was Aterian Inc. (NASDAQ: ATER). The company designs and manufactures a variety of consumer products that it then sells to online customers, including Amazon, as well as its own and other websites. Aterian also markets to other merchants the sales platform it uses for its own business. There really does not appear to be any reason for the big moves that began last week. In February, the stock traded at nearly $49, so even with Monday’s gain, the shares trade about 65% below their February high.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) continues to post gains despite higher short interest in the stock. About 19% of the company’s floated shares were shorted at the end of August, and last week’s share price gain of around 16% probably brought more short sellers to the table. It is possible that the shorts will never get the message that there is some non-trivial number of investors who believe there is enough actual value in AMC stock to support a share price above $50.

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (NASDAQ: CLNE) has always seemed like an odd meme stock. Now that natural gas prices basically have doubled over the past 12 months to reach their highest level in three years, the stock’s attraction seems even odder. Clean Energy Fuels sells natural gas-based fuels, primarily in California, which will soon depart the market for fossil fuels altogether. How this supports a higher price for Clean Energy Fuels stock is beyond our limited math skills.

Camber Energy Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN: CEI) gave back some of the gains it posted last week. The share price broke through $1.00 right around the noon hour Thursday, and it traded near $1.65 a share before drifting down to close the week at $1.52. Shares were taking something of a beating Monday but still traded well above $1.00.

Aterian traded up about 40% in the noon hour Monday, at $16.55 in a 52-week range of $3.04 to $48.99. More than 163 million shares had traded thus far on the day, more than 20 times the daily average of around 8.3 million.

AMC stock traded up 3.7% Monday to $52.04, in a 52-week range of $1.91 to $72.62. The average daily volume is about 108.5 million shares, and about 48 million had traded.

Clean Energy Fuels traded up more than 6% to $8.33, in a 52-week range of $2.36 to $19.79. The average daily trading volume is around 11 million shares, and about 3.8 million had traded.

Camber Energy was down about 4.9%, at $1.45 in a 52-week range of $0.33 to $3.10. More than 132 million shares had traded on Monday, compared to a daily average of around 45.3 million.

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