U.S. markets traded lower at midday Friday, with all the major indexes down by less than 1%. The materials (down 1.9%) and tech (down 1.2%) sectors were the leading losers.
One meme stock defying the downward trend was SmileDirectClub Inc. (NASDAQ: SDC). The company’s stock built on its premarket gain and trading volume was about 12 times the daily average. Social media mentions were up 3,400% over the past 24 hours, and the stock was the second-most-discussed on the WallStreetBets subreddit. The company had no news, and the share price likely was driven higher by retail investors trying to squeeze some profits out of short sellers, who own about a third of the company’s float.
At the other end of the league tables, IronNet CyberSecurity Inc. (NYSE: IRNT) continued trading down after Friday’s premarket session. Volume was higher than usual but not wildly so. IronNet had no news, but the stock price has been on a tear for the past several sessions. As Stein’s Law reminds us, however, if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
After gaining nearly 24% on Thursday, TMC the metals company Inc. (NYSE: TMC) gave back more than half of that Friday morning. The company’s SPAC transaction completed just a week ago yielded just $137 million in fresh cash, far below its expected haul of around $600 million. We covered some details of that transaction in our Friday premarket report.
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Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: GREE) had lost about 18% of its value since the former Support.com combined with a subsidiary of Greenidge to form a new publicly traded firm with a new ticker. Commenters on WallStreetBets were not amused. One ape advised others to stay away from mergers: “Nothing but disaster as of late for most of them.” He or she was probably thinking about the Torchlight Energy reverse merger that created Meta Materials. But there are other exhibits. See TMC, just above, for example.
The real disaster for Greenidge could be Thursday’s prospectus filings registering the resale of about 10.5 million shares of stock owned by current shareholders. The company will receive no proceeds from the sale, and shareholders are likely to see some dilution.
SmileDirectClub stock traded up more than 13% to $6.78, in a 52-week range of $4.63 to $16.08. Nearly 108 million shares had been traded thus far Friday, compared to a daily average of around 8.8 million.
IronNet traded down more than 19%, at $33.38 in a 52-week range of $9.36 to $47.50. The high was posted Thursday. About 9.5 million shares had traded on the day, compared to the daily average of around 3.3 million.
TMC was down nearly 16% to $10.44, in a post-IPO range of $8.31 to $15.39. The average daily trading volume is about 15.8 million shares, and around 8.5 million had traded.
Greenidge traded down about 9%, at $39.56 in a 52-week range of $14.09 to $519.04. The average daily trading volume is about 2.3 million shares, and nearly 2 million had changed hands already.
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