Meme Stock Movers for 9/20: AMC, Greenidge, Hut 8, Marathon Digital, SmileDirectClub

Investing

Published: September 20, 2021 9:28 am

Premarket action on Monday was decidedly downbeat. The three major indexes traded down by at least 1.5%, with the Dow Jones industrials down about 1.8%. The fate of Evergrande, one of China’s largest real estate developers, should be known in the next few days. The company’s next interest payment of $83.5 million is due Thursday and another $47.5 million is due on September 29.

Closer to home, Bitcoin closed down about 9% on Friday and traded down nearly another 10% early Monday at $42,879. This has not been good news for bitcoin miners.

The biggest loser in Monday’s premarket was Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: GREE). The stock closed down about 8.7% on Friday and traded down more than 13.5% on Monday morning. Shares of Hut 8 Mining Corp. (NASDAQ: HUT) traded down more than 11% in Monday’s premarket, and shares of Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA) traded down nearly 10.5%.

Greenidge’s shares have been sliding ever since its merger with Support.com. Since reaching a recent high of nearly $45 on September 3, the shares have dropped about 28% to trade at $32.45 in Monday’s premarket.

Hut 8, a Toronto-based bitcoin miner, plunged last week following its announcement of a secondary offering of about 23 million shares at $8.55 per share. The stock traded at almost $10.50 prior to the announcement.

Marathon Digital has dropped about 25% since September 3 on no particular news. Since September 6, Bitcoin futures have dropped more than 16%.

Of these three stocks, only Greenidge has been on the meme stock radar because of its combination with Support.com. Short interest in Hut 8 was less than 3% before the secondary offering, while short interest in Marathon is around 16%.

SmileDirect Club Inc. (NASDAQ: SDC) remained Monday’s premarket winner among meme stocks. The shares were up as much as 11% earlier, but that was cut to around 4.5% about half an hour before the opening bell. Chatter about the stock has remained high on Reddit, although most of the discussion has been neutral.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) dropped 4% on Friday to close at $44.20. Shares were down about 6.5% in Monday’s premarket on no specific news.

Markets Insider has a summary of a RealVision interview with Moody’s Lily Francus, director of the firm’s quantitative research strategy group, who compares the meme stock boom to the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s. Among Francus’s comments is this one on secondary stock offerings and AMC:

When you see these meme squeezes, asset volatility does increase dramatically. But the ability to capitalize on these at-the-market equity offerings really does win out in the end. Our predictions of expected default frequency over the next year went completely into the dumpster. At its peak, we were actually recording that AMC’s probability of default around November was one in two. Now, it’s less than one in 100.

ALSO READ: 5 Top Goldman Sachs Conviction List Stocks to Buy Pay Big, Safe Dividends

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