Tuesday’s premarket futures trading had all three major indexes in the red. The primary driver appears to be rising prices for oil and natural gas as supplies continue to be constrained. Equities that are suffering the most are the growth stocks, while 10-year Treasuries are yielding more than 1.5%. It doesn’t help that Senate Republicans have blocked a continuing resolution to keep the federal government running and to suspend the debt ceiling.

Meme stocks, on the whole, performed pretty well on Monday, with seven stocks we follow closing with double-digit gains and none closing with a double-digit loss.

The day’s big winner was Camber Energy Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN: CEI), which added 33.3% to its share price to close at $2.72, after touching an intraday high of $2.80. The shares were up nearly 9% in Tuesday’s premarket and approaching the current 52-week high of $3.10. The company had no news and the run-up continues to look for all the world like a short squeeze.

More than 331 million shares of Camber Energy stock were traded on Monday, more than four times the daily average of nearly 80 million. More than 13 million had been traded in today’s premarket session.

Clean Energy Fuels Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNE) added 13.7% to its share price on Monday to close at $9.28. Given the rising cost of fossil fuels, it apparently only makes sense that renewable fuels makers like Clean Energy should get some action. The company has several renewable natural gas supply contracts, including one signed in April with Amazon. Monday’s trading volume of about 13 million shares was about double the daily average.

GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) made news Monday not because its stock price jumped or collapsed but because two traders were accused of “wash trading” by the U.S. Securities and Commission (SEC) in connection with the meme-stock price run-up in early 2021. According to the SEC:

[One of the traders] was able to generate illicit profits by using broker-dealer accounts that passed rebates back to their customers to place initial orders on one side of the market, and then using broker-dealer accounts that did not charge fees for taking liquidity for his subsequent orders on the other side of the market. When identifying a product to trade, [the trader and his associate] selected far out-of-the-money put options on some “meme stocks,” which they thought would be easier to trade against themselves because interest in buying the “meme stocks” and related price increases would make put options on those stocks less attractive.

That basically is the definition of wash trading and it is illegal. The associate charged has agreed to disgorge $51,334 in ill-gotten profits together with $515 in interest and pay a $25,000 fine. SEC litigation against the trader continues.

Meta Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: MMAT) closed Monday with a gain of nearly 18% to $6.08. Volume was nearly double the daily average of 20.5 million. In our midday report Monday, we noted a couple of events that may have given the shares a boost.

Other double-digit gainers Monday were Naked Group, Cellect Biotechnology, Vinco Ventures and Workhorse.

Get Our Free Investment Newsletter

I have read, and agree to the Terms of Use

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.