Investors tried to shake off the effects of Tuesday’s dip and the effort appeared to be successful until tech stocks began to drag down the Nasdaq Composite and mining and metals stocks took a chunk out of the S&P 500. The Dow Jones industrials lost a little from its morning highs but remained up about 0.4% into the noon hour, driven by Boeing’s ratings upgrade to Outperform from Bernstein’s analysts.

On the meme stock front, losers far outnumbered winners thus far on Wednesday. Cybersecurity provider IronNet Inc. (NYSE: IRNT) had no news, but the stock was down by double-digits to trade at around $21.92 in the noon hour. Following its SPAC merger late in August, the stock jumped from around $12.60 to a high of $47.50 by mid-September. Since then, the shares have dropped by around 50%.

Deep-sea miner TMC the metals company Inc. (NASDAQ: TMC) also traded down by double digits at noon Wednesday. The company has announced that it is mobilizing its latest offshore research project to continue its investigation of the environment around its proposed mining area in the Pacific Ocean. TMC wants to set a “rigorous environmental baseline” in order to “characterize the potential impacts of its proposed nodule collection operations to source critical battery metals from deep-sea polymetallic nodules.”

Camber Energy Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN: CEI) had no news Wednesday, but shares surged about 28% to around $4.12, after reaching a new 52-week high of $4.19. On Tuesday, the stock set the previous high of $3.44. One interesting note about Camber is that it both produces oil and natural gas while working on technology that would capture carbon directly out of the air.

The world’s first direct carbon capture facility opened recently in Iceland. When it is running at full tilt, the plant is designed to remove about 4,000 metric tons of carbon per year from the atmosphere. In 2019, global carbon emissions totaled 36.5 billion metric tons. Direct carbon capture almost certainly will be necessary to keep carbon emissions in check. Equally certainly, it will be hugely expensive.

Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: GREE) traded up more than 16% in the noon hour to $27.68, well below its morning high of $32.50. Investors made a couple of feeble attempts to turn the slide around, but it wasn’t happening.

The company did get some good news in the morning when B. Riley analyst Lucas Pipes initiated coverage of the bitcoin miner with a Buy rating and a price target of $78, nearly 230% above Tuesday’s closing price of $23.78. In addition to mining for bitcoin, Greenidge also generates electricity in upstate New York.

IronNet traded down 19.5% to $21.21 as the noon hour drew to a close. The stock’s 52-week range is $9.36 to $47.50, and the average daily trading volume is around 4.3 million shares. Nearly 3.9 million shares had already traded on the day.

TMC traded down nearly 15%, at $4.45 in a 52-week range of $4.44 to $15.39. The low was posted very recently. The average daily trading volume is around 16.4 million shares, and more than 7.1 million had changed hands on Wednesday.

Camber Energy’s stock traded up 22% to $3.92, in a 52-week range of $0.33 to $4.19. More than 500 million shares had traded on the day, more than five times the daily average of around 91.2 million.

Shares of Greenidge were up more than 15%, at $27.40 in a 52-week range of $14.52 to $519.04 (split-adjusted). The average daily trading volume is about 2.7 million shares, and more than 22 million had been exchanged.

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