Investing

Meme Stock Movers for 11/2: GameStop, Plug Power, SoFi, Tesla 

Paul Ausick

Published: November 2, 2021 9:15 am

Last Updated: November 2, 2021 9:26 am

Premarket trading Tuesday was somewhat subdued, following Monday’s record closing highs for the three major U.S. stock indexes. The Federal Reserve begins its two-day meeting Tuesday and is expected to announce Wednesday that it will begin to slow its Treasury note purchases but leave interest rates alone for the time being. Crude oil dropped back below $84 a barrel, and Bitcoin pushed past $63,000 again. Yields on 10-year Treasuries were down a tick.

Monday was also a good day for meme stocks. An old standby had a good day, due almost entirely to enthusiasm from retail investors. GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) added 9% on Monday and traded roughly flat in Tuesday’s premarket. Mentions on WallStreetBets rose more than 300%, and trading volume of almost 5 million shares was more than 40% higher than the daily average. The only real news was the Friday announcement that Chief Operating Officer Jenna White had left the company after a tenure of less than a year.

SoFi Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFI) added 12.6% to its share price on Monday and was trading down by less than 1% in Tuesday’s premarket. The company had no news Monday, but investors remain buoyant based on expectations that SoFi will receive a bank charter real soon now. Trading volume topped 52 million shares, double the daily average of 24.8 million.

Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ: PLUG) jumped 8.8% on Monday and traded up another 1.5% at $42.26 in Tuesday’s premarket. The company had no specific news, but the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, is currently boosting interest in alternative energy stocks. On top of that, Plug Power has signed a slew of deals recently to provide hydrogen infrastructure. Combined with raised guidance, the company has high hopes, and so do investors.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) posted a new 52-week high of $1,209.75 on Monday before closing up 8.5% at $1,208.59. Partly that’s due to next week’s planned IPO of electric pickup truck maker Rivian, which is now on its roadshow promoting an opening price in the range of $57 to $62 a share. At the high end, that would mean Rivian’s value is over $60 billion, more than GM and Ford combined. Anything that boosts the electric vehicle market is a positive for Tesla.

Then, of course, CEO Elon Musk weighed in last night, and the stock traded down by about 3.5% Tuesday’s premarket. In response to a tweet, Musk tweeted:

You’re welcome!

If any of this is based on Hertz, I’d like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet.

Tesla has far more demand than production, therefore we will only sell cars to Hertz for the same margin as to consumers.

Hertz deal has zero effect on our economics.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2021

No signed deal, no big deal to Musk. For investors, apparently, not so much.