Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 1/3: Lucid, Meta Materials, Tesla, TMC

Paul Ausick

Published: January 3, 2022 1:40 pm

U.S. markets traded in the green during the noon hour Monday, although the gains have been pared significantly since our premarket report. Just five of 11 market sectors were trading higher, led by energy stocks (up 2.5%) and consumer cyclicals (up 1.9%). Real estate (down 1.6%), health care (down 1.5%) and utilities (down 1.4%) were lagging.

Crude oil traded up about 1.5% to $76.36, about 20 cents a barrel below its early morning level. Bitcoin dipped below the $47,000 level it had reached in morning. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes jumped by about 10 basis points to 1.62%, while two-year yields have remained essentially flat. Risk appetite appears to have rebounded.

Meta Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: MMAT) traded up more than 19% in the noon hour Monday on no specific news. The company has been mostly quiet since mid-December and the day’s action was probably unexpected by all but a few true believers in this stock. We don’t see how anything has changed since our last in-depth look at the company—except the share price, which was $3.11 then and is around $3.35 now.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) traded up more than 11% Monday after soundly beating delivery estimates for the fourth quarter. We looked at the numbers in our morning report and they were pretty impressive: year-over-year sales up 87% to 936,000 vehicles and 308,000 in the fourth quarter alone. The company appears well on its way to 1.2 million or more deliveries in 2022.

TMC the metals company Inc. (NASDAQ: TMC) traded down in the noon hour Monday. Chairperson and CEO Andrei Karkar filed a Schedule 13D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealing that he had increased his ownership stake in the company to 19.3% and now holds 43.94 million shares of TMC stock. Usually, an insider buy pushes the stock higher. Not this time.

Electric vehicle maker Lucid Group Inc. (NASDAQ: LCID) saw its stock rise by about 6.5% Monday. Tesla’s strong showing, together with the solid reports from three top Chinese EV makers, has filtered down to Lucid, Rivian, Canoo and even Lordstown.

Meta Materials stock traded up by about 16% as the noon hour ended Monday, at $2.86 in a 52-week range of $1.36 to $21.76. The average daily trading volume is around 7.5 million shares, and 6.6 million had already been traded on the day.

Shares of Lucid traded up more than 7% to $40.80, in a 52-week range of $10.00 to $64.86. The average daily trading volume is around 72.3 million, and about 28.7 million had traded thus far on Monday.

Tesla stock was up almost 11.5%, at $1,177.85 in a 52-week range of $539.49 to $1,243.49. The average daily trading volume is $26.5 million shares, and more than 21 million had already been traded.

TMC stock traded down about 3.9% to $2.00, in a 52-week range of $1.66 to $15.39. The average daily trading volume is around 3.5 million shares, and about 1.3 million had changed hands thus far.