Newest Meme Stocks Extend Gains With No Sign of Craze Fading
(Bloomberg) — Another batch of names has been added to the meme-stock frenzy as retail traders latched on to their latest favorites Wednesday.
Prison operator GEO Group Inc. soared 38% and Clean Energy Fuels Corp. jumped 32%, supplanting names like ContextLogic Inc. and Clover Health Investments Corp. that had led the charge higher on Tuesday. In Europe, Air Berlin jumped 138% after surging 54% the day before. Meanwhile, shares of fast-food restaurant chain Wendy’s Inc. reversed gains from Tuesday after both Northcoast and Stifel downgraded the stock to hold-equivalent recommendations from buy.
Read more: Prisoners Are the Latest Meme Stock Fad as Geo Jumps
Trading in so-called meme stocks took off this week, with chatter building on WallStreetBets and other social media platforms on the potential for short squeezes as investors in the forums rallying against short sellers.
Speculative frenzy among the Reddit-favorite names has been especially pronounced as a broader stock market hasn’t gone anywhere for most of the past month. While shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Workhorse Group Inc. have jumped at least 80% in June, the Russell 3000 Index has advanced less than 1%.
Don’t Dismiss Digital Art | Opinion
Art is now digital, and a debate is raging: Are non-fungible tokens (NFTs) worth the exorbitant prices they are selling for? The simple answer is yes. If someone voluntarily pays a huge amount for something, he values it more than the money he hands over. Others may disagree with his choice, but that’s what makes a free society.
How else could you explain an “invisible” sculpture that recently sold for over $18,000? Price is guided by scarcity and subjective valuation—not by the cost of raw materials and labor or objective truth. Sculpturist Jeff Koons broke a record several years ago selling a rabbit statue made of stainless steel for $91 million. If you broke down his creation into scrap, it’d be worth a few feet of train track. Yet this was heralded as a wise investment in the art world.