Gamestop – AMC, other ‘meme’ stocks jump; regulator signals concern
ALEX LOWE, 04 July 2021
Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc (AMC.N) and other “meme stocks” jumped on Monday, extending a rally in social-media favorites into a third week as message boards hummed with talk of squeezing Wall Street short-sellers.
The sharp gains prompted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to say it was looking into signs of market manipulation given the “volatility in certain stocks.” The volatility has challenged analysts, and two of them in the past week have stopped covering video game retailer GameStop, whose shares soared in January in a retail-driven rally.
Cinema operator AMC jumped almost 15%, putting its gain over the past five sessions at 111%. BlackBerry’s U.S. listing surged 14% and is now up 57% since the start of June.
“AMC never ceases to amaze me. Just when I think that train is over, it jumps almost 10 points in the first 30 min of trading,” one poster on Reddit wrote.
AMC shares are up about 2,500% in 2021 as the company has courted individual investors, while GameStop has surged over 1,300% year to date.
Some bearish investors retreated from bets against AMC on Friday. Short interest slumped to 74.5 million shares, or 14.9% of AMC’s float, from 88.2 million on Thursday, according to S3 Partners.
