AMC Stock Rises After GameStop Earnings. What It Says About the Meme Trade.

Text size

A number of familiar “meme” stocks were on the move Friday after

GameStop

—the most popular meme stock of them all — rebounded even after disappointing quarterly earnings.

GameStop (ticker: GME) rose more than 1% Friday after falling more than 7% in premarket trading Friday. The videogame retailer reported a surprise loss for its fiscal fourth quarter, even as sales beat Wall Street’s expectations.

GameStop rocketed to prominence more than a year ago, and was placed at the forefront of a market mania driven by retail investors who were largely connected through online social media platforms like Reddit. The “meme stock” moniker came from hype around the stocks built up through social media and memes. 

Investors’ focus in the meme-stock frenzy mainly landed on beaten-down companies, especially those that had been under pressure through the pandemic and targeted by short sellers. 

Some of the stocks that experienced intense retail attention included cinema chain

AMC Entertainment

(AMC), homeware retailer ​​

Bed Bath & Beyond

(BBBY), software group and former handset maker

BlackBerry

(BB), Finnish telecom

Nokia

(NOK), and spaceflight company

Virgin Galactic

(SPCE).

In the wake of GameStop’s tumble, it was a mixed day in the market for other meme stocks. AMC — which recently announced a surprise expansion into gold mining — rose 2%, with BlackBerry 3.3% higher. Nokia was down 1.4%, and Virgin Galactic notched an increase of nearly 3%. Bed Bath & Beyond fell 0.3%.

In meme stock style, these five stocks have had fairly extreme moves this yer compared with the wider market.

AMC is down more than 40% this year, with Virgin Galactic and BlackBerry not far behind, with 32% and 25% year-to-date declines, respectively. Nokia has declined 16% this year, while Bed Bath & Beyond has shot up 44%. The

S&P 500
index, by comparison, has lost 8%.

At the zenith of the meme-stock hype, GameStop rose from less than $18 in early January 2021 to almost $350 within less than a month, before tumbling into a pattern of volatile trading, which it has mostly held for the past year. The shares closed at $87.70 on Thursday, down more than 40% so far this year.

Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]