Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 7/6: Meta Materials, ContextLogic, Virgin Galactic, Clover Health

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.

Following a long holiday weekend, U.S. equities markets opened sluggishly Tuesday with both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones industrials trading lower. The Nasdaq opened slightly higher but has since dipped to a small negative showing at the noon hour.

Meme stocks are about evenly split between winners and losers so far Tuesday. One stock that may be setting up as a new meme play is DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI), which came public last week but was hammered Tuesday following a demand from the Chinese government that the company’s Uber-like ride-hailing app be removed from all the country’s app stores. We’ll keep an eye on this one.

Since its combination with Torchlight Energy late in June, Meta Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: MMAT) has taken up the meme stock mantle. The stock got a jolt from a company press release announcing the completion of a U.K. government-funded project with a prototype of a non-invasive glucose-sensing device. The company’s chief science officer said that Meta is seeking new “strategic partners” and expects to begin pre-clinical human studies this summer. This is good news for Reddit investors and they have jumped on it.

ContextLogic Inc. (NASDAQ: WISH), aka Wish, said Tuesday morning that it has been granted a payment services license by the Dutch central bank. The license gives the company the ability “to process transactions and increase control over the payments value chain in a compliant manner, while also reducing reliance on third parties.” Wish said it will use the license to pay European Union merchants directly but there is no impact on EU consumers.

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) paraded its flight crew for the company’s launch in front of the cameras Tuesday morning, and the stock received a bump in price, even though UBS analyst Myles Walton downgraded the stock from Buy to Hold but lifted his price target from $36 to $45 a share. The downgrade was made strictly on valuation. The shares are up three times in a little over a month, and despite some investors’ enthusiasm, the 47 times estimated 2025 EBITDA is pretty rich for a company that’s still losing millions of dollars.

Clover Health Investments Corp. (NASDAQ: CLOV) took another beating Tuesday. The stock has traded down by more than $5 a share since June 24. More than a third of the company’s total float is sold short and Tuesday’s lockup expiration is not helping day traders. The stock price could rebound Wednesday, or not. Here’s more on heavily shorted stocks that might be in for a short squeeze.

Meta Materials traded up more than 17% earlier Tuesday but shares have dipped to a gain of around 14% in the noon hour. The stock’s 52-week range is $0.42 to $21.76. Average daily trading volume is around 16.9 million shares, and about 13.7 million had traded hands so far Tuesday.

ContextLogic traded up more than 11% in the morning, but this stock, too, has seen a pullback to a gain of about 3.8% to trade at about $12.10. The 52-week range is $7.52 to $32.85. The average daily trading volume is about 54.1 million, and so far today the stock had traded around 53 million shares.

Virgin Galactic stock traded up by nearly 10% early Tuesday. By the noon hour, the gain had been pared to less than 2%, and the stock traded at around $45.75, in a 52-week range of $14.27 to $62.80. More than 50 million shares had traded, compared with a daily average trading volume of around 30.5 million.

Clover Health traded down about 13.8% to $110.10, in a 52-week range of $6.31 to $28.85. The average daily trading volume is 59.1 million shares, the stock had traded about 46.5 million for the day.

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