Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 7/8: Newegg, AMC, DiDi, Virgin Galactic

Paul Ausick

Published: July 8, 2021 1:26 pm

Last Updated: July 8, 2021 1:27 pm

If there’s one thing that has people talking on Reddit Thursday, it’s the Sunday launch of SpaceShipTwo Unity, the fourth crewed test flight of the Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) spaceship, VSS Unity.

For the first time, the spaceship will fly with a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists, including company founder Richard Branson. VSS Unity is scheduled to launch at 9:00 a.m. ET from the company’s New Mexico spaceport.

Not to throw cold water on Virgin Galactic’s achievement (if/when it happens), but Space.com raises the question of where space begins. On its three previous crewed flights, the craft has reached altitudes above 50 miles, enough to earn astronaut wings for the crew by NASA’s standards.

But space junkies point to another recognized boundary: the so-called Kármán line at an altitude of 62 miles. One of those space junkies is Jeff Bezos, who has noted that Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle has traveled well beyond the Kármán line. Competitive billionaires can be relied on to compete over everything. Bezos is scheduled to travel on New Shepard’s first crewed flight, currently set for launch on July 22, the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing.

Newegg Commerce Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG), which saw its share price nearly triple on Wednesday, returned toward earth in Thursday’s morning trading session. Just as happened with Wednesday’s massive runup, trading in the stock was halted briefly due to volatility for a total of 10 minutes in two stoppages of five minutes each.

Chinese ride-hailing firm DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI) opened lower Thursday morning and hasn’t been able to overcome the effects of being squashed by the Chinese government just days after its IPO. Barron’s noted Thursday morning that “China’s recent punitive actions have historically attracted steely investors who used bullish stock and options strategies in anticipation that the stocks would soon rally higher. But not this time.” As boxer Mike Tyson has said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) opened down more than 9% from Wednesday’s closing price of $45.07. Shortly before noon, however, the shares zipped past the breakeven line to reach an intraday high of $47.80 about half an hour later. As of June 15, about 19% of AMC’s total float was sold short. That’s not far from the 23.4% of the company’s float held by institutional (long) investors. It is that narrow gap that gives retail investors some of their leverage for attacking short sellers of AMC stock.

Virgin Galactic traded up about 10.6% to $49.67, in a 52-week range of $14.27 to $62.80. The average daily trading volume on the shares is about 31.8 million, and 46.7 million shares traded in Thursday’s morning session.

Newegg traded down by about 31% to $46.63 in the noon hour Thursday. The stock’s 52-week range is $2.80 to $79.07, a new post-IPO high set Wednesday. The average daily trading volume is about 2.3 million shares, and so far on the day, nearly 11 million shares had changed hands.

AMC stock traded up about 8.5%, at $48.90 in a 52-week range of $1.91 to $72.62. The average daily trading volume is 157.8 million, and more than 1033 million had traded.

DiDi shares traded down about 5.5%, at $11.25 in a post-IPO range of $11.00 to $18.01. The low was set earlier in the morning. The average daily trading volume is more than 180 million shares, compared to Thursday morning’s volume of around 50 million shares.

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