At noon on Monday, U.S. markets had fallen from their early gains, and two of the three major indexes were showing small losses, while the Nasdaq has dropped about 0.5% thus far on the day. Crude oil continued trading at less than $80 a barrel, and Bitcoin had dropped to around $64,000 from more than $65,000 early Monday. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes were up about five basis points at around 1.61%.
Biotech meme stock Progenity Inc. (NASDAQ: PROG) traded up about 15% at noon Monday. The company’s stock is still heavily shorted (around 34% of the float is sold short) and the stock borrow fee is around 85%. While not the top-ranked stock in Fintel’s weekly list of stocks most likely to fall victim to a short squeeze, it’s the largest of the top six. Some WallStreetBets comments are touting a gamma squeeze that can force options holders to buy short-dated call options, pushing the share price even higher.
AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) traded up about 4.5% in the noon hour Monday on no specific news. CEO Adam Aron, who makes almost as much news as Elon Musk, commented last week that AMC will be looking at getting back in the movie production next year. The idea would be to produce movies that would be shown only in AMC theatres. That’s on top of brand extensions like AMC popcorn and accepting cryptocurrency as payment for online ticket sales.
Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) traded down about 4% Monday, as CEO Elon Musk continued to take a few more shots at Democrats, including the president, who Musk blames for forcing him to sell his shares to avoid expected higher future taxes. Following a tweet showing how the purchasing power of $100 in 1950 is the equivalent of $8.70 today, Musk comments: “Inflation is the most regressive tax of all, yet is advocated by those who claim to be progressive.” So, higher taxes and wild inflation are forcing Musk to do the things he does.
Pot grower Tilray Inc. (NASDAQ: TLRY) traded up more than 3% Monday on the prospect of new legislation backed by five Republican members of Congress that was set to be announced in the afternoon. The measure is reportedly a somewhat watered-down version of a Democratic-supported proposal. The Republican bill, sponsored by Nancy Mace (R-SC) would end the federal law banning the sale of marijuana while allowing states to operate under their own rules. Marijuana Moment has a detailed report on the political maneuvering.
As the noon hour ended Monday, AMC traded up about 5.3%, at $42.12 in a 52-week range of $1.91 to $72.62. The average daily trading volume is around 61 million shares, and nearly 21 million had traded this far on the day.
Progenity stock traded up nearly 18% to $3.53, in a 52-week range of $0.66 to $7.86. The average daily trading volume is around 64.4 million, and nearly 31 million shares had traded thus far.
Shares of Tesla traded down about 4.3%, at $989.99 in a 52-week range of $404.09 to $1,243.49, and the company’s market cap has dropped below $1 trillion again. The average daily trading volume is around 23.3 million shares, and almost 20 million had changed hands on the day.
Tilray traded about 3.6% higher to $13.40, in a 52-week range of $6.66 to $67.00. The average daily trading volume of around 19.1 million is already in the rear-view mirror, with more than 46 million shares traded thus far.
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