Investing

Midday Meme Stock Report for 12/17: AMC, DraftKings, Rivian, Tesla

Paul Ausick

Published: December 17, 2021 1:39 pm

The three major U.S. stock indexes tried to bust into the green Friday morning, but only the Nasdaq managed the feat. At last look, however, all three traded in the red with the Dow Jones industrials down by more than 1%. Ten of 11 sectors traded lower in the noon hour Friday, with financials (down 2.2%) and energy (down 1.6%) on the biggest slide. Tech stocks traded down about 0.9%.

Crude oil traded down about 1.6% in the noon hour, essentially at its level early in the morning. Bitcoin slipped below $47,000 but recovered from an earlier dip to around $45,800. Yields on the 10-year Treasury note were down about three basis points, while the two-year note traded up by nearly two basis points. The 10-year/two-year spread had tightened slightly to 0.77% in the noon hour Friday.

There are more gainers than decliners on our meme stock watch list, with the top gainer and the top loser both having moved more than 10%. Early in the morning, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) announced that more than 1.1 million people paid their money to watch “Spider-Man: No Way Home” on its Friday opening in AMC theaters. AMC said the new Spider-Man film is “the single highest grossing movie title on its opening night in AMC’s history” for the month of December and is second on the all-time list, behind “Avengers: Endgame.”

At the other end of the day’s price changes, Rivian Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: RIVN) traded down sharply following a disappointing earnings report. No one expected much in the way of revenue (just $1.03 million, while Rivian reported sales of $1.00 million). Even the huge per-share loss did not really matter. What did matter is producing and delivering the company’s R1T pickup and its soon-to-be-delivered R1S sport utility vehicle. The company also noted that it has preorders for some 71,000 all-electric pickups and SUVs. Ford has said it has 200,000 preorders for its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup.

Sports betting company DraftKings Inc. (NASDAQ: DKNG) traded up around 6% on Friday, after posting a new 52-week low in the first half-hour of trading. The company had no specific news, but a Bloomberg report on how DraftKings and other sports betting apps are branching out into new media efforts has probably put some air under the stock.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) traded up during the noon hour Friday on no specific news. Unless, of course, we count another sale of Tesla stock by CEO Elon Musk, who parted with more than 934,000 shares. He has now sold more than 13 million shares with a total sales value of around $13.6 billion since he began the tax-related sales. Before Musk began selling, he owned about 170 million Tesla shares. Since the sales began, he has exercised options that leave him with more shares (around 175 million according to Barron’s) than he started with.

Shares of AMC traded up about 24.3% to $30.25 as the noon hour ended Friday. The stock’s 52-week range is $1.91 to $72.62. The average daily trading volume is about 43.3 million shares, and nearly 98 million had already traded on Friday.

Rivian stock traded down about 11%, at $96.86 in a post-IPO range of $92.62 to $179.47. The low was posted in the morning. The average daily trading volume is about 32.7 million shares, and more than 29 million had traded on the day.

DraftKings stock traded up about 6.5% to $28.73, in a 52-week range of $25.80 to $74.38. The low was posted in the morning. The average daily trading volume is around 15.5 million shares, and 14.3 million had traded thus far.

Shares of Tesla traded up more than 2%, at $946.94 in a 52-week range of $539.49 to $1,243.49. The average daily trading volume is around 26 million shares, and more than 18 million had traded on Friday.

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