Investing

World's Hottest Stock Up 571%

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: December 21, 2023 9:15 am

As the year ends, it is time to pick winners and losers. For those who invest, one measure is the best and worst is stock prices. Shares of Ecopro (which trade on South Korea’s KOSDAQ) are up 571%, which puts them on top of the stock performance world.

Bloomberg looked at the 2,746 stocks in its Bloomberg world index to pick the winner. Ecopro’s shares trade like U.S. meme stocks AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AMC) and GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME). Retail investors moved into Ecopro stock without any apparent reason. The chart of the company’s shares looks like a rollercoaster, particularly a ludicrous runup in the summer that started in July. It dropped some in September, but not enough to lose the crown as the best-performing stock. On certain days, the stock dropped or rose 20%.

Ecopro makes secondary battery material, according to Reuters. The company’s revenue did rise in 2022 but was choppy through the first three quarters of 2023. Once again, there is nothing about Ecopro’s results that would justify the jump.

A look at AMC is a reminder that stock prices can seesaw violently during a year. The movie company has been a poster child for the damage streaming has done to movie theaters. And it also made an equity offering to raise money that triggered dilution. AMC traded for $52 a share in February. Shares trade near $6 today, down 85% for the year. The wild gyrations of game retailer GameStop settled down in the latter part of this year after huge swings in 2022. (The 25 Top Stocks of 2023: The Best Performers So Far This Year)

Why did Ecopro stock have such a huge runup? Probably because it does not have a base of sane institutional investors who look at fundamentals, even if they short the shares. Instead, people traded in and out because of the chance they could make a killing. That only worked on days when the stock did not plunge.