Are Meme Stocks Dead? (Again?)
This seems like an article I write every year which really isn’t a great long-term trend if you ask me. If I have to ask if meme stocks are dead each year then clearly it’s been another year of losses. I’m not a meme stock hater by any means. I don’t have any positions in these stocks but I’m not as against the trend as some others are.
But with Bed Bath and Beyond’s (NASDAQ: BBBY) recent announcement that it is preparing for bankruptcy in the coming weeks, I thought about how many diamond hands were now firmly in the red. Remember the short squeeze this stock had? It’s hard to imagine that shares were trading at $30.00 within the past year. Today, Bed Bath and Beyond shares are starting off 2023 at just under $2.00 after falling by nearly 30% following its announcement.
I’m not expecting this stock to bounce back anytime soon!
AMC and GameStop Stock News
Is it just me or have we not heard anything about these two stocks in a long time? Taking a quick look at their charts we can see that AMC (NYSE: AMC) has fallen by 82% and GameStop (NYSE: GME) fell by more than 50% over the past year. AMC is trading at below $4.00 and GameStop at about $16.00. Can somebody please make the bull cases for either of these stocks?
What about APE (NYSE: APE)? The preferred shares that AMC distributed to raise capital to save its struggling business. Well, shares of APE are also down by about 78%. To be honest, I was never a fan of how CEO Adam Aron used retail investors to continuously pump up the stock’s price. Call me anti-meme stock but I didn’t really see any other CEOs needing to take the measures that Aron did.
As for GameStop, it had a decent earnings report last quarter as losses narrowed on a year-over-year basis. But has anyone heard much about its NFT marketplace? Or its digital wallet? These were supposed to be transformative projects that would catapult GameStop from a brick-and-mortar retailer to a Web3 leader.
So Are Meme Stocks Dead?
Is this the last time I write this article? Will meme stocks die forever in 2023? It’s nearly impossible to say. Every time I count them out they always seem to make a comeback. It’s not a great environment for a short squeeze right now given the lack of capital most investors have at their disposal. It’s been a difficult year for everyone and I would never wish ill will upon anyone that is investing in the markets. At this point, you can call for conspiracies or market-fixing or whatever else it is that meme stock traders are using as an excuse. I think it’s time we just come to realize that none of these companies are particularly strong businesses and it’s time to accept that the Mother Of All Short Squeezes (MOASS) is likely never going to come.
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