(Bloomberg) — Vinco Ventures Inc. and Support.com Inc. surged, and are on track to extend rallies fueled by retail investors in chatrooms like StockTwits and on Reddit.
The pair of stocks jumped more than 50% each when the market opened in New York, extending gains from last week, when Vinco Ventures more than doubled and Support.com almost tripled. The rallies came as individual investors attempted to pump their bets on Twitter, Reddit’s WallStreetBets and chatrooms on Stocktwits.
Support.com, a little known software firm, has seen its market value soar to $958 million on Monday, while digital media company Vinco Ventures ended the week valued at just over $630 million.
“There’s a lot of randomness that goes into which stocks become meme stocks,” Sahm Adrangi, founder and chief investment officer of Kerrisdale Capital Management, said. “Short squeezes have always been a part of the markets.”
Red-hot rallies for the two stocks continue a trend where heavily-shorted firms surge on high volume as investor chatrooms light up with mentions. While the idea of a short squeeze isn’t new, the phenomenon of meme stocks has captivated investors for the better part of 2021.
Bets against the pair have been gaining traction lately, with 60% of Support.com shares available for trading sold short, data compiled by S3 Partners show. One-fifth of Vinco Ventures stock is currently sold short, with the total short positions for the two stocks at roughly $216 million, the data show.
While Monday morning’s surge extended to retail trader favorites like Naked Brand Group and Meta Materials Inc., darlings AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and GameStop Corp. were little changed.
Here are some other retail-favorites that are seeing notable gains in Monday’s session
- Aterian Inc. shares rise as much as 48%
- Meta Materials is up 38%, the most since June 21
- Naked Brand jumps as much as 9.6%
- Root Inc. spikes 31%, the most since January 13
- Oragenics Inc. rises 10%, the most in a month
(Updates share movement, adds comment in fourth paragraph and stocks in bullet secion.)
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