Losses and profits. There was a time when loyal shareholders were rewarded at annual general meetings with a small gift: a pretty ashtray, a good bottle, an electronic gadget. Commented attention around the closing buffet. In the age of social networks, the AMC cinema chain, one of the largest in the United States, has chosen… popcorn and special screenings to thank its small carriers. The initiative was applauded on the Reddit network, the haunt of individual traders. And that will be a lot of popcorn to produce, since there are now more than 3 million who have placed their savings in the King of the Dark Rooms.
After bringing the video game distributor GameStop to the stock market, they became even more infatuated with this company, which is as popular as it is sick. Successive confinements have brought her to her knees. With $ 5 billion in debt (4.1 billion euros) and 126 million market capitalization, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2020. But the vigilantes of the Web have decided to save it. Since the beginning of 2021, its title, massacred and therefore highly speculative, has been included in the category of Meme Stocks, these stocks of companies in distress, like GameStop, BlackBerry, Koss or AMC, on which we can try nice speculative blows.
Dream of a revolutionary internet
The price rose slowly, from $ 2 in early January to $ 10 in April, then $ 20 at the end of May, to finish at $ 64 on Wednesday, June 2 – more than 3,000% increase in six months. The latest acceleration came when stock marketers learned that hedge fund Mudrick Capital had single-handedly underwritten a $ 230 million flash capital increase from the company and resold those shares on the market that same day. with an undisclosed, but generous profit. The activity is so intense that it affects the stock indexes. The company is still dying, but it’s worth nearly $ 30 billion.
The stock market adventure is just around the corner, and collective hallucinations frequent dark rooms. This frenzy recalls the craze for Internet values in 2000, when the simple suffix “. com ”was worth billions on the stock market. The dream of a revolutionary Internet, which came true a decade later, failed economic realities and caused a major recession. Today’s bubble is not even based on a technological dream, but on the power of the multitude of networked individuals and on the free money provided by central banks which fuels all the stock market follies. But who will have the audacity, suicidal, to withdraw the infusion?