[ad_1]
(Bloomberg) — Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. posted their biggest gain in six months after investors turned bullish on the stock.
Most reads come from Bloomberg
The movie theater operator, one of the poster children for 2021’s meme stock frenzy, soared 27% to $9.15 on Thursday, its biggest gain since May 12. Trading activity in call options tripled the past 20-day average, with investors snapping up out-of-the-money contracts earlier in the morning.
Calls with strike prices of $8, $8.50 and $9 that expire on Friday were the most actively traded AMC contracts on Thursday. All told, more than 550,000 call options were traded in New York as of 3 p.m., compared with a 20-day average of about 163,000. The stock closed at $7.23 on Wednesday.
Day traders also promote stocks through social media chat rooms and message boards. Thursday’s gains came as the “AMC” ticker was trending on Stocktwits, a popular trader chat room, and it was one of the most mentioned stocks on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum. However, buying demand from retail traders was lackluster. Individuals on the Fidelity platform were net sellers as of 2 p.m. New York time.
AMC Entertainment has attracted individual investors over the past two years as they sought to take on short sellers who were betting that the stock would fall. More than 20% of AMC’s shares are currently short-sold, according to financial analytics firm S3 Partners. The stock is down 50% this year after surging nearly 1,200% in 2021.
Other stocks favored by retail traders also rose, with Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. up 13 percent and GameStop Corp. up 4.9 percent. The S&P 500 was up 0.1% at 3:09 pm in New York, while the Nasdaq 100 was up 0.4%.
—with assistance from Matt Turner.
Most reads come from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2022 Bloomberg Intelligence
[ad_2]
Source link