GameStop saga continues and has got the world’s attention on a group of individuals hanging out on Reddit – r/WallStreetBets (WSB).
At the time of writing, the number of people on WSB has surpassed the population of Singapore. Here’s a piece of history:
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I wanted to make a list of the bets by WSB as there were a handful of them under attack and probably more coming up. Easier to keep track this way.
But before we begin, I want to be a downer on this. Don’t take this as an endorsement to participate. If you want to participate, do it only with money you can afford to lose. It is not easy to resist getting caught in the frenzy or the lure of astronomical returns. You might think of betting big and make millions so you can retire. No. That’s gambling. What if you lose all that money? Think of the downside first before the gains.
If you want to understand a bit more about the phenomenon, check out the video I did.
Ok, warning shot fired. We start the list with a revisit to the first group of successful WSB stocks.
FANG
GameStop is the mother of all WSB bets. It was the first successful anti-wall street trade pulled off by WSB.
The story started earlier with some hedge funds, notably Michael Burry, who was an investor in GameStop since 19 Aug 2019. But I see the spike in transaction volume on 31 Aug 2020 (see chart below) so someone or a group of people started to pile in on GameStop.
There’s a reddit user by the name u/deepfuckingvalue who reportedly invested and holding GameStop for 2 years. He posts his financial pornography each day and below is the screenshot of his GME value on 31 Jan 2021:
I think such huge gains made public is what inspire a lot of people to jump onto the bandwagon thinking that they can achieve the same. Please be sensible, some of these redditors got in at very cheap prices. You are better off getting on another train early. That said, the train may never leave or go to the moon. These are the risks.
The other famous WSB stocks are AMC, Nokia, Blackberry and Fubo TV. Dropping Blackberry, they form the ‘new’ FANG stocks.
There are a handful of other meme stocks that have ran up and some brokers have placed trading limitations on them:
- Bed Bath and Beyond
- Express
- First Majestic Silver
- Koss
- Naked Brand
- Tootsie Roll
#1 iShares Silver Trust
The next biggest focus seems to be on iShares Silver Trust (SLV) – the ETF that holds silver on your behalf. The allegation is that precious metal prices are manipulated by the institutions and since this is a movement against Wall Street, they would love to succeed on SLV. I must say I don’t know enough to verify if the allegation is true or false.
The silver prices have already gone up after Covid-19 struck. I guess it was a response to the ultra-loose monetary policy. For selfish reasons I hope WSB is right on this because I have some silver coins which I won’t mind selling if silver prices can be ‘freed’.
#2 XL Fleet
XL Fleet offers commercial electric vehicles. It is now in the radar of WSB and get quite a number of reactions from the community.
The share price has recently collapsed after peaking around $35. We shall see what happens to it next.
#3 Biocryst Pharmaceuticals
Next up, a biotech company that produces oral drugs for rare and serious diseases.
Trading at $8.52 at the time of writing, the share price is still a far cry from the high of $37.25.
Where else to find more meme stocks?
1- r/satoshistreetbets: Dogecoin
Initially, I thought WSB was behind the jump in prices for some of the coins such as Curve, Uniswap, Compound, Ripple and not to forget Dogecoin.
It is important that WSB does not talk about crypto at all! It is in their rule #4:
There’s another group that mimics WSB and specifically talks about crypto – r/SatoshiStreetBets
2 – Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a supporter of WSB and vice versa. Musk tweets about stocks and show support for WSB at times. Market moves are pretty correlated to his tweets though we cannot prove or disprove he was the cause of those stock moves.
So be sure to follow Musk on Twitter too.
Accept the risks if you wanna join in
Not all the stocks mentioned in WSB are getting the support of the masses to participate in.
We don’t know whether regulations will come in and label this movement as a manipulation.
Prices can be very volatile and it can crash crazily if majority started selling them.
Brokers have also proven that they may limit the trading on hot securities. And it may happen again.
I am not a financial advisor. Don’t listen to me.
