AMC, Trump Media: Meme stock trending tickers

Shares of AMC Entertainment (AMC) are moving higher on Wednesday morning as the company closed the previous trading day with its biggest percentage gain since February. Last week CEO Adam Aron claimed that Chapter 11 bankruptcy is "inconceivable."

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) are popping Wednesday morning after losing nearly 30% within the last 5 days and 70% of its peak seen last month.

Yahoo Finance's Brad Smith and Seana Smith break down the latest meme stock trading action.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Morning Brief.

This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video transcript

- Taking a look now at AMC, which is up again this morning. Yesterday the stock rose over 10% despite no apparent news, their largest percentage gain since February. Last week, AMC chief executive Adam Aron did say that Chapter 11 bankruptcy is, quote, "inconceivable." Really interesting here as we've continued to track the moves in AMC Entertainment over the past two days.

Yeah, we talked about that move yesterday. Net-net in aggregate, two days, up 16% right now.

- Yeah, and I think this also just points to some of the frenzy that has been surrounding these types of names and meme stocks. When we talk about the volatile movements that we've seen in AMC, especially over the last several weeks, comparing that to some of the volatile moments or the volatile moments that we've seen in Trump Media. Taking a look at that stock, that has really been among the trending tickers here at Yahoo Finance over the last several days.

And taking a look at the recent drop that we've seen. And then actually today's gain a bit of a bounce back here of just about 70%, But the stock, though, has plunged nearly 70% from the peak last month. So a lot of selling action in some of these names that really are not trading in tandem with fundamentals. Clearly, that is a topic that we've been talking about. Nothing new there.

But when you see these wild moves in a name like Trump Media and a name like AMC, clearly, it's getting our attention, it's getting retail investors' attention, and much of that action really being driven by the activity of retail traders.

And then also the public debut of Reddit as well. That has also put the spotlight on this meme trade once again.

- Yeah, absolutely. It's getting meme again. Memetic is what it's short for, everyone, just in case you were wondering, the scientific terminology behind it. But at the end of the day, looking at some of these wild moves higher in the swings that we've been tracking, companies like Phun, ticker symbol PHUN. I'd seen that track that move higher a couple times this year by about 400% during a single trading session on multiple occasions here.

And so all these things considered, it's almost like, once again, buyer beware. There's not a get-rich-quick that you can just easily execute more often than not. And for some of these companies that are totally detached from fundamentals, it's wild, to say the least, to still see this happening.

- Yeah, and you got to keep that in mind, right? If you're going to be buying into one of these names, clearly, maybe, you could be lucky and be buying on one of these dips and see massive gains. But on the flip side, you also got to be ready to lose it all because it's not trading any sort of fundamentally based, and clearly then, that really lacks any sort of trigger that really could be to the one side or the other, or really any reasoning behind some of the movements that we are seeing.