Reddit stocks: what meme stocks are trending?

Top Reddit stocks to watch

Below is a list of the top 10 most mentioned US stocks on the WallStreetBets thread on Reddit over the last 24 hours on June 20, 2023, according to data from Quiver Quantitative. Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and other instruments have been excluded. 

1. C3.ai
2. NVIDIA
3. Tesla
4. Visa
5. Robinhood
6. Advanced Micro Devices
7. Carnival
8. Palantir
9. SoFi
10. Virgin Galactic

US futures

• Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.3%
• S&P 500 is down 0.3%
• Nasdaq 100 is down 0.4%

Welcome back from the Juneteenth holiday! Today, the US economic calendar is headlined by speeches from St Louis Federal Reserve president James Bullard and John Williams from New York, as well as US housing starts and building permits data. Fed chair Jerome Powell provides his semi-annual testimony to different committees of Congress on Wednesday and Thursday, when markets will listen out for any clues on future policy after the central bank left interest rates unchanged at its latest meeting but signalled more tightening is to come.

Top US stock news

Alibaba’s ADRs are down 2.3% before the bell after the Chinese firm announced CEO and chairman Daniel Zhang will step down and become the boss of its cloud computing business as the company continues to advance its plan to split itself into six separate businesses. That will see Eddie Yongming, the head of its ecommerce platforms Taobao and Tmall, takeover as CEO of Alibaba while executive vice chair Joseph Tsai will be promoted to chairman. Yongming takes charge as Alibaba prepares to focus on its ecommerce operations and become a holding company that will own stakes in five spin-offs, including its cloud computing arm that will be led by Zhang.

Ford is down 0.8% and General Motors is trailing 0.3% following reports that US lawmakers are set to urge them to reduce their reliance on China, according to Reuters. A bipartisan group of four lawmakers from the House of Representatives China Select Committee will meet with the CEOs of both carmakers today, the report said. Notably, that warning would come just a day after US secretary of state Anthony Blinken visited Beijing. Some of the committee members have also revealed they are nervous about Tesla’s reliance on China after it revealed plans earlier this year to open a new battery factory in Shanghai, amid a broader push by the government to encourage more companies to produce components domestically.

Tesla is down 0.5% after ending last week at eight month highs. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is set to visit the US today, during which he is expected to meet government officials about US-India relations and meet several chief executives, including Elon Musk, according to Reuters. That would follow on from senior Tesla officials meeting India’s deputy minister and other officials last month. Elsewhere, South Korean firm Hyundai is considering becoming the latest firm to adopt Tesla’s charging connector after Ford and General Motors signed-up earlier this month. Its CEO Jaehoon Chang said Hyundai would consider joining the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, if it was in the best interest of customers.

NVIDIA is up 0.2% amid a report from Reuters that the semiconductor firm’s high-end chips are finding their way to customers in China through the underground market despite US sanctions banning the export of them to the country. The report said an electronics area named Huaquangbei in Shenzen is discreetly selling NVIDIA’s A100 artificial intelligence chips for around $20,000 each – about double the usual price. The US government banned the export of the A100, as well as the more recently developed H100, late last year. NVIDIA said it does not allow exports of the chips to China and would take immediate action against any customer found to be breaching the rules.

Intel is up 0.5% and at 10-month highs following a very busy weekend. News broke yesterday that the company will spend over EUR30 billion, around $33 billion, to build two chipmaking plants in Germany – marking the biggest-ever foreign investment into the country. The German government has agreed to provide Intel with EUR10 billion of subsidies, according to media reports, more than the original EUR6.8 billion envisioned. Intel is pushing into Europe and is aimed at helping it catch up the ground lost to rivals like AMD, NVIDIA and Samsung over the years. That comes soon after Intel announced it was building a $4.6 billion factory in Poland and Israel said over the weekend that Intel was building a $25 billion factory there.

Fellow chipmaker AMD is down 0.8% this morning.

Adobe is down 0.8% and falling from 16-month closing-highs after the Financial Times said European antitrust regulators are preparing to launch a formal investigation into its proposed $20 billion acquisition of design platform Figma. The report said the investigation could take many months and has the potential to derail it entirely. Adobe is hoping to complete the deal before the end of 2023.

C3.ai is trading marginally higher this morning. The company, which briefly hit 20-month highs on Friday before losing ground. Retail traders have continued to back the company and its AI prospects after some analysts threw doubt over its ability to capitalise. C3.ai still trades well below its IPO price and there are plenty betting against the company, with short interest standing at over 35% of its float at present, according to Fintel. That may be catching the eye of retail traders looking for short-squeezes as they try and force short sellers to cover their positions.

Robinhood is down 0.8% after closing at a two month high on Friday. The stock gained ground last week after Mizuho Securities analyst Dan Dolev said Robinhood was successfully taking market share in cryptocurrency trading from Coinbase. He said data from April suggested Coinbase had lost ground, saying that this was likely down to the regulatory concerns hanging over Coinbase amid the SEC’s crackdown on crypto platforms and a rise in small-ticket retail trading fees.

Coinbase is up 1%. Its UK director, Elke Karskens, said proper regulation was key to the growth of the crypto market during a talk at Oxford Blockchain amid the action taken by the SEC. ‘We believe fundamentally regulation is going to inform the success of this industry long term,’ she said. However, she warned that while regulation is key to protecting consumers, it must be designed so not to ‘stifle innovation’.

Palantir is down 2.2% at $15.95 after being downgraded to Outperform from Strong Buy by Raymond James this morning, despite raising its target price to $18 from $15. While the broker has matched the highest target price on Palantir on Wall Street, the stock is approaching this level following the rally that has pushed Palantir shares higher over the past six weeks.

Singaporean firm Grab Holdings is up 5.3% on reports from Bloomberg that it is preparing to make its biggest round of layoffs since the pandemic. The fresh round of cuts are expected to be bigger than the 5% cut made in 2020 that saw around 360 staff let go.

Virgin Galactic is up 2.8% today. The stock popped last week after confirming it will make its first commercial flight toward the end of this month, although we saw it give back much of the gains it booked last Friday. That marks a major milestone for the company, which may be able to rebuild confidence by proving its flight schedule, with a second one pencilled-in for August, is reliable and consistent. A report from TheStreet suggests the 800 tickets already sold were dished out for around $200,000 apiece, but said new tickets are now being sold at $450,000, at which it has already sold about 100 additional tickets, according to Business Insider.

SoFi is down 3.5% as its fall from 14-month highs continues. The stock has torn higher since the US debt ceiling was resolved, paving the way for student loan repayments to restart later this year. However, the stock has been tumbling recently and this accelerated after three brokers downgraded SoFi on Friday and filings showed that insiders had been selling stock, suggesting there is a growing consensus the price has gone too high.

Carnival is up 1.4% and hoping to test the 13-month highs it hit on Friday. Fellow cruise line operators are following. Norwegian Cruise Line is down 0.5% after also hitting 13-month highs last week while and Royal Caribbean is down 0.3% after climbing to its highest level in 20 months last week. They continue to recover from the pandemic and got a boost last week when JPMorgan said the big three liners are seeing increased demand, although all three are now deep in overbought territory and finding it more difficult to find higher ground.

FedEx is up 0.2% ahead of fourth quarter and full year results out after markets close today. It has been an extremely tough year for FedEx, but markets believe it has reached a turning point and will see earnings rebound in the new financial year. The company has had to shake-up the way it works in response to the shifts in the market amid inflation-induced cost increases and softer freight demand. Wall Street forecasts revenue will be 7% lower than the year before at $22.7 billion in the fourth quarter while adjusted EPS is expected to plunge 29% to $4.88. Earnings have been under pressure all year while the decline in sales in the second half outweighed the gains seen in the first. That puts FedEx on course to report a 2.8% decline in annual sales and a 27.8% fall in adjusted EPS over the full year. The outlook for the new financial year is key. Markets are looking for adjusted EPS of $18.36 in the year to the end of May 2024. FedEx is currently trying to cut $6 billion in costs over the coming years and the speed of its progress could be behind any miss or beat.

Reddit stocks FAQs

What are meme stocks on Reddit?

Meme stocks are the shares of companies that have gained popularity on social media – including on the Reddit discussion forum. These online communities are filled with retail traders and investors who have researched a particular stock, and then create a coordinated effort to influence the share price.

What happened to GameStop on Reddit?

In 2021, a community of retail traders coordinated a strategy on the r/WallStreetBets Reddit forum to buy shares and out-of-the-money options on GameStop. The idea was to create a short squeeze and force institutional investors and hedge funds who had shorted the stock to buy it back at a loss.

Ultimately the strategy worked, and GameStop’s valuation soared from $1 billion in 2020 to over $22 billion in 2021. This triggered large losses for the short sellers – totalling around $6 billion. The phenomenon was dubbed the ‘David vs Goliath’ of the stock market.

What are the risks of trading Reddit stocks?

The main risk of trading Reddit stocks is the volatility caused by the swings in social sentiment. For example, investors pushed the price of Bed, Bath and Beyond up 314% in the summer of 2022, but it crashed back down a few days later, causing huge losses for retail investors.

To manage the risk of trading meme stocks, you should always attach a stop loss to your positions.