AMC, BlackBerry shares surge along with GameStop. Here's why meme stocks are back.
CBSN
It's like 2021 all over again — at least, in one bullishness-on-steroids corner of the stock market.
Several "meme stocks," or companies whose shares are buoyed by social media buzz rather than traditional business fundamentals like growth and profits, surged ahead of the start of trading on Tuesday. It's the second consecutive day that such stocks have popped in the stock market, following GameStop's 72% surge on Monday.
Other favorites with the WallStreetBets, the Reddit forum that spurred the meme-stock craze three years ago, jumped in pre-market trading on Tuesday. Among them are movie-theater operator AMC Entertainment, whose shares soared 78% in premarket trading, and BlackBerry, with a 26% gain. GameStop shares spiked more than 130%.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.