Is There A New Way To Evaluate The Value Of Meme Stocks?

As of Friday afternoon, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc AMC was trading at $51, well off its highs from Thursday morning but still up 96% in June. 

The growth in AMC’s price began in earnest last week, with the price rising from $12.38-26.12. This week has been just as intense, with the stock getting as high as $77 in Thursday's premarket session. 

GameStop Corp GME also experienced a considerable jump in price over the same time frame, up by 56.5%. As of Friday, the original meme stock was trading at $254.

What’s driving the AMC price spurt?

While on its way to pre-pandemic patronage, the world's largest cinema company is undoubtedly not inspiring investors purely with its fundamentals. Rather, I suspect that investors are inspired by the recent media reports detailing the phenomenal losses that short sellers are continually racking up.

On May 26-27, it was reported that GME and AMC short sellers lost $618 million and $754 million on respective days, as the meme stocks rallied. Last week alone, AMC short sellers lost $1.2 billion. These numbers are incredibly intoxicating for short squeezers.

Short Sellers losing hundreds of millions after AMC stock rally!

Is it just me, or is there more mainstream reporting of the short sellers’ daily losses more frequently?

While I believe there is an uptick, I don’t think these reports were the initial catalyst of the current run-up in price seen in GME and AMC. However, I believe it is spurring meme investors to increase their positions in the stocks and push past the ‘natural’ short squeeze price of the stocks.

If what short squeezers believe will eventuate in the mother of all short squeezes (MOASS), the extra price paid for each stock right now will be immaterial to them. Likewise, if short squeezers can inflict a little more pain on hedge funds along the way, then the cost incurred for another turn of the screw appears to be entirely worth it.