This is The Takeaway from today’s Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with:
Stocks have come roaring back since stumbling early in August.
In the two weeks following the lows on Aug. 5, the S&P 500 added $3.7 trillion in market capitalization with the “Magnificent Seven” stocks accounting for $1.6 trillion of that.
While Nvidia (NVDA) and the artificial intelligence trade are leading the rebound, the risk rally has broad participation — even from oft-forgotten corners of the market like meme stocks.
In May, we outlined Yahoo Finance’s proprietary meme stock five-day volatility trigger. The list of stocks includes meme stalwarts GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment (AMC), along with Carvana (CVNA), Beyond Meat (BYND), Kodak (KODK), Palantir (PLTR), and Coinbase (COIN).
Any up or down moves among members of this group greater than three standard deviations, measured over the trailing quarter, are recorded and aggregated. When there are at least three triggers within a rolling five-day window, a signal is generated.
Since the Aug. 5 low, Carvana, Palantir, Beyond Meat, and Coinbase each registered volatility triggers — with the composite signal peaking at 7 on Aug. 9.
(The all-time signal peak — going back to December 2020 — was 14, recorded on Jan. 28, 2021, during the original GameStop frenzy.)
As outlined in May, meme stocks were once a reliable contrary signal during the 2022 bear market. Investors chased each fledgling rally by bidding up laggards — right before the general market rolled over.
But that hasn’t been the case for most of this bull market, as signals have been distributed throughout the price rallies. And recent signals were generated closer to the beginning of the surge.
In fact, the recent price action in the meme stocks that produced volatility triggers seems to be explained more by idiosyncratic factors and general market volatility than by any latent memeishness.
Palantir, for instance, delivered an upbeat earnings forecast on Aug. 5, which turned a 14% loss on the open that day when the yen was blowing up into a 2.6% loss by the close.
Coinbase’s returns have recently waxed and waned with the fortunes of crypto and bitcoin. And Carvana reported earnings on July 31, leading to a sizable bounce on Aug. 1 — right before the general market turmoil.
The exception might be Beyond Meat, which jumped 40% on Aug. 9 for no discernible reason.
Suggesting the pure meme trade — those unexplained surges that defy any fundamental or rational justification — is still in play for the modern trader.
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