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NEWS
Another Day, Another Big Tech Breakout

The U.S. stock market’s rally continued today on the back of strength in large-cap tech and consumer discretionary stocks. This Wednesday’s market holiday is certainly adding an element of uncertainty and keeping overall volumes light. 🤷

Today's issue covers GameStop’s shareholder meeting selloff, Tesla’s improving technicals, and La-Z-Boy’s post-earnings break. 📰

Here's today's heat map:

8 of 11 sectors closed green. Consumer discretionary (+1.76%) led, & utilities (-1.10%) lagged. 💚

Primo Water’s shares boiled over today on news that BlueTriton has agreed to a reverse merger with the company. Existing shareholders will hold 43% of the combined company, and BlueTriton backers will own the rest. 🌊

Autodesk rose 6% as activist investor Starboard Value accumulated a $500 million stake in the company. It’s weighing legal action over the software company’s delayed disclosure of its internal investigation into accounting malfeasance. 💰

AMC Networks is apparently jealous of how well AMC Entertainment has declined and wants to join the party. It filed to sell $125 million in convertible senior notes due 2029 via a private placement, sending shares down 35%. 💸

Space company Virgin Galactic shares fell 15% as its 1-for-20 reverse stock split took effect to keep the stock above the exchange’s $1 minimum price. ⏪

And small-cap biotech firm Shattuck Labs fell 20% after BTIG downgraded it from buy to neutral, citing some ambiguity in one area of the company’s latest clinical trial data, which could delay progress. 👎

Other active symbols: $PLTR (+6.15%), $MU (+4.58%), $AVGO (+5.41%), $LEN (-1.53%), $ASTS (+14.97%), and $AVTE (-93.30%). 🔥

Here are the closing prices: 

EARNINGS
Meme Stocks Lose The “Fundamentals” Game

Meme stocks are not known for their strong fundamentals. Instead, they’re known for their strong momentum among the retail investing and trading community. And today was a good reminder of that situation for two reasons.

GameStop’s shareholder meeting was supposed to be a major catalyst for the company’s shares, with investors hoping that management would provide an update on their plan to drive the company’s core business to profitability. 📝

After all, they’ve been able to raise billions of dollars on the back of this recent “meme stock” rally and are in a much better position financially. Instead, we saw more of the same vagueness and lack of imagination we’ve seen for the last few years. 😴

Chairman and CEO Ryan Cohen said, “With respect to retail operations, we plan to continue reducing costs and focusing on profitability,” talking about a smaller network of stores. He also said the company is focused on long-term shareholder value and not “hype,” but again lacked any details on the gaming retailer’s strategy.

As a result, $GME shares fell 12% on the day as investors and traders digested the “news,” if you can even call it that… 😐

In regards to another meme stock that’s not trading on fundamentals, take a look at AMC Entertainment. Disney’s blockbuster hit “Inside Out 2” helped the theater chain achieve its highest-grossing weekend of 2024…so surely the stock was up, right?

Wrong… $AMC shares were down 2% on the day. So much for that. 🙃

The point here is that these stocks continue to trade on social sentiment and momentum in the short term, while in the long term, they’ll trade on fundamentals. And clearly, neither company has figured out its core business enough to give investors confidence to come along for the ride.

At least that’s what the market is indicating so far… 🤷

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