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Gary Gensler might not have come through with the regulatory revolution many of them wanted on Monday, but retail investors shrugged off their SEC-sized hangover on Tuesday to enjoy some big gains in big meme names, get high on pot stocks and bathe in a truly delightful visual metaphor on actual Wall Street.
To set the tone for the day’s action in meme stocks, MemeMoney would like to draw your attention to Lower Manhattan, where onlookers found themselves enjoying a new addition to the Financial District’s ever-changing collection of public art exhibitions.
On Monday, a 7-foot-tall bronze statue of a gorilla appeared in front of Wall Street’s iconic “Charging Bull” statue, occupying the place where “Fearless Girl” once stood as part of a well-intentioned (if ill-executed) attempt to use sculpture as a statement about the financial system.
The gorilla, erected by nascent social-networking platform Sapien.Network which also stashed 10,000 bananas under the famously virile bronze bull, is apparently “dedicated to putting the needs and welfare of human beings first.”
But it’s also a 7-foot primate that Reddit’s army of retail investors immediately identified as a fellow “Ape,” sending social media into paroxysms of artistic appreciation.
On Twitter, influencer and notorious pro-retail investing-stunt enthusiast Kat Stryker was quick to heap praise on the statue, declaring “Who ever did this is a legend!!” adding the hashtag #ApesVsWallStreet.
But it wasn’t just statuary taking a stand on Tuesday.
After the long-awaited staff report from the Securities and Exchange Commission on January’s manic surge in GameStop
GME,
stock left many “Apes” waiting for more from Wall Street’s chief regulator, GameStop’s army of loyal HODLers used their collective focus to move shares up as high as 1.6% on Tuesday, before the stock petered out, closing up just under 0.5%.
Not content to share the SEC’s view that January’s real short squeeze on GameStop was essentially “the friends we made on Reddit along the way,” Apes doubled down on their theories that there is more to come on possible collusion between zero-commission trading app Robinhood
HOOD,
and its biggest market-maker Citadel Securities (charges both parties have consistently denied).
Reddit and Twitter were also full of speculation that the SEC’s look back at GameStop’s unprecedented move was more proof that short-sellers didn’t cover their bets, despite a passage in the report in which the SEC found that “GME had sharp price increases concurrently with known major short sellers covering their short positions after incurring significant losses.”
However one chooses to parse the phrasing, it was crystal clear on Tuesday that Apes are not done litigating the events of January with or without support from the SEC.
Elsewhere in Meme Land, shares of BlackBerry
BB,
surged more than 14%, its best day in months. AMC Entertainment
AMC,
however, tumbled 2.85% on the day, despite CEO — and senior apprentice memelord — Adam Aron telling CNBC on Tuesday that the theater chain will accept a variety of cryptos as payment in the near future.
Aron, who reiterated that AMC stock is now controlled by individual investors and “I work for them,” went on to tickle his bosses with a feather, openly musing that “I think we are just weeks away from announcing a new business line for our company that is not running movie theaters as you traditionally know them.”
But, as would be the case on a day dominated by SEC tea leaves, vestigial smartphone stocks and a 7-foot bronze ape statue, it was pot stocks that came away the biggest winners.
In addition to meme darling Tilray
TLRY,
which closed up 15.8% after a social-media interest surge of more than 1,400%, according to HypeEquity, cannabis stocks like Canopy Growth
CGC,
up 8.6%, Cronos Group
CRON,
up 8.4%, and Aurora Cannabis
ACB,
up 7.6%, all finished higher on the day.
Have you checked out our interview with Dave Lauer on MemeMarkets? Because you should!
