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The latest retail stock darling is up 3,500% this week – but down 99.9% from its peak

5/16/24 12:52PM

Depending on how you look at it, this retail meme stock moment is either winding down or going back to its roots.

GameStop and AMC are both down about 30-40% over the past two sessions, as of 1pm ET. But in its most basic (or base) form, isn’t the retail frenzy less about a select handful of stocks and more about finding a heavily-shorted company with a somewhat interesting narrative that trades at a very low nominal price, then buying the shares like crazy?

Enter Faraday Future Intelligent Electric, a self-described “global shared intelligent electric mobility ecosystem company.” The stock is up about 150% on the day – a very moving target – and 3,500% on the week, as of 1pm ET.

Some fun facts about the firm:

The company hasn’t filed quarterly financials since November 13 (more than six months ago).
Those numbers weren’t too bright, showing operating losses of $66 million for the three months ending September 30, 2023.
The Nasdaq announced plans to delist the stock (because the price was too low, even after a number of reverse splits), and...
There appears to be some palace intrigue in the form of a public leadership struggle.

But! In this world, that pesky set of facts must be balanced against these two:

The stock was trading below 5 cents per share coming into this week.
Short interest as a percent of float was nearly 90% as of April 30, per exchange data.

For those reasons, it’s a name you currently see actively being promoted on various i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ trading-related subreddits, as well as the Wall Street Bets chat on Telegram.

Unlike GME and AMC – where this bout of market mania appears to be a faint echo of what transpired three years ago, in price performance and activity — FFIE is the exact opposite.

Faraday did get some love in the 2021 frenzy — the stock nearly doubled in January. But that pales compared to the parabolic moves in GME and AMC that month. And those moves, in turn, have nothing on what’s happening in FFIE this week. (Yes, yes, I know, it is easier for small number to go up by more than slightly-less-small number over a short period of time).

But the real kicker is in the activity: In late January 2021, the value traded in the stock exceeded $286 million. Now it’s down 99.9% from that level — and the value of the stock traded through 1pm today reached $980 million!

Wild.

Max Knoblauch16m

Electric aircraft maker Beta surges as Amazon discloses 5.3% stake, Jefferies upgrades stock to “buy”

Beta Technologies, the electric aircraft maker that went public in November, is soaring in early Wednesday trading. The stock climbed before markets opened following an upgrade from Jefferies from “hold” to “buy” with a $30 price target, reflecting a nearly 80% climb from its price as of Tuesday’s close.

Jefferies believes Beta shares are attractive after recent risk-off trading — the stock is down 40% since the beginning of the year.

Also appearing to boost optimism in Beta is an SEC filing on Tuesday that indicated Amazon owns a 5.3% stake in the company. The stake isn’t new: Amazon was listed as a 5% or greater shareholder in Beta’s November IPO.

Matt Phillips1h

Analysts give mixed reviews on Robinhood’s Q4 results

Robinhood Markets remained down in premarket trading after delivering Q4 results Tuesday that fell short of some of Wall Street’s expectations, partly due to a slide in crypto trading.

Here’s what analysts had to say about the print:

Barclays: “Q4 came in softer than expected as lower take rates in options and crypto impacted transaction revenues, and lower [securities] lending in particular impacted [net interest income].”

Mizuho: “Prediction Markets were strong, but overall mixed quarter.”

Piper Sandler: “Bottom line, despite these ST headwinds which we laid out in our note last week, our LT thesis remains intact. If you can stomach the volatility, HOOD is the best way to play secular growth in retail trading and the closest FinTech platform we’ve ever seen to achieving ‘super app’ status.”

Zack’s Investment Research: “Crypto trading revenue fell 38% year over year in Q4, and January data showed another 57% decline in app-based crypto volumes. Unfortunately, that’s not a seasonal blip, that’s a structural slowdown in one of Robinhood’s historically highest-margin engagement drivers.”

Citizens JMP: “Slight revenue shortfall for Robinhood Markets but better expense performance, broadening business contribution, and a full roadmap should support strong growth again in 2026; reiterate our Market Outperform rating.”

Luke Kawa1h

Job growth crushes estimates in January, unemployment rate unexpectedly dips to 4.3%

The American labor market, ladies and gentlemen.

The January jobs report was a blockbuster, with nonfarm payrolls growth of 130,000.

Economists polled by Bloomberg expected nonfarm payroll growth of 65,000 for the month. Heading into this release, the event contracts trading closest to a coin flip were “above 50,000” and “above 60,000,” suggesting the masses were less optimistic than Wall Street.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3%, while economists had anticipated it would hold steady at 4.4%.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF extended gains in premarket trading following this release.

The employment gains were very narrowly focused on an industry basis: healthcare accounted for a whopping 123,500, or 95%, of the net job growth.

Luke Kawa1h

Unity Software craters after Q1 sales and earnings guidance fall short of estimates

Both pillars of Unity Software’s business are under pressure from AI tools and new entrants, and its internal AI capabilities don’t seem to be keeping up.

Shares of the gaming engine and ad tech company are off more than 20% in premarket trading. Its solid Q4 results were overshadowed by weak Q1 guidance, with management calling for revenues to range from $480 million to $490 million with adjusted EBITDA from $105 million to $110 million. Wall Street’s estimates were $494 million and $112 million, respectively.

The company’s outlook suggests “a slower than expected ramp-up in its AI-powered ad-technology tool, Vector,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Nathan Naidu wrote. “Slow uptake of Unity 6 subscriptions, with guidance seeing flat growth in 1Q, could drag on top-line gains.”

Unity was among the stocks that cratered in late January after the release of Google’s Project Genie, which was able to recreate knockoffs of popular games.

Separately, Unity and peer AppLovin have suffered amid fears that their ad divisions will be disrupted by startups utilizing AI agents.

Matt Phillips & Luke Kawa3h

AI infrastructure company Vertiv soars after Q4 earnings beat, 2026 outlook crushes expectations

AI infrastructure company Vertiv Holdings is spiking after posting sunny guidance and Q4 earnings that beat estimates.

For Q4, the major provider of power and cooling solutions for data centers reported:

Adjusted earnings per share of $1.36, vs. the $1.29 consensus expectation from analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Sales of $2.88 billion, in line with estimates.

For Q1, management said adjusted earnings would come in between $0.95 and $1.01; even the lower end of that range is higher than the $0.93 consensus estimate. Q1 guidance for net sales of $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion also outstripped Wall Street’s call for $2.54 billion.

For the full year, the lower end of Vertiv’s range of guidance for net sales ($13.25 billion to $13.75 billion) and adjusted earnings per share ($5.97 to $6.07) were both above the highest estimates from analysts polled by Bloomberg.

Vertiv has to be one of the more successful examples of SPAC-era financial engineering.

The company came out of the combination of GS Acquisition Holdings Corp., a so-called blank check company, and Vertiv Holdings — then owned by private equity company Platinum Equity — as part of a roughly $1.9 billion deal, including debt, first announced in late 2019.

The stock pretty much went nowhere for years after it listed as Vertiv on February 10, 2020. But as the AI data center boom began to roll, the shares exploded. Since the end of 2022, they’re up more than 1,300% and Vertiv has created roughly $70 billion in market value.