GameStop store entrance at Rego Center shopping mall, Queens, New York

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Stonks

The return of GameStop stock mania was weeks in the making

Options traders were making wild bets on GME much earlier in May

5/14/24 12:55PM

The return of the meme stock mania that’s seen shares of GameStop rise as much as 270% over the past two days was shaped by bullish bets that were weeks in the making. And if those wagers were ever going to pay off, the surge needed to happen by this specific time.

With hindsight, trading volumes in the stock were picking up for no good reason well ahead of this week. These higher volumes were accompanied by some eyebrow-raising behavior in the options market.

“Something has been percolating”

Daily trading volume ranged from 2.1 million to 7.7 million over the last three months, besides a few days in late March where it briefly jumped to 17 million shares. But then things started changing: on May 3, volume spiked to 36.3 million shares, and between 24 million and 48 million shares changed hands each day until May 13, when volume spiked to 182 million. Speculators were accumulating shares in the week leading up to Roaring Kitty's tweet.

“Frankly, I’ve been trading this for the past two weeks in both directions because something has been percolating,” said Tom Hearden, senior trader at Skylands Capital.

Typically, you would expect interest in upside targets that would be easier to reach to become more in demand during the stock’s gradual rise, Sosnick said.

“This has been building for some time, someone got long big slugs of the $25 and $30 calls,” said Sosnick. “The fact that we saw the open interest creeping higher and steadily increased in the 30s faster than in the 20s, was odd, and a signal that something was up.”

Those call options, barring a repeat of the Q1 2021 and 2022 episodes, would have expired completely worthless. As of Friday, the ability to buy shares of GameStop by May 17 at a price of $30 was worth $0.43. Now, those options are worth over $20.

Compare those trends in open interest to a much larger, heavily-traded stock like Apple. Coming into the week, there was more than five times as much open interest in options that would be in the money in the event of a 4% increase in the iPhone maker compared to options with a strike price about 15% above the market close on May 17.

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The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 close at record highs again as Strait of Hormuz is declared open

Stocks reached new record highs as risk-on sentiment flooded back into the markets, while oil tumbled.

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With their recent surge, Intel shares just hit their highest level since the dot-com era

Intel’s surge of nearly 60% this month has the iconic American chipmaker’s stock price approaching levels last seen during the dot-com era. Bloomberg noted that shares just touched their highest intraday level since the turn of the century:

“The stock rose as much as 1.5% to $69.55, topping a peak it hit on Jan. 24, 2020. The shares are up 90% this year, after soaring 84% in 2025. Intel is now roughly 8% from its all-time closing high of $74.88, established on Aug. 31, 2000.”

That’s just the most recent late-’90s-era throwback we’ve been seeing in tech shares lately. Oracle is currently pacing for its best week since late 1999.

What’s even more remarkable, however, is that Intel’s forward price-to-earnings ratio today dwarfs the premiums the market was putting on the stock during the nuttiness of the dot-com mania.

That reflects the fact that the recent run-up in Intel shares is, essentially, giving the chip giant credit for a massive turnaround that hasn’t actually happened yet.

One also might wonder if the fact that Intel is partially owned by the US government means it’s more attractive — and therefore worth a higher premium — than other chipmakers without the state imprimatur.

Still, kind of startling.

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Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 pill hit nearly 1,400 prescriptions in first week

Eli Lilly rose after preliminary numbers cited by Wall Street analysts showed strong uptake of its new weight-loss pill.

The FDA approved Foundayo on April 1 and shipments began on April 9. In its first week, roughly 1,400 US prescriptions were written for the drug, according to IQVIA data cited by Deustche Bank analysts in a Friday note.

Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s rival in the GLP-1 market, released its GLP-1 pill earlier this year, and early signs show that it’s expanding the market, inviting patients who were turned off by weekly injections. Novo’s pill had a stronger first week than Lilly’s, with its Wegovy pill hitting 3,071 US prescriptions in the first four days after its launch on January 5.

Lilly’s pill has an advantage over Novo’s, which is that it can be taken at any time of day, with or without food. Lilly disclosed in a February regulatory filing that it had $1.5 billion worth of prelaunch inventory ready ahead of the FDA approval — which is about as much as analysts polled by FactSet expect it to sell this year.

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Critical Metals jumps after Greenland’s government approves CRML to take majority control of the Tanbreez mining project

Critical Metals is up more than 25% in premarket trading on Friday after the critical mining company announced that it now owns 92.5% of the Tanbreez rare earth deposit following an approval from the government of Greenland.

With that latest government support, Critical Minerals added an additional 50.5% stake to its ownership, reportedly acquired from Rimbal Pty Ltd, per Bloomberg News. With access to eight heavy rare earth elements often used in consumer electronics and defense, the site is one of the world’s largest undeveloped rare earth deposits and a key source of rare earth supply outside of China, according to the company.

In Critical Metals’ press release, Chairman Tony Sage commented that the approval “removes the most significant structural overhang on the project and provides the clarity to advance Tanbreez to production with confidence,” especially as Tanbreez’s location offers a significant logistical advantage through its year-round direct shipping access, compared to rival projects.

With 92.5% of the project now vested in Critical Metals Corp., and the remainder owned by European Lithium Ltd., CRML now has full control of the project and is seeking to accelerate development there, with plans for a new international airport and a “150-tonne bulk sample program,” which is slated for June 2026.