Stock ‘Meme’ Mania Seeps Into ETFs

AMC is leading the latest meme stock frenzy. Here is the impact on ETFs.

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sumit
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Senior ETF Analyst
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Reviewed by: Sumit Roy
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Edited by: Sumit Roy

The meme stock frenzy has returned. After a brief hiatus during the past few months, the WallStreetBets-inspired traders are back in action, sending shares of the movie theater chain AMC Entertainment soaring.

On Wednesday alone, shares of AMC nearly doubled, bringing its year-to-date gains to a whopping 2,850%.

At its peak price, the market capitalization of AMC topped $31 billion, 50x its pre-COVID levels and about 8x its previous peak market cap set in 2017.

AMC Market Capitalization

Source: Bloomberg

While AMC’s fundamentals have certainly improved since the dark days of last year, almost everyone agrees that the movie theater chain’s stock price is disconnected from the performance of its underlying business.

It’s a situation reminiscent of the super surge in GameStop shares earlier this year, when Redditors sent the stock of the struggling video game retailer to the stratosphere for no apparent reason. AMC was a participant in that first meme stock rally, and was arguably at the time the second most popular meme stock.

This time around, AMC has taken the lead, though GameStop is still very much a WallStreetBets darling, with its share price up 100x from its pandemic lows.

Relentless Meme Stocks

Perhaps what’s most surprising about 2021’s meme stock mania is not that retail traders have been able to collectively band together to target specific stocks, it’s that they have been able to do so over and over again, for an extended period of time.

When GameStop topped out at $483 back in January, everyone thought the party was over. But after crashing to $40 in February, the stock staged another spectacular rally to more than $300. The stock sold off again to less than $120, but now it’s back near $300.

These quick, rolling waves of booms and busts that have no fundamental underpinnings are a unique characteristic of the current meme stock phenomenon.

No one knows how long this can continue, but at least for now, meme stock traders have been able to harness their collective energy to drive certain stocks to once-unimaginable levels. No one knows which stock will be the next meme stock, but there will undoubtedly be another GameStop or AMC in the future.

ETF Concentration

For most ETF investors, the meme stock craziness is just a sideshow. By design, most exchange-traded funds are diversified, meaning that any individual stock usually doesn’t have a huge impact on the performance of an ETF.

But there are exceptions. During the peak of the GameStop mania back in January, the stock was rising so fast that two ETFs ended up with nearly a quarter of their portfolios in the stock.

A similar situation happened with AMC and the SoFi Social 50 ETF (SFYF), which FactSet describes as a fund that “pursues the wisdom of the crowd approach.” On Wednesday, AMC ballooned to 23.5% of the ETF’s portfolio. With shares of GameStop making up another 6.1% of the fund, SFYF is currently as close to a meme stock ETF as you can get.

TickerCompanyWeighting
AMCAMC Entertainment23.53%
GMEGameStop6.14%
TSLATesla5.27%
AAPLApple5.14%
NIONio3.90%
AMZNAmazon3.53%
MSFTMicrosoft3.12%
PLTRPalantir3.09%
DISDisney3.00%

 

Another fund, the Invesco Dynamic Leisure and Entertainment ETF (PEJ), also saw AMC swell into an outsized position at 18% of the portfolio as of Wednesday.

AMC likely won’t maintain such a large position in these portfolios—SFYF caps its individual holdings at 10% of the fund, while PEJ is an equal-weighted fund—but for the brief period before rebalancings, investors should be aware of the meme stock concentration in these ETFs.

The ETF.com stock finder tool is a good way to find out which ETFs have large weightings in specific stocks. The tool can be accessed here or by typing www.etf.com/stock/TICKER into your browser.

With meme stocks showing no signs of going away, this is a handy tool for ETF investors, especially those with exposure to less-diversified thematic ETFs.

Email Sumit Roy at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @sumitroy2

Sumit Roy is the senior ETF analyst for etf.com, where he has worked for 13 years. He creates a variety of content for the platform, including news articles, analysis pieces, videos and podcasts.

Before joining etf.com, Sumit was the managing editor and commodities analyst for Hard Assets Investor. In those roles, he was responsible for most of the operations of HAI, a website dedicated to education about commodities investing.

Though he still closely follows the commodities beat, Sumit covers a much broader assortment of topics for etf.com, with a particular focus on stock and bond exchange-traded funds.

He is the host of etf.com’s Talk ETFs, a popular video series that features weekly interviews with thought leaders in the ETF industry. Sumit is also co-host of Exchange Traded Fridays, etf.com’s weekly podcast series.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he enjoys climbing the city’s steep hills, playing chess and snowboarding in Lake Tahoe.