(Bloomberg) -- Meme-stock traders again piled into GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., a day after shares of both firms soared in a revival of the retail frenzy.
The video-game retailer's stock jumped as much as 51% in premarket trading on Tuesday, while that of the beleaguered movie theater chain surged as much as 58%.
The latest rally was turbocharged on Monday following the return to social media of Keith Gill, who drove the meme-stock mania of 2021 under the moniker “Roaring Kitty.” Gill shot to fame that year by rallying day traders on Reddit in an effort to squeeze GameStop short sellers. Before Monday, his X account had long been dormant.
Both stocks — which remain far below their 2021 peaks — rallied more than 70% on Monday as option volume surged to the highest level since July 2022, with nearly 700,000 contracts traded. In contrast to the past few days, the surge was not solely driven by call trading, as put volume also surged.
“GameStop ranked as the second-most traded stock by retail investors for out of the money Call option volumes on Monday,” said Giacomo Pierantoni, head of data at Vanda Research.
“Retail traders were also actively purchasing the underlying stocks, with $16 million flowing into GameStop and $37 million into AMC,” said Pierantoni.
Other major premarket movers on Tuesday included BlackBerry Ltd., SunPower Corp. and Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. Monday's rally also boosted other high-risk and heavily shorted names like Rivian Automotive Inc., Lucid Group Inc., Nikola Corp. and Vinfast Auto Ltd.
--With assistance from Michael Msika.
(Updates stock moves and adds addtional stocks in last paragraph.)
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