Corporate-earnings season has just begun, and the fourth-quarter results that will pour in over the next two weeks could be critically important for investors, as Tomi Kilgore explains. Mark Hulbert looks at an important trend that hopefully won’t reverse this earnings season. More coverage as earnings season begins:
EV market in flux
Xpeng’s P5 electric car.
AFP via Getty Images
Tesla
TSLA,
-1.98%
is making moves to maintain its leading market share for electric vehicles. The company’s fourth-quarter discounting was announced as a temporary move to improve sales when prospective buyers were likely to wait until 2023 for new federal tax credits to kick in. But now Tesla has started a new round of price cuts of up to 20% on Model 3 and Model Y cars. Claudia Assis takes a closer look at what the price cuts might mean for Tesla’s financial performance. More coverage of developments in the EV market: Meme stocks heat up again
Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond have risen 88% this year through Jan. 12, even though the retailer is considering a bankruptcy filing.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
For those of you who thought the meme-stock craze might have ended when the long bull market fizzled early last year, the wild action continues. Consider Bed Bath and Beyond
BBBY,
-25.57%
: The company may file for bankruptcy, but its share price has risen 88% this year. According to the latest information available from FactSet, half of the Bed Bath & Beyond shares available for trading have been sold short. Such a high percentage of traders betting on the share price falling has set up a short squeeze — a scramble to buy the stock to cover their short positions, which sends the shares soaring. In his daily email to clients on Jan. 13, Matthew Tuttle of Tuttle Capital Management wrote that people who had made money shorting stocks during 2022 were getting cold feet and that the “piling into meme stocks” was a bullish sign for the market overall. He then added a note of caution in light of the Federal Reserve’s tightening of monetary policy to fight inflation. Here are six popular meme stocks sorted by percentage sold short, showing price changes for three periods through Jan. 12:
Company
Ticker
Short interest/ percentage of float
2023 price change
2022 price change
Price change from end of 2021
Carvana Co. Class A
CVNA,
-13.98%
58%
69%
-98%
-97%
Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.
BBBY,
-25.57%
50%
109%
-83%
-64%
Beyond Meat Inc.
BYND,
-3.15%
40%
34%
-81%
-75%
Coinbase Global, Inc. Class A
COIN,
+2.62%
27%
34%
-86%
-81%
GameStop Corp. Class A
GME,
-0.63%
23%
12%
-50%
-44%
AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Class A
AMC,
-0.30%
22%
23%
-85%
-82%
Source: FactSet
Despite the impressive returns for the first half of January, the longer-term numbers show what losers these stocks have been. Jumping on a heavily shorted stock hoping for a quick gain requires excellent timing. Inflation is not cool, but it is cooling
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