BlackBerry has gotten caught up in the meme-stock trade.
Pau Barrena/Bloomberg
Thursday’s frantic trading in BlackBerry sent the stock swinging and marked the heaviest trading day in the company’s history.
Volume in the stock was 528 million shares, easily topping the 372 million shares that changed hands on January 27, in the middle of the last big spike in the software company’s shares, according to data from FactSet. There have been just eight trading days in the company’s history when the stock’s volume has eclipsed the 200 million share level.
BlackBerry (ticker: BB) has about 565 million shares outstanding.
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The stock gyrated wildly on Thursday as it was swept up in the meme-stock frenzy—shares getting a boost from the enthusiastic support of retail traders in the Reddit group WallStreetBets. Shares of BlackBerry opened sharply higher, swung to a loss around the middle of the session, and then bounced back into the green. After trading as high as $20.17 a share—and as low as $13.56—the stock ended the session at $15.85, a gain of 3.9%. That marked the six straight day of gains, a combined advance of about 83%.
This is the second time in 2021 that investors have aggressively bid up BlackBerry shares. In the first four weeks of January, the stock nearly quadrupled, hitting a 10-year high at nearly $29 before falling back to single digits recently.
BlackBerry’s trading volume in the holiday-shortened week has reached 950 million shares, already the second highest on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That trails only the 1.268 billion shares that changed hands in late January during the last Reddit-propelled spike in the stock. Today’s trading volume is about 1,920% of the 30-day average turnover in the stock.
Most other meme stocks declined during Thursday’s session. Both AMC Entertainment (AMC), down 18%, and Express (EXPR), off 20%, announced stock offerings this morning, warning in their filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that only investors willing to take on considerable risk should buy the shares. Meanwhile, GameStop (GME) fell 9%, and Bed Bath & Beyond dived 28%.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]
