INVESTING

It’s a Meme Stock Life for Us

Being a meme stock is a lot like being Spider-Man: You get bit by a strange insect, gain supernatural strength but are super awkward about it, then eventually harness your new skills to save the world. 

Right now, AMC is realizing that with great power, comes great opportunity to build for the future. Yesterday, to capitalize on its extraordinary (and some say baffling) popularity among individual investors, the theater chain unveiled a program called AMC Investor Connect, which aims to create a direct line between the chain and its army of individual shareholders.

• Through the program, individual investors will get benefits like a free large popcorn and invitations to special screenings. 

Zoom out: After gaining a stunning 96% yesterday, AMC stock has now increased nearly 3,000% in 2021, which it owes to frenzied interest from retail traders who own more than 80% of the company’s outstanding shares.  

But only recently has AMC decided to take advantage. Over the weekend, it sold $230 million worth of stock to a hedge fund in order to “go on the offense again." 

What it all means

It’s become clear that “meme stock mania,” the phenomenon of an asset shooting up in price for no other reason than it’s trending on social media, is a feature, not a bug, of modern financial markets. We thought meme stocks peaked with the bankrupt Hertz last summer, or GameStop this winter, but just this week... 

• Dogecoin, the crypto based on a joke, popped more than 30% yesterday in anticipation of Coinbase allowing it to be traded on its Pro platform. With a market cap of about $54 billion, it’s now the sixth-most valuable crypto.
• An Elon Musk tweet about the viral song “Baby Shark” sent shares of Samsung Publishing, a company that owns a big stake in the song’s producer, up more than 10%. 

Looking ahead...given AMC’s success in leveraging its internet fame for tangible business improvements, other meme stocks might follow its lead. 

RETAIL

Etsy Finds the Sheesh to Its Cheugy

Etsy is expanding beyond handmade “Live Laugh Love” bathroom signs with its acquisition of thrifting app Depop for $1.6 billion. 

For Etsy, whose median seller is about 39, it’s a strategic move meant to court Depop’s overwhelmingly Gen Z user base: More than 90% of its users are under 26.

For those of us past our quarter-life crises, here’s the need-to-know on the secondhand shopping platform: 

• More than 26 million users across 147+ countries buy and sell apparel and accessories.
• Revenue, which mostly comes from the commission Depop charges per sale, doubled last year to $70 million.
• Depop’s sales grew faster last year than its fashion resale rivals, Poshmark and ThredUp. More than $650 million worth of goods traded hands on Depop in 2020.

Looking ahead...thrifting is expected to get more popular as Gen Z ages into greater spending power and more shoppers favor sustainable products over fast-fashion. But if that’s the glass-half-full take, here’s the OJ-and-I-just-brushed-my-teeth one: Etsy has warned shareholders of impending “possible deceleration” caused by “reopening headwinds.”

E-COMMERCE

Amazon’s New Indica Approach

In an attempt to overthrow the DQ that doesn’t limit how many brownie blizzards you can eat as your town’s best employer, Amazon announced it would no longer include marijuana in its drug screenings for some workers. So unless your position is regulated by the Department of Transportation, Amazon said it will treat marijuana like alcohol (should make for an interesting office holiday party). 

• Other employers like Hospitality Ventures, a management group that runs Marriott and Hilton hotels, have also dropped marijuana testing to attract already hard-to-find staff.

Everyone’s doing it. Last year, of the seven million drug tests conducted for employers by Quest Diagnostics, around 2.7% came back positive for marijuana. The number has been rising slowly, from 2% in 2016, as more states legalize recreational use.

Speaking of legalization, Dave Clark, Amazon’s consumer boss, said the company supports legislation to decriminalize cannabis and encouraged other companies to get with it.

Big picture: Amazon hopes its cool weed aunt energy, recent wage increases, and the introduction of a (poorly received) cry box will neutralize the slew of criticism it’s gotten around unsafe working conditions. 

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GRAB BAG

Key Performance Indicators

Stat: Get ready for a surge in “Made in the Southwest” stickers. From January 2017 to January 2020, five states in the Southwest—Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nevada—accounted for 30% of the job growth in manufacturing, per the WSJ.

Quote: “It’s a boomer power-play.”

Research compliance specialist Portia Twidt told Bloomberg she decided to quit her job after her employer asked her to come back to work for a six-minute meeting. Companies that require workers to return to the office after 1+ year of WFH might be at risk of losing them to more remote-friendly companies. 

Listen: A Death in Cryptoland is a podcast that tells the story of the bizarre circumstances around the reported death of Canada’s largest crypto exchange. (CBC)

FINANCE

Ally Bank Tries to Live Up to Its Name

Ally Bank became the first large bank to end the practice of charging overdraft fees—aka when you buy a $3 coffee but don’t have enough money in your account, so you pay an additional $35-or-so fee to your bank.

Prior to the change, about one-in-12 of Ally’s customers overdrafted at one time or another. But while an overdraft fee can be “a major cause of anxiety” for customers, per Ally, getting rid of them isn’t expected to have much of an impact on the bank’s finances.

Other banks aren’t on board

Calls for an end to overdraft fees have been getting louder, and the most vocal critic is Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Last week, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Warren called on the leaders of six major banks to end the practice—and singled out JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon as “the star of the overdraft show.”

Executives responded with, “Hey, look over there!” pointing to other ways they’re alleviating customers’ financial burdens, instead of making any promises regarding overdraft fees.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Amazon Prime Day is coming June 21–22.
• Churchill Downs suspended racehorse trainer Bob Baffert after confirming that his horse, Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, failed a second drug test.
• The US slapped tariffs on more than $2 billion worth of goods from six countries over their plans to tax US tech companies, but then immediately suspended the tariffs to allow for negotiations.
• Microsoft will unveil a big update for Windows at an event on June 24.
• A record 41 women are now running Fortune 500 companies.
• Mike Krzyzewski, the winningest coach in Division I men's basketball history, will retire from coaching Duke after this season.

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BREW'S BETS

Just do it: How to read more books in the golden age of content.

The awards we actually care about: The best “dumb internet videos” of all time.

Brew mini: Beat your time from Tuesday here.

Thursday conversation starter: We usually reserve these for Saturdays, but this one is too good to save. Pick four contiguous states for your breakaway nation.

GAMES

Three Headlines and a Lie

Not sure what’s going on this week, since all of the news stories we chose for Three Headlines and a Lie all sound like plots for low-budget horror movies. See if you can spot which headline is fake and then tell us which one you’d want to watch in a double feature with Sharknado.

1. “Man has wrong leg amputated in “tragic” hospital mix-up”
2. “Ohio art exhibit faces backlash over vending machine full of tongues”
3. “Cannibal mice threaten Sydney homes and Australian farms”
4. “Dracula's castle in Romania offers tourists vaccine”

ANSWER

The vending machine of tongues does not exist to our best knowledge.