(Bloomberg) Investors are rediscovering their appetite for the market’s speculative fringes.The shares of GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. the poster-children of this year’s Reddit boom are surging. Interest in special purpose acquisition companies has reignited with Chamath Palihapitiya’s blank-check firms leading the way. And Bitcoin and Ether are up after last week’s bonfire in cryptocurrencies.While the catalyst is unclear, retail traders appear to be driving the action. Touts are plastered all over social media with individual investors attempting to pump their bets on Twitter, Reddit’s WallStreetBets and chatrooms on Stocktwits.“The Reddit raiders are at it again,” Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said as shares of GameStop and AMC were among the most actively traded stocks Wednesday. “It looks retail driven to me.”Memes Are ForeverWhile the S&P 500 is virtually flat this mo
The Defiance Next Gen SPAC Derived ETF (SPAK) plunged as much as 4.1 per cent on Tuesday, extending its year-to-date losses at one point to about 20 per cent.
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Mark Yusko on SPACs The head of RIA Morgan Creek Capital recently launched an ETF to diversify investments in the blank-check companies.
Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, made up most of the growth in the U.S. initial public offering (IPO) market last year. In 2020, SPACs raised $79.9 billion in gross proceeds, topping the 2019 record of $13.6 billion, according to Nasdaq.
There is even a SPAC focused on acquiring firms in the wealth management space, guided in part by Larry Roth, former CEO of broker/dealer Cetera and a long-tenured executive in the financial advisory industry.
However, SPACs have also received a fair amount of bad press, with many pointing to subpar returns for investors.