AMC shares soars more than 30% at open,KOSS shares surges nearly 20%.
"The retail trader is at it again," said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. "AMC500k and AMCSqueeze were trending on Twitter yesterday and that momentum took the stock price above the end of January high that we saw during the peak of meme stock mania."
Enthusiastic Reddit traders are encouraging each other to double down on AMC's stock and call options by sharing screenshots of their portfolio and touting massive return. One trending post on WSB Friday reads: "$AMC YOLO UPDATE : 4948 shares, 10 calls, across 4 brokerages, and I still ain't selling!"
Short covering could be fueling AMC's massive rally this week. When a heavily shorted stock jumps higher in a rapid fashion, short sellers are forced to buy back borrowed shares to close out their short position and cut losses. The forced buying tends to accelerate the rally even further.
AMC is a heavily shorted name with about 20% of its float shares sold short, compared with an average of 5% short interest in a typical U.S. stock, according to S3 Partners.