Intel stock has plunged this year, triggering buzz on WallStreetBets.Jaque Silva/SOPA/Getty Images
Intel has been driving lots of retail chatter and stock purchases in recent days.
The chipmaker’s stock has tanked this year, and a poorly timed investment has tickled Reddit users.
Four members of Reddit’s WallStreetBets subreddit explain why they’re betting big on Intel.
GameStop. Bed Bath & Beyond. Intel?
The microchip maker isn’t an obvious choice to become the next big meme stock, but it’s generating a bunch of buzz on Reddit’s WallStreetBets subreddit.
Early on Thursday, Intel ranked fifth on Swaggy Stocks’ list of trending stocks on WSB over the past week, and sixth on Ape Wisdom’s list for the past 24 hours.
Retail investors have also been piling money into the chipmaker. Vanda Research’s retail flow tracker shows it was the fifth most popular stock in the five trading days through August 13, attracting $162 million in net retail purchases.
Intel only trailed Nvidia ($1.4 billion), AMD ($259 million), Palantir ($189 million), and Tesla ($164 million). It outpaced the likes of Apple ($155 million) and Microsoft ($147 million).
Vanda analysts noted that overall net retail purchases have surged this month, “far exceeding even our most bullish expectations” as investors capitalized on the “chunkiest dip since April.” Demand has cooled since the start of August but purchases continue to hover near a 12-month high of $1.4 billion a day, the analysts added.
Why Intel?
Intel stock has plunged by about 60% this year to about $20, its lowest level in over a decade. On August 2, it tanked as much as 30% — its steepest one-day decline in over 30 years — after Intel’s second-quarter earnings revealed plans to lay off some 15,000 staff, or 15% of its total workforce, and guided toward lower revenues than Wall Street expected.
The company’s net assets were valued at $115 billion at the end of June, about $30 billion higher than its current market capitalization.
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