(NYTIMES) – All year, amateur investors, propelled by a social media frenzy and a bit of boredom, have poured money into risky forms of investments like meme stocks, special purpose acquisition companies and Bitcoin.
With the pandemic easing in the United States, many market watchers expected the investment world to return to something resembling normalcy.
But investing frenzy that is fuelled by social media is still fanning big jumps in the stock market – the stock price of AMC, the beleaguered movie theatre chain, recently went up by over 70 per cent. Riding the momentum, AMC announced a fresh US$230 million (S$310 million) investment from a hedge fund. Hours later, the fund dumped the shares, calling AMC “overvalued”. Despite this, the stock surged even higher.
It sent a clear message: The whiplash that has defined investing in the pandemic is not going away as people with money to burn jump from one novel idea to the next, inflating the value of stocks and digital items beyond what many traditional investors would consider rational.
“Volatility is moving from market to market,” said Mr Gavin Baker, an investor at Atreides Management, which backs stocks and private companies. “I’m treating it as the new normal.”
The biggest driver of risky investment manias has been a surplus of cash in people’s pockets. While that could slow as leisure spending resumes, interest rates remain low, pushing people to take more risks with their money.
Prominent investors have begun to speak out about those risks, even though the VIX, an index measuring volatility known as a “fear gauge”, remains low.
Mr Barry Silbert, a cryptocurrency investor, predicted that volatility would soon rise in response to “macro fireworks” caused by factors as varied as food prices and overpriced cryptocurrencies.
Mr Michael Burry, the investor portrayed in The Big Short, has forecast “the mother of all crashes” and called the market activity “unnatural, insane and dangerous”.
Mr Douglas Boneparth, president of the financial advisory firm Bone Fide Wealth, added: “This is one of the most uncertain times we’ve existed in – economically, socioeconomically, from a health perspective.”
Many investors are riding out the erratic market, even when their bets do not look so hot. Mr Steve Veerman, 36, a software developer, has spent thousands of dollars building a collection of digital basketball cards called “moments” on a site called NBA Top Shot.
The site uses blockchain technology, which underpins cryptocurrencies, to authenticate its digital collectibles, known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
His collection is now worth a life-changing sum of money on paper, even as the overall value for Top Shot moments has fallen 6 per cent since February and counting.
He has no plans to stop buying or cash out; he believes digital collectibles will outlive trading cards. He acknowledged that there would be “lots of price volatility” along the way. “It’s not for the faint of heart,” he said.
NFT sales exploded earlier this year, promising a new way for artists, musicians, entertainers and others to make money online and making headlines with million-dollar sales.
But the rush of people hawking NFTs made it difficult for projects to stand out, pushing offerings to become increasingly absurd, like the fringed leather jacket of Joe Exotic, from the documentary Tiger King. NFT sales fell 90 per cent from the euphoric peak in early May, according to an analysis by Protos, a crypto-focused media company.
Bitcoin’s volatile month – dropping by around 65 per cent in May, recovering some and then falling further again – has not swayed investor enthusiasm. A recent survey by The Ascent, a financial services ratings site, showed that Generation Z investors viewed cryptocurrencies as slightly less risky than individual stocks.
But they are learning that wild price swings can happen over a single tweet. In February and March, when Mr Elon Musk and his company, Tesla, embraced Bitcoin, its price soared. In May, when Mr Musk tweeted that Tesla would not accept Bitcoin payments over concerns with its environment impact, its price dropped. It jumped again when Mr Musk suggested on Twitter that Tesla would again accept Bitcoin some day.
The appetite for risky bets has fuelled firms like Robinhood that enable customers to trade stocks, options and cryptocurrencies. In January, Robinhood’s role in the trading of meme stocks landed it in hot water with Congress, state regulators and its customers.
The attention only turbocharged Robinhood’s growth: Revenue more than tripled in the first three months of 2021 compared with the same period last year. Robinhood plans to go public in the coming months.