What happened
Meme stocks are striking back on an up day for the market as the premier internet chat room favorites AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC 6.08%) and GameStop (GME 3.13%) are rallying heading into noontime trading Monday, rising 7% and 4.4%, respectively.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 are both also up for the day so far, rising less than 1% at 11:45 a.m. ET.
So what
It wasn’t an especially memorable box office this past weekend, although Thor: Love and Thunder managed to hold up well even as its take slipped 68% in its second week. But movies in general are doing well this year; the worldwide box office of $4.42 billion year to date is almost equal to all of 2021’s $4.49 billion.
A lot of that is due to the tremendous success of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, which has pulled in $1.2 billion globally since its May 27 release. AMC, as the biggest theater operator, stands to benefit the most from the public’s continued interest in the big-screen experience, and the company recently reported its busiest weekend of the year.
For GameStop, its shares are rising ahead of its 4-for-1 stock split that will occur at the close of trading today, while also riding a mildly successful launch of its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace last week that saw over $3.5 million in transactions occur.
Now what
The drivers of the current stock action are actually business-related moves, which tend not to play a big role with these two companies. As meme stocks, they often rise and fall based on how much chatter they generate on social media, but sometimes the two coincide.
Rich Duprey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Read More: Why AMC and GameStop Shares Are Rising More Than the Market Today | The Motley Fool