Although poor long-term investments, meme mania captured the imaginations of short-term traders with its wicked price action.

The counterculture drumbeat of taking down the institutions was then usurped by the meme management who issued shares after any sort of short squeeze.

Onlookers had to know the energy would not last and it is finally dying down.  

Euphoric moments minted traders who benefited from unusual price spikes when institutions were caught off guard and had to buy the stock back at outrageous prices.

It appears as if this stage of meme mania is at the dying embers, and a sell the rally pattern has emerged in the past month just as big tech has accelerated its lead over everyone else.

For short-term traders, executing directional bearish bets is still on the table and for long-term buyers, you never should hold any of these following companies.

This type of smash and grab philosophy was just too risky for the Mad Hedge Technology portfolio and we avoided it like the plague.

I saw this more as a byproduct of too much liquidity in the system than anything else.

The stocks which skyrocketed were, in most cases, failed business models and only specific anomalies helped price action spin their way.

Since the volume has fallen off a cliff, the sell the rally would be the logical way to go for all the risk-takers who missed out on the meme mania phenomenon on the way up.

Here are the stocks involved.

Clover Health Investments, Corp. (CLOV) operates as a health insurer. It recently said it would be expanding insurance plans across nine states and more than 200 new counties in a bid to focus on underserved communities. The share price of the firm soared 8% after the announcement.

BlackBerry Limited (BB) provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises and governments worldwide. The company leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety, and data privacy.

It is placed fourth a list of 10 Reddit’s WallStreetBets meme stocks hedge funds are piling into.

The company’s shares have returned 145% to investors in the past twelve months.

The company announced that the QNX software marketed by the firm was now installed in close to 200 million vehicles worldwide. This is an increase of 20 million compared to last year.

ContextLogic Inc. (WISH) is a California-based mobile ecommerce firm.

It is ranked third on a list of 10 Reddit’s WallStreetBets meme stocks hedge funds are piling into.

On July 6, the company announced that ContextLogic B.V, the Dutch arm of the business, had been granted a payment license for the European Union region. The share price of the firm jumped more than 5% after the announcement, which a company official said was the first step towards becoming a payment service provider in Europe.

GameStop (GME) rose from $4 to $325 and currently sits at $180.

The stock has continued to trend down from $320 after the latest short-squeeze and momentum is strongly biased towards the downside.

The retail company sells video games and has a terrible business model.

The last one is AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (AMC) whose stock went from $2 to $60 and now is back down to $40.

AMC was a headliner disaster during the pandemic because movie theatres were closed and consumers were substituting their services for Netflix or other streaming services.

The Chinese property tycoon Wang Jianlian who bought into AMC before the pandemic was able to exit from his investment with a $675 million gain.

He acquired the company applying $1.9 billion of debt in 2012.

The Wanda Conglomerate was bailed out by the Reddit trading army after his vision of making AMC a “true global cinema operator” fizzled out big time.

The cinema chain reported a net loss of $4.6 billion for 2020, thus it’s stunning that Wang was able to spin such a disastrous investment for a tidy profit.

The AMC stake sale is the latest instance of Wanda offloading assets under pressure from Beijing, which wants Chinese to pare back its overseas holdings and debt.

The company was placed on a watch list by regulators in 2017 along with Anbang Group, Fosun Group, and HNA Group. These privately controlled Chinese conglomerates had accumulated some of the world’s largest debts after snapping up overseas trophy assets, often at premium prices, and were facing significant debt maturities.

Wang got lucky but the annual 2020 losses highlight the extent to how bad these business models are and how fortunate they were to have received a bailout from retail traders.

I believe these stocks are good for a short-term directional bearish bet with a controlled stop-loss strategy if things go sour fast.

None of these are worth owning, there are just too many other items on the menu that are tastier in a roaring U.S. economy.

From a wider-angle lens, the stock frenzy has fueled a record flow of money into the market from retail investors.

Only just last month, traders bought almost $28 billion of stocks and exchange-traded funds on a net basis, the largest amount in a single month since at least 2014.

This surely means that this new source of investment flows has gone into big tech with its huge surges higher.

At some point, capital will find itself in a different part of the equity market again and the Reddit army will be resuscitated basically because too many of them took profits and will be able to roll those profits into new positions.

Don’t get dragged into the mud looking for an easy buck.