Social media awareness of a given stock creates meme status. Investors know that the attention meme stocks garner can positively affect prices. Communities rally around particular stocks and coordinate their efforts to increase prices.
Those same communities also conduct heavy research into shares in many cases. All that to say, the interesting phenomenon has pros and cons.
One of the clearest cons is that those communities sometimes get overzealous in supporting fragile stocks. The consequences can be disastrous. Putting your capital in meme stocks can lead to significant losses. I’d suggest getting out of or avoiding entirely the shares discussed below.
Tupperware (TUP)
I can’t understand why investors rally around Tupperware (NYSE:TUP) as a meme stock. Certainly, food storage containers are not interesting to the younger meme investors. Other meme shares at least tend to have the element of exciting businesses in their favor.
Tupperware is an extraordinary meme stock, in my opinion. Beyond being boring, there’s also very little information by which to judge it as an investment. Tupperware last provided any meaningful financial data in March. All investors know is that sales are declining and that the company can’t produce income despite making more than $1.3 billion in sales in 2022. This make it one of those meme stock to sell.
The company did restructure debt, which allowed it $150 million of wiggle room. Then, in October, Tupperware announced that it was changing CEOs. Weeks earlier, Tupperware announced that it received approval for its extension request with the NYSE Listing Operations Committee. It’s a case of kicking the can down the road on a dead firm that won’t be revived. Tupperware has no brand name clout remaining and is a holdover from a bygone era.
Carvana (CVNA)
Carvana (NYSE:CVNA) is a foolish place to buy a used car from and a foolish stock to invest in.
The company has essentially attempted to overlay technology onto a fundamentally simple business transaction: Buying a used car. That isn’t going to benefit the consumer overall, which will ultimately lead to dissatisfaction and failure.
Carvana is succeeding in one regard: It created a record gross profit per unit in Q3 of $5,952. Carvana uses technology and flashy display silos to trick consumers into overpaying for used vehicles. First of all, consumers will hopefully realize this soon. Even if they don’t, Carvana continues to lose astounding amounts of money. The company reported a net loss of $502 million in Q3. It’ll have to fool consumers into overpaying by a much more significant amount to find profitability.
Speaking of profitability, the earnings release was studded with that word. The investor relations team dared to say that those gross profits per unit “validate strength and profitability of Carvana business model.” No, it doesn’t. The business model is not profitable at all.
GameStop (GME)
GameStop (NYSE:GME) is reaching its end. It’s been quite the ride for the original meme stock. That said, GameStop is essentially back where it began. It is again a failing gaming company that missed its chance to ride the seismic shifts upward.
Instead of hitching its cart to eCommerce and digital trends, it stuck with a traditional business model. Ryan Cohen affected a majority shareholder takeover intended to push it into the digital era. While he successfully catalyzed that movement, efforts to enact the shift fell flat.
GameStop hired a string of eCommerce executives to do Cohen’s bidding. They fell by the wayside one by one. GameStop recently installed Cohen himself to lead a continued turnaround effort.
It isn’t going to work. That turnaround effort is based on a return to making traditional disc-based sales work. Not only does GameStop intend to somehow swim against the tide in that regard, but it’s also doing so while slashing costs. It couldn’t stem the tide of eCommerce even when it threw all its resources at it. So, it certainly won’t make its traditional business model work with fewer resources. All in all, it’s one of those meme stocks to avoid.
On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
