Data: Bloomberg; Chart: Sara Wise and Andrew Witherspoon/Axios. Note: Stocks limited to companies with a market capitalization of more than $150 million.
Almost never does a stock trade more than twice its market value in a single day. It never happened in 2001, for instance, and never happened in 2003, and only happened once in 2002.
Driving the news: It has happened 7 times this week already, and 20 times this month. In the past 12 months, it's happened 84 times, which is more than all of the previous occurrences going back to November 1998.
GameStop, of course, is leading the charge — it traded more than twice its market capitalization on Jan. 13, 22, 25, 26, and 27.
- AMC managed the feat on Jan. 1, 22, and 27.
Why it matters: Equity is permanent capital. It's a way for individuals to partially own companies over the extremely long term without their securities ever maturing.
- What we've seen in the past month, and especially the past week, is certain companies becoming little more than vehicles for short-term gambling.
