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Here’s a list of the market’s most speculative stocks

Here’s a list of the market’s most speculative stocks

Hope you got all the presents you wanted during the festive season.

If not, there are always lottery stocks. That is, highly speculative stocks that can go either boom or bust.

But how do you find these companies? A research paper from authors including Alok Kumar of the University of Miami notes that, if all market participants were passive investors, the ratio of dollar volume to market capitalization would be equal for all stocks. So to find the most speculative stocks, look for the stocks with the highest turnover ratios.

MarketWatch, as we’ve done from time to time, screened New York Stock Exchange- and Nasdaq-listed stocks, with market caps of at least $500 million, to find such companies.

Here’s the list:

Symbol

Name

Last year’s annual profit, before items, millions of dollars

RGTI

Rigetti Computing, Inc.

-75.1

BBAI

BigBear.ai Holdings, Inc.

-60.4

BTBT

Bit Digital, Inc.

-13.9

OPEN

Opendoor Technologies Inc

-275

CAN

Canaan Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A

-414.2

CHPT

ChargePoint Holdings, Inc. Class A

-457.6

PLUG

Plug Power Inc.

-1,368.80

TLRY

Tilray Brands, Inc.

-245

QBTS

D-Wave Quantum Inc.

-82.7

QUBT

Quantum Computing Inc.

-27

PACB

Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc.

-306.7

RCAT

Red Cat Holdings Inc

-21.5

RZLV

Rezolve AI Limited

-0.3

SERV

Serve Robotics Inc

-24.8

WOLF

Wolfspeed Inc

-573.6

ACHR

Archer Aviation Inc Class A

-457.9

NVTS

Navitas Semiconductor Corporation

-145.4

CLSK

Cleanspark, Inc.

-145.8

IQ

iQIYI, Inc. Sponsored ADR Class A

271.8

MARA

MARA Holdings, Inc.

261.2

The companies the screen identifies make intuitive sense: it’s a list filled with quantum computing, AI and bitcoin plays. Most aren’t profitable, though Asian video provider iQIYI and bitcoin miner MARA Holdings have made money this year.

For what it’s worth, homebuilder NVR NVR and travel provider Booking Holdings BKNG screen as the least speculative stocks using this methodology, which makes sense given that each share carries a four-digit cost, making them ill-suited to day trading.

The markets

U.S. stock index futures were lower early Friday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00 down 120 points, or 0.27%, to 43,582, while S&P 500 ES00 futures fell 19.5 points, or 0.32%, to 6,075, and Nasdaq 100 futures NQ00 fell 79 points, or 0.36%, to 21,929.

European and Asian shares were mixed Friday in thin year-end trading, after China reported lower corporate profits in November, the fourth straight month of decline, with European markets moving in narrow ranges as they reopened after Christmas holidays.

Germany’s DAX  DX:DAX edged 0.1% higher to 19,863.29, while the CAC 40 FR:PX1 in Paris was up 0.4% at 7,308.99. Britain’s FTSE 100 UK:UKX inched 0.1% lower, to 8,147.00. The dollar fell to 157.71 Japanese yen USDJPY from 158.00 yen. It had been trading below 150 yen until the past few days.

Key asset performance

Last

5d

1m

YTD

1y

S&P 500

6040.53

2.87%

0.70%

26.64%

26.33%

Nasdaq Composite

20,035.34

3.31%

5.11%

33.47%

32.69%

10-year Treasury

4.59

7.10

32.60

70.91

79.28

Gold

2649.9

1.93%

0.51%

27.90%

26.83%

Oil

69.73

0.39%

1.40%

-2.24%

-5.54%

Data: MarketWatch. Treasury yields change expressed in basis points

The chart
Here’s a list of the market’s most speculative stocks
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