Laix shares soar, other small Chinese educational stocks gain
05/02/2021 19:48
NEW YORK, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Shares of artificial
intelligence company Laix Inc LAIX.N soared as much as 355% on
Friday while those of several other small Chinese educational
companies with relatively few shares available to be traded also
jumped.
Some of the stocks were being touted on social media
websites Reddit and Twitter, though nothing like the recent
furor over GameStop Corp GME.N that has sent its stock
soaring.
Laix shares were up 70.3% at $4.36 in afternoon trading
after hitting a high of $11.65 earlier in the session. Shares of
Meten Edtechx Education Group Ltd METX.O rose 13.9% to $3.12,
Sunlands Technology Group STG.N was up 10.8% at $1.55, RYB
Education Inc RYB.N jumped 18.1% to $3.19.
The free float for those stocks, or number of shares
available to be traded publicly, was 42 million or lower. Apple
Inc AAPL.O , the largest company by market value, has a free
float of 16.78 billion shares.
"Smaller cap stocks are always going to be more influenced
by social media ... by different things so I'm not surprised if
it is small Chinese names, that stuff they can push around but
they will struggle to push the bigger names now," said Dennis
Dick, head of markets structure, proprietary trader at Bright
Trading LLC in Las Vegas.
Unlike GameStop and other stocks at the center of a
retail-driven stock rally, short interest in the Chinese
educational stocks was very small, according to analytics firm
S3 Partners.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by
Alden Bentley and Richard Chang)
((lewis.krauskopf@thomsonreuters.com; 646-223-6082; Reuters
Messaging: lewis.krauskopf.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net,
Twitter: @LKrauskopf))