When it comes down to sharp price movements, people tend to relate them to the cryptocurrency market and especially alternative coins. However, a massive four-digit percentage price surge occurred yesterday on Wall Street with a little-known company after it announced plans to enter the electric vehicle (EV) business.
Headquartered in Hong Kong, SPI Energy, a part of SPI Group, operates as a solar panel developer and wholesale supplier. Interestingly, the company also serves as a “turnkey, one-stop cryptocurrency mining hosting and equipment solution.”
Yesterday, though, SPI Energy launched a wholly-owned subsidiary called EdisonFuture Inc. The new firm’s establishment would enable the company to “design and develop electric vehicles (EV) and EV charging solutions.” Essentially, this would position EdisonFuture in the same field as arguably the most popular EV developer – Elon Musk’s Tesla.
SPI Energy CEO Xiaofeng Peng commented that Tesla has already demonstrated that this end-to-end business model in the renewable energy space can “generate significant value.”
Yesterday’s announcement impacted SPI Energy’s shares almost immediately. SPI closed the Tuesday trading session at $1,05. However, the stocks skyrocketed to a daily high of $33,53 on Wednesday, thus registering an impressive increase of nearly 3,100%. Consequently, the company’s market value also surged from about $15 million to roughly $460 million.
The high volatility continued until the end of the trading session, but this time in the opposite direction and SPI closed at $14.
The above example is not the first in which a Wall Street-traded company stock has showcased notable volatility. Earlier this year, the popular corporation operating a few rental car brands Hertz Global Holdings, filed for bankruptcy. The company stock plummeted to below $0,50 but in a few days surged by 1,000% to $5.53.
The drama regarding the German-based online payment processor Wirecard AG also resulted in highly-volatile stock price performance. After filing for insolvency due to missing $2.1 billion, WDI nosedived from 100 EUR to 1 EUR per share in less than a week. A few days later, news of ban lifting in the UK pushed the stock price to 9 EUR (a 900% surge).
Similar extremely volatile developments are generally linked to the cryptocurrency market, where double, triple, and sometimes even quadruple-digit price increases could occur among altcoins.
The difference is that the cryptocurrency market is unregulated, and it trades 24/7. On the other hand, Wall Street and all other global financial stock exchanges are highly regulated, with numerous watchdogs following each move.
The article was first published on Sep 24, 2020.