The Airtasker Ltd (ASX: ART) share price has only been with us on the ASX for 2½ days now. And yet, it's brought us more drama than a Shakespearean tragedy.
As we covered at the time, Airtasker shares gave its institutional and insider investors a very nice debut when it listed 65% above its asking price. But for any investors trying to buy in at the market open, it was a pretty flat day.
But yesterday was when investors really stepped on the gas. The Airtasker share price opened more than 7% higher than where it closed Tuesday at $1.05 and rocketed all the way up to $1.96 in intra-day trading yesterday, a rise of 88%.
That's also more than 200% above Airtasker's listing price of 65 cents a share. Airtasker ended up closing yesterday at $1.74 share.
Airtasker share price 'going to the moon' and back
But the drama continues today. At the time of writing, the Airtasker share price is down a hefty 18% to $1.435 after opening at $1.75 a share this morning. Talk about making a strong opening statement on your ASX debut!
It is worth stating that such extreme volatility like what we have just discussed isn't exactly normal on the ASX. Even in this day and age.
In fact, what we have seen over the past 2½ days is redolent of the whole GameStop Corp (NYSE: GME) stock price saga. This saga has been playing out over the past three months or so over in the United States.
If you're unfamiliar with this story, it involves massive price swings on both the upside and the downside. It was initially fuelled by a Reddit group known as WallStreetBets.
Social influencers at play?
This comparison gels with a report from the Australian Financial Review (AFR) today. The AFR reports that Airtasker's meteoric rise has been felled by social influencers pushing millennial and Gen Z investors into the stock.
The report says that statements like "Let's send Airtasker to Saturn" and "The real question is when do we start using rocket emojis?" were being thrown around on an ASX version of WallStreeBets on Reddit called ASX Bets.
Another Gen Z investor apparently told the AFR they bought Airtasker shares "for the LOLs", and that "we are having too much fun to care".
Wild stuff.
So what's next for the Airtasker share price? Well, who the heck knows, to be frank. But it's certainly one for the popcorn! At the current Airtasker share price, the company now has a market capitalisation of $687.5 million.
