By Sinéad Carew and Medha Singh

(Reuters] – Thursday’s volatile trading in AMC Entertainment (NYSE) and GameStop(NYSE) shares was due to the fact that the so-called mem stocks lost some of their gains from earlier in the day. Investors were looking for bargains after several days of losses.

These companies released no announcements on Thursday. However, they have large support from retail investors. This is because of their collaboration to push out short sellers last year to record heights.

The pair traded inconsistently on Thursday. Cinema operator AMC closed up 8.0% at $11.20, after climbing as high as $13.71. GameStop shares ended up 10.1% at $89.57 compared to the stock’s session high $108.06.

Although equities experienced a severe sell-off recently, Thursday’s mesmerizing stock trading showed that not all investors had abandoned the “buy-the dip” strategy. [.N]GameStop saw its value drop 36% in five session, while AMC lost 34% over the same period.

“There’s a lot of people out there looking for ways to purchase dips with very aggressive products. Steve Sosnick (NASDAQ: Chief strategist, Interactive Brokers) said that this is why AMC and GME are so popular. The true believers of meme stocks are still not fully cured.

He said that the rally lost momentum as the session went on, and some traders left because stocks have had such large rallies or declines in the past.

Interactive Brokers clients include small institutions and retail investors. However, they have “backed off memes” during the declines in stocks, Sosnick stated.

GameStop’s 2022 share price is about 40% lower than the 687% increase for 2021. However, GameStop shares have risen more than 2,463% since its peak in 2017. AMC shares have fallen 60.6% over the past year compared to a gain of 1,183% in 2021, and an increase of 3,624% at their peak last year.

Anthony Denier is the chief executive officer of Webull, a trading platform. He noted that investors in retail who have started trading within the past few years never faced a bearish market.

His words were: “Now we are in a bear trend where rallies seem more like a dead-cat jump’.” Retail investors feel the exhaustion of trying to find the bottom, which is not something that’s easy.

Surprisingly, the action of Thursday was quite different than in recent days. According to JPMorgan’s research, retail traders have sold shares worth $1.9B in the last 2 days. This is the largest single-day outflow since the beginning of the year, and it occurred late Wednesday night.

Cheng Peng (a JPMorgan derivatives and quantitative strategist) said that there was no significant directional bias in retail traders’ views of AMC and GameStop on Thursday.

Peng mentioned that “instead of the buying seems to have been driven by institutional investors”, citing data from public order flow.