What happened
Vinco Ventures (BBIG) had another wild day of trading on Wednesday. Shares of the technology-focused acquisitions company swung between a loss of 10% to gains of as much as 46%, before ending the day up 15.6%.
So what
A joint venture between Vinco Ventures and Zash Global Media and Entertainment acquired short-form video platform Lomotif in July. Lomotif has more than 225 million app installations and over 31 million monthly active users worldwide. Notably, it's expanding into India, a potentially massive market for social media where rival TikTok is banned.
Shares of Vinco Ventures are up sharply this year. Image source: Getty Images.
Additionally, Vinco Ventures launched a platform for music streaming and non-fungible tokens in August. Its subsidiary, Emmersive Entertainment, released a new album from rapper Tory Lanez in what it calls an E-NFT format that offers buyers some intriguing features.
In a press release, Lanez said: "I couldn't be more excited to have a platform from Emmersive Entertainment that allows my fans and collectors alike to not only hear my music, but become entrepreneurs as well if they choose to, by having the ability to resell and set their own price on the open market. This allows for a completely different kind of fan engagement, which is the next iteration of the music industry, an absolute paradigm shift."
Now what
Yet while these developments are interesting, other factors have helped to drive Vinco Ventures' stock up a staggering 558% so far this year. Nearly all these gains have come since late August, when Vinco became a popular stock among investors on social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter (NYSE: TWTR).
In recent days, traders have ramped up their bets by buying shares and call options, in hopes that the rally will continue. But as today's trading showed, Vinco Ventures is a volatile stock. The violent rally in its stock price could quickly reverse, if traders decide to move on to the next hot stock. That makes buying its shares today a risky endeavor.