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The young investors who are part of this new wave prefer to conduct research on Reddit, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter, and speculate on stocks they expect to rise, without any reference to fundamentals.

The result is befuddled valuations across the market where online forums and social trading determine valuations far more than estimates of future cash flows.

The meme-stock asset class’ new frontrunner is South Australian minerals explorer turned deep-tech quantum computing hopeful Archer Materials. It climbed 21 per cent on Monday to a record $2.88 on a valuation of $655 million.

The chairman’s salary from July 1, 2020, of $370,000 accounted for about 14 per cent of the company’s total annual cash expenses. The chairman and chief executive’s salary of $251,850 combined equalled 24 per cent of total expenditure over the year.

In other words, the tech company boasting a $655 million market value has only a handful of staff, no product, and spent just $2.6 million in operating expenses last year.

Frenetic rally

Its shares are up more than five-fold from 51¢ in August 2020 and up 26-fold from 11¢ in August 2019. The frenetic rally follows a string of positive announcements around the quantum computing chip’s development – there have been three announcements since August 10 reporting that the technology has been granted patents in South Korea, China, and the US.

One of just three directors, Alice McCleary resigned on July 29 and was listed on June 17 as owning 3.87 million shares after acquiring an additional 1.17 million via options.