PepsiCo, SoFi and Uranium Energy join Robinhood's Trending list near 52-week lows; Seagate the outlier

Fourteen stocks entered Robinhood's Trending list between Monday afternoon and early Tuesday, and what retail investors are buying right now looks less like a chase and more like a hunt through the lows. Eight of the 14 closed Monday lower than they were a month earlier, and six finished within 10% of their 52-week low. PepsiCo set its 52-week low on Monday itself.

The new arrivals were Seagate, SoFi, Lucid, AppLovin, Plug Power, MP Materials, Vistra, PepsiCo, Reddit, Applied Materials, Pfizer, Uranium Energy, Navitas and Summit Therapeutics. They replaced a group that included Archer Aviation, BigBear.ai, Chipotle, Roblox, DoorDash and Palo Alto Networks. Nothing moved on the separate "100 most popular" list, which is still led by Nvidia, Apple and Tesla.

The new names, against the numbers

One-month change is the Aug. 28 close to the Sept. 28 close. P/E and 52-week lows as of Monday's session. "Negative" means the company lost money over the trailing twelve months.

Seagate is the one that does not fit

Only three of the 14 newcomers rose more than 5% over the month: Seagate, Summit Therapeutics and Applied Materials. Seagate closed Monday at $921.51, up 11.1% on the month and 4.4 times its 52-week low of $209, set on Oct. 22 last year. At a market value of about $210 billion it trades at 66 times trailing earnings. It also is not at its peak: the 52-week high was $1,145 on June 18, so the stock sits about 20% below it even after the run. On Tuesday it was down 1.4% at midday.

The names near the floor

The rest of the list tells a different story. PepsiCo closed Monday at $128.50 after touching $126.72, its lowest level in a year. Last week Bloomberg reported that the company plans to raise some chip and soda prices after earlier cuts failed to move volume, which we covered with the numbers from its own filing. At 16.9 times earnings it is the cheapest of the profitable newcomers on that measure, and the only one of the 14 within 2% of its low.

Uranium Energy is down 25.7% in a month and ended Monday 3.4% above its 52-week low. It is also scheduled to report results today, and options were pricing a move of about 8.4% against an average of 9.9% on its last four reports, as we detailed this morning. SoFi, at 35 times earnings, is 7.1% above its low and less than half its 52-week high of $32.73.

We searched the day's news feeds for company-specific news behind SoFi, Lucid, MP Materials, Reddit, AppLovin and Vistra appearing on the list and did not find any.

Already trending, and the loudest

Boeing was on the list before this refresh, and Monday was a heavy session for it. Volume was 18.1 million shares, about 2.5 times its 30-day average, as the stock fell from a $192.50 open to a $184.39 close. CNBC reported that FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Monday the agency's approval of the 737 Max 10 would be delayed while it assesses a software issue. Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told CNBC on Tuesday he was "not overly concerned." Boeing was up 2.1% at $188.20 at midday. Among the newcomers, Applied Materials has five congressional trades on file, four purchases and one sale by House members between June 17 and Aug. 6, each disclosed in the $1,001 to $15,000 range, according to TipRanks. Disclosures can arrive up to 45 days after a trade, so they describe the summer, not this week. The full record is on our congressional trades tracker.

Carnival, also already on the list, reported record third-quarter results today; our story has the fuel math. Company filings for the names above are on SEC EDGAR for Seagate and PepsiCo.

Sources: list, volume and fundamentals data via Robinhood; prices via Nasdaq; congressional trades via TipRanks (STOCK Act disclosures, reported up to 45 days after the trade); filings via SEC EDGAR; CNBC. Some data may be delayed. This is market information, not investment advice.