Why is Getaround, GETR, a right dog of a Spac, up 80% over the day?

Getaround (NYSE: GETR) stock has not had a happy introduction to the public markets. The IPO was back in December last year and as a result of the combination with the Spac company (trading, as always, at around the $10 mark) the stock sank, near immediately, to just above a $dollar and has sunk more gradually since then to perhaps 25 cents. This is not perhaps what investors would have wanted. The base problem was that many of those with shares in the Spac declined to remain in the combination and, as they can do, demanded their cash back. 

Not a good little Spac therefore. But this past couple of days the stock has jumped. As we can see:

Getaround stock price from NASDAQ

Then the most recent trades, postmarket:

Aftermarket trades in Getaround from NASDAQ

The terrible performance since the IPO, well, that can partly - probably mostly - be put down to the manner in which so little capital was raised as people withdrew their capital from the merger.

What needs explaining is why the jump right now. And that's difficult because there's no obvious reason available. The latest Edgar filings are that the company will be late filing its accounts. The reason given is that the merger itself means that the audit will be difficult. Which, well, yes - but it's not as if the combination is an unknown or non-forecast event. A decent accounting system would be able to cope with that - therefore we might assume the absence of a decent accounting system. That's never a good sign.

There's a certain amusement in that they've already received an NYSE notice for being below the minimum bid price - that usually takes rather longer than just a few months even for the worst performing equity. Other than that there's no particular news. Oh, except they already started cutting staffing levels back in February - again, possibly a result of raising too little capital in that Spac merger.

So, why the share price leap? In the absence of any other explanation we'd suggest that it's just one of those things. Microcap share prices can be highly volatile - people just decide to pile in and the price therefore moves. This would suggest that the price will drift back again as people realise it's merely a momentum trade. 

Note that we don't know this, we're assuming it in the absence of that other, better, explanation.