• Quantum computing, AI and bitcoin plays screen as some of the most speculative companies

Hope you got all the presents you wanted during the festive season.

If not, there are always lottery stocks. That is, highly speculative stocks that can go either boom or bust.

But how do you find these companies? A research paper from authors including Alok Kumar of the University of Miami notes that, if all market participants were passive investors, the ratio of dollar volume to market capitalization would be equal for all stocks. So to find the most speculative stocks, look for the stocks with the highest turnover ratios.

MarketWatch, as we've done from time to time, screened New York Stock Exchange- and Nasdaq-listed stocks, with market caps of at least $500 million, to find such companies.

Here's the list:

The companies the screen identifies make intuitive sense: it's a list filled with quantum computing, AI and bitcoin plays. Most aren't profitable, though Asian video provider iQIYI and bitcoin miner MARA Holdings have made money this year.

For what it's worth, homebuilder NVR $(NVR)$ and travel provider Booking Holdings (BKNG) screen as the least speculative stocks using this methodology, which makes sense given that each share carries a four-digit cost, making them ill-suited to day trading.

The markets

U.S. stock index futures were lower early Friday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM00) down 120 points, or 0.27%, to 43,582, while S&P 500 (ES00) futures fell 19.5 points, or 0.32%, to 6,075, and Nasdaq 100 futures (NQ00) fell 79 points, or 0.36%, to 21,929.

The chart