The vegan food brand Beyond Meat has revived the phenomenon of ‘meme stocks’ on Wall Street, in which small investors coordinate online to speculate, with a spectacular rise in about four days, which already seems to deflate.
Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based hamburger substitutes, has been in financial trouble for several years, which has made it a target for ‘short-sellers’, speculators who bet on a stock’s fall in the stock market and make money when it actually goes down.
However, the tables turned for the company when last week it announced an operation in which it had exchanged part of its debt for shares, which dragged its value to 52 cents per share, its worst price, in contrast to a record of $234 that it registered in July 2019.
At half a dollar per share, last Thursday Beyond Meat became a ‘penny stock’ that caught the attention of users on internet forums such as Reddit and YouTube channels, who decided to buy en masse, crushing the bearish bets of short sellers.
On Friday, Beyond Meat rose 24% and the upward trend continued this Monday, when its shares were included in an index fund (ETF) focused on ‘meme stocks’, Roundhill Meme Stock ETF, which caused the stock market to soar 127%.
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On Tuesday, the brand announced that it was going to expand its offer of some products in the American supermarket chain Walmart and its shares closed with another strong rise, 146%, in their best trading day.
Today, in a frenetic session, Beyond Meat shares were among the most traded on the market, soaring another 110% before plummeting to close down 1.1% at $3.58.
In electronic trading after the Wall Street close, Beyond Meat was still down 24%.
Beyond Meat’s moves in recent days are reminiscent of the ‘meme stock’ phenomenon that occurred in 2021, when users of the Wallstreetbets forum on Reddit led a kind of revolution against large bearish funds betting on struggling firms like GameStop.
With information from EFE.
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