Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. went up 60% on Tuesday, when news came out about activist investor Ryan Cohen’s latest bet on the home goods store.
Trading was often stopped because the stock was so volatile. During the day, it went up as much as 78.8%, reaching $28.60.
Cohen’s investment company, RC Ventures, is the business’s second-largest shareholder and recently added more independent directors to its board. RC Ventures bought call options on 1.67 million shares with an expiration date of January 2023 and a strike price between $60 and $80.
An option gives you the right to buy or sell a security at a certain price and on a certain date. When you buy a call option, you are betting that the price of the underlying asset will go up.
“When his name, Cohen, comes up, people start to talk about him. So, Bed Bath and Beyond is getting a lot of attention on social media, and this attention is spreading to other stocks “One of the traders at Triple D Trading, Dennis Dick, said.
On Fidelity’s trading site, shares of the home furnishings company had the most activity, which shows that small investors were interested.
At 11:47 a.m. ET, about 189 million shares had been traded, which is more than six times the 30-day moving average volume for the company.
Ortex, an analytics company, says that short positions covering 50.7% of Bed Bath & Beyond’s public free float have led to a “short squeeze” signal.
So far this month, the stock has gone up by 440%. This is similar to how shares of GameStop and AMC Entertainment went up early in the year, which hurt hedge funds that had bet against the company because of the huge gains.
Other heavily shorted companies, like Blue Apron, which delivers meal kits, FuboTV, which streams sports TV, GameStop, and Weber Inc., which makes barbecue grills, grew by 8% to 53%.
Tuesday, the stock price of Bed Bath & Beyond went down after B. Riley downgraded it to “sell,” saying that the shares were “overvalued.”
