(Bloomberg) Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s spectacular rally is drawing in a record hoard of cash from retail investors, who are pumping their bets on popular social media websites and trader chatrooms.
Retail traders bought an all-time high of $73.2 million of the stock on Tuesday, bringing their total net purchases in three weeks to $171.4 million, according to data compiled by Vanda Research. What’s more, the most actively traded derivative for the stock is betting on it to soar another 50% to $45 by the end of the week, Bloomberg data show.
The shares powered higher by as much as 45% on Wednesday to briefly touch $30, with 79 million shares changing hands in the first 30 minutes of the session — more than 11-times the average of the past month. The stock’s 492% surge from a late-July low has come with a record 1.14 billion shares traded, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The retail crowd has also added to bets on some of their other favorite meme stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and GameStop Corp., in recent sessions. However, net purchases of the original meme stocks pale in comparison to the mania seen in January 2021.
Fidelity customers snapped up Bed Bath & Beyond in Wednesday’s session with the stock being the most purchased asset on its platform as of 9:51 a.m. in New York. Buy orders for the retailer doubled those to sell, and the net purchases were more than five-times the size for Tesla Inc., the next most-bought stock.
That demand mirrors the optimism expressed on day trader chatroom StockTwits where Bed Bath & Beyond has the number one trending ticker and on Reddit’s WallStreetBets where it continued to be the most discussed company.
