Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ:BBBY) was tipped for another day of feverish trading after Gamestop chairman Ryan Cohen filed to sell his entire stake in the US household wares retailer on Wednesday.
BBBY and GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) are both members of the so-called meme stock club, a group of US-listed companies where the share registers are dominated by institutional short sellers on the one hand and devoted retail investors organised through the portals such as Reddit-hosted wallstreetbets on the other.
The results of this battle can be huge swings in the share price and that happened earlier in the week with Bed Bath.
Shares shot up on Tuesday following news Cohen’s venture capital firm RC Ventures had taken out call or buy options at prices up to US$80 that would increase his stake to 11.8% only to slump again yesterday when he filed to sell his stake.
RC Ventures, BBBY’s second largest investor, said it intends to sell 9.45mln shares, including the options, through JP Morgan Securities.
Reuters reported that BBBY reached an agreement with RC Ventures in March and is currently working on refinancing plans.
Tuesday saw trading in shares reach their highest in at least five years, with more than US$73mln worth of the company's shares bought.
On Wednesday, Bed Bath & Beyond options were also actively traded single stock outstripping such as Apple and Tesla.
Since the end of July, shares in BBBY have risen by around 350% having previously shed around 80% of their value over the past eleven months.
Other meme stocks including GameStop, cinema owner AMC Entertainment and more recently Beyond Meat have also seen big swings recently with rises in their value of at least 50% since June.
Shares in Bed Bath and Beyond were down 18% at US$19 shortly before the US market opened.