Beyond Meat jumps amid spike in call activity
Shares of Beyond Meat are soaring on Wednesday amid heavy call activity and little news.
Over 200,000 call options have changed hands as of 11 a.m. ET, already above the 20-day average of 194,098 for a full session. Its put/call ratio of close to 0.1 is the lowest in months.
The three most traded options contracts are calls that expire this Friday with strike prices of $1 and $1.50, as well as calls that expire next Friday with a strike price of $1.
Those remain out-of-the-money call options: after its meme moment drove shares to $7.69 on October 22, the stock has given all that back and then some as the air came out of many speculative pockets of the market.
Because of how much call demand spiked during the boom times, today’s pickup registers as more of a blip on the chart:
Beyond Meat’s recent refinancing efforts, which were cited as a supposed fundamental catalyst for the explosion of retail interest, started when the stock was trading at $2.85.
Based on today’s activity, the dust hasn’t fully settled on this story, but so far: management has eliminated about $800 million in debt and all it got in exchange so far is a near 70% decline in its stock price and a longer runway to make processed peas into faux meat.
