Copyright Los Angeles Times
The rapid rally in shares of Beyond Meat Inc. has sent some short sellers scrambling to exit their positions to avoid further damage, while still others doubled down on their bets against the stock. Over four days, shares of the beleaguered plant-based protein producer from El Segundo surged more than 1,300% through Wednesday’s intraday peak. That’s pushed short sellers’ paper losses to more than $120 million from last week’s record low close, according to data from S3 Partners LLC. The rapid about-face from an all-time low to a 14-month high helped swing the tide to a more than $45 million paper loss year to date. Before the retail trader-driven rally, shorts had paper profits of nearly $80 million in 2025. Beyond is the latest name to be caught in the renewed casino-like trading mania sweeping across the equities market. Like the meme-stock frenzies of years past, shares of the vegetarian “meat” purveyor have been caught in the whiplash of retail traders’ short attention spans. Some of the short sellers’ losses have already started to unwind. The stock ended Wednesday down 1.1% after an intraday pop of 112%. Losses extended in after-hours trading, with shares falling as much as 20% to $2.86 as of 4:27 p.m. in New York. “You’re getting two-way action on the short side — short covering for people that are getting squeezed, but more short selling for people that find this an attractive entry point,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners LLC. Short interest as a percentage of float, or a measure of how many available shares have been borrowed and sold short by traders, has dipped in the last few sessions but is up by more than 5 million shares over the last 30 days. The action in Beyond Meat started Friday and ramped up on Monday when Business Insider reported that a trader named Demitri Semenikhin has been touting the stock on social media, similar to how Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, helped spur trading in GameStop Corp. during the Covid-19 pandemic. On Wednesday, the stock initially climbed higher after the company’s announcement that Walmart Inc. would expand the availability of its products to more than 2,000 stores. Beyond Meat’s meme-stock treatment over the last few days does remind Dusaniwsky of GameStop. “There’s definitely, definitely some short sellers that got squeezed out, but it’s much like GameStop,” he said. While the price spike flushed out some short sellers, others added to short positions as the price got so high, so fast, that a retreat seemed inevitable, he added.
