Beyond Meat shares have soared nearly 1,300% in less than a week, as meme stock traders pile into the struggling plant-based meat producer, fuelling one of Wall Street’s most dramatic retail-driven rallies of the year.
Speculative investors, rallying on social media platforms, have turned Beyond Meat into the most traded stock in the US, eclipsing even Tesla and Nvidia in pre-market volumes on Wednesday.
Despite its relatively modest $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) market capitalisation, trading activity in Beyond Meat surpassed both Tesla ($1.4 trillion) and Nvidia ($4.4 trillion) before markets opened.
At the time of writing, the company’s stock was up almost 100% on the day, as retail traders continue to target heavily shorted or undervalued names in a renewed meme stock surge reminiscent of the GameStop and AMC rallies of 2021.
The extraordinary rebound comes despite Beyond Meat’s ongoing profitability challenges and declining demand for plant-based alternatives — underscoring the speculative fervour driving the latest phase of retail investor mania.
The dramatic rally has made Beyond Meat one of the most talked-about names on social media trading forums, with retail investors piling in to capitalise on the sudden momentum.
Reflecting its meteoric rise, the company’s shares have now been added to a meme-stock exchange-traded fund (ETF) — a fund designed to track stocks popular among retail investors and social media-driven trading communities.
The surge mirrors past meme stock manias seen with GameStop and AMC Entertainment, where coordinated online enthusiasm and short squeezes sent shares to dizzying highs, often far beyond their underlying fundamentals.
Analysts warn, however, that volatility remains extreme, and valuations are divorced from company performance, leaving latecomers exposed if the rally unwinds as quickly as it began.
