Bed Bath & Beyond stock skyrockets amid latest meme trader frenzy

Yahoo Finance Live examines the surge in Bed Bath & Beyond stock as meme investors and the Wall Street Bets community rally behind the retail meme stock.

Video transcript

- My play is BBBY, Bed Bath and Beyond, because the memers are back and folks, they are in control because at one point, Bed Bath and Beyond had surged more than 63% on the day. It's still up more than 35%. On what? On largely nothing, but we can tell you this it's been the most searched name on Reddit's wallstreetbets chat board and that ultimately is what drove these numbers and is driving all the action for the meme stocks. Users-- one claim to have turned 45 grand into 450 grand today.

These are called the Apes. If you don't know them, check them out on Reddit. 46% of the total shares of BBBY are shorted and on and on goes this cycle. They've been in a lot of trouble outside of the meme stock-- burning through capital, overspending, their CEO Mark Tritton is out, they're searching for a new CEO. Many are pressuring them to spin off Bye Bye Baby, the one successful aspect of it. They're trying to rework brands but ultimately, what is driving the day here are the memers. And you're seeing the same thing with GameStop and you're seeing the same thing with AMC, though not nearly as high. Today they're both up between 6 and 7%.

And we talk with CEOs all the time here, Rochelle, and you talk-- like Brian Chesky, for example, Airbnb always says, look I can't run my company according to the rise and fall of the shares. But it is interesting if you're a CEO of these companies what do you do with the meme traders? What do you do with the Apes? Because Adam Aron from AMC really embraces them and he enjoys this ride. He says he's going to coin an NFT I own ape NFT embracing them. It is a really difficult scenario if you're trying to run one of these companies.

- I think if you're compounding meme stocks with NFTs-- you want to talk about house of cards potentially all falling apart, that's certainly not where I would want to put the safest bets. But it just seems as if every once in a while, we see these meme rallies pop up and as you mentioned, no rhyme or reason. So we're going to have to keep an eye on Bed Bath and Beyond. Obviously, as you mentioned they've been having a lot of trouble with their business, they were one of the few companies that didn't have enough inventory when others had too much. So there does seem to be this mismatch between what they're trying to give the consumer and what the consumer actually wants.

- And it's also important just to point out for our viewers out there that you need to be ready to lose this money if you're going to play with one of these meme stocks. Because just taking a look at the action today there's no real catalyst for any of these names moving to the upside within the meme trade. Look at Bed Bath and Beyond, up 36% like Dave was saying, was up significantly more at the start of the trading session. GameStop and AMC both halted because of activity in their space. So these names are trending on wallstreetbets and some of the other favorite websites here of retail traders but if you put money to work in some of these names you've got to be ready to lose it just as quickly.