Heavily shorted small stocks that are starting to rip this week
Meme stock mania is back somewhat, and retail traders are targeting a new group of shares. Speculation resurfaced and exploded on Wall Street this week as day traders on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum touted “you-only-live-once” risky trades and piled into beaten-down stocks. It’s no longer GameStop or AMC that retail traders are flocking to these days. They rotated from OpenDoor to Kohl’s on Tuesday, and to wearable camera firm GoPro and doughnut maker Krispy Kreme on Wednesday. Wall Street strategists say meme stocks’ resurgence is a sign of euphoria as the broader market rallied back to record highs on the back of better-than-feared tariff headlines. The S & P 500 closed at another record high Tuesday, bringing its 2025 gains to more than 7%. “It does send a message about broader market risk,” Steve Sosnick, Interactive Brokers chief strategist, said on CNBC Tuesday. “It’s kind of like this very distant red flag suggesting that you know what, maybe the market is getting a little frothy here.” Many of these targets share characteristics such as elevated levels of short interest and low stock price. CNBC ran a screen of U.S. stocks to find the next meme names using the following criteria: Short interest as percentage of float above 30% Market cap between $50 million and $2 billion Share price below $20 The purpose of the screen is to find where the speculative crowd could be targeting next. Beware investing in these stocks as most of these speculative runs could be short-lived. The data is from FactSet. Some of the names on the list are already ripping higher Thursday. Beyond Meat surged more than 10% at one point Wednesday on no news, while 1-800-Flowers.com skyrocketed nearly 20% before ending the day 4.4% higher. Kohl’s is also on the list.
