Kohl's Shares Shoot Up Over 105% as Meme Stock Dynamics Overwhelm Retail Issues
Shares of Kohl's shot up as much as 105 percent to $21.39 shortly after the opening bell on Tuesday — enough that trading in the stock was briefly halted to cool the market down.
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The stock settled at an increase of 37.6 percent to $14.34, leaving the company with a market capitalization of $1.6 billion.
There was no corporate news driving the big run-up, but a confluence of market dynamics.
Sixty-six percent of the stock's float was sold short as of the end of June, according to Yahoo Finance. That has two-thirds of the retailer's investors betting the stock will fall.
But if the stock rises, short sellers will eventually have to take the loss and those losses grow as the stock goes higher, creating a rush for the exit as the short sellers are squeezed.
Short squeezes can happen when a troubled company bounces back, catching doubters unawares. But Kohl's is also caught up in the world of meme trading, where investors on sites like Reddit rally around a name and sway the broader market.
Shares of videogame retailer Game Stop famously rallied in 2021 as a grassroots campaign sought to squeeze out the shorts on the stock.
For the company in question, meme stock bumps and short squeezes can be distracting, but have limited direct impact on operations.
However, the episode does highlight the tough spot Kohl's is in as meme investors tend to go after weaker stocks where they can move the market.
And Kohl's has been in something of a perpetual turnaround.
Former chief executive officer Michelle Gass was dogged by activist investors before she left to take charge at Levi Strauss & Co. Tom Kingsbury stepped in for two years as CEO only to see his efforts fall flat. The next great hope, CEO Ashley Buchanan, was fired after three months in April, after engaging in vendor transactions with a romantic interest under unusual terms.
Sales fell 4.1 percent in the first quarter and the company projected the top line would fall by 5 percent to 7 percent this year.
Now Kohl's is looking to turn that trend around, find a permanent CEO and navigate tariffs and cautious consumers — all while ignoring a new kind of chaos in the stock market.
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