Krispy Kreme, GoPro and Beyond Meat shares soar in revival of meme stock craze
Krispy Kreme, the North Carolina-based chain with about 350 shops, soared as much as 25% on Wednesday.
GoPro, famous for its miniature action cameras, jumped 49% while Beyond Meat rose 11%.
3 Krispy Kreme Cake Batter donuts on display in a Times Square shop.
Stephen Yang
Shares in Opendoor Technologies, an online platform that buys and sells real estate, plummeted 18% after a wild week in trading – rising more than 300% over the past week.
Kohl's shares also fell 13% after gaining about 40% at the start of this week.
Social media buzz around the stocks and short squeezes spurred the rally, despite little change in these companies' business fundamentals, according to Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.
'Krispy Kreme seems to be the latest addition to the frenzy,' Hathorn said in a note.
'Like the others, there was no significant news to justify the rally, just sheer retail momentum.'
It's an apparent comeback for meme stocks, reminiscent of the GameStop chaos four years ago that famously forced Gabe Plotkin to shut down his hedge fund Melvin Capital Management.
3 Shares in Krispy Kreme soared Wednesday.
AP
Similar to that initial GameStop craze, this latest bout of meme stocks are soaring alongside broader market optimism. The S&P 500 has notched another all-time high and Bitcoin has doubled in less than a year.
Call volume on Krispy Kreme skyrocketed Tuesday, hitting a record of over 100,000 contracts trading – about 71 times the average daily volume over the past four years, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
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GoPro saw its highest call volume since 2021 with over 56,000 contracts, according to Bloomberg.
Traders on the WallStreetBets page on Reddit, known for orchestrating meme stock movements, suggested several companies, including Krispy Kreme.
The revival started last week, as shares in Opendoor surged massively – though Eric Jackson, founder and president of EMJ Capital, argued that Opendoor is not a true meme stock.
3 A small GoPro action camera.
Gabe Shakour – stock.adobe.com
'I got into it because this is a real business. It's got a real platform that it's built and it's definitely fallen on hard times, that's why the stock is down like 99% or whatever it is from its all-time highs, but I just think the market got overly pessimistic about this,' Jackson told Bloomberg Podcasts on Tuesday.
Kohl's, meanwhile, had more than doubled at one point on Tuesday.
Other stocks with relatively high short interest, like The Campbell's Co., Aehr Test Systems, Polaris and Wendy's, also attracted buyers this week.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
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Is Investing in "The DORKs" a Good Idea Right Now?
Key Points The DORK stocks -- Krispy Kreme, Opendoor Technologies, Rocket Companies, and Kohl's -- are getting attention. Each of these companies is losing money, but trading volume is spiking. 10 stocks we like better than Krispy Kreme › There's a new investing trend out there. Well, perhaps "newish" is the best way to put it, because to my eyes this is just a recycling of the meme stock fad that swept through the markets four years ago. That didn't end well for a lot of people, and I have similar expectations for this one. The stocks feeding into this trend are known as DORK stocks -- an acronym for the stock tickers of Krispy Kreme (NASDAQ: DNUT), Opendoor Technologies (NASDAQ: OPEN), Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT), and Kohl's (NYSE: KSS). Just as in the meme stock boom of old, some of these companies are seeing wild changes in price and valuation for no good reason. But the trading volume is up as investors' interest is piqued. If the DORK stock name isn't enough to scare you off, then perhaps a closer look at the companies would do it. However -- and I can't stress this enough -- investing in DORK stocks seems to be a really bad idea. If you're itching to try it, here's what you should know. Hype isn't a realistic strategy First, let's take a look at the companies. Krispy Kreme makes great doughnuts, but I'm not willing to say it's a good investment today. Opendoor, which operates a digital platform that allows people to sell their houses, is linked closely to Rocket Companies, which allows people to apply for mortgages and manage their money. Kohl's is a struggling big-box clothing retailer. Krispy Kreme saw first-quarter revenue drop by 15% from a year ago, and posted a loss of $33.4 million and an earnings per share loss of $0.20. Opendoor's Q1 revenue dropped by 2%, to $1.2 billion, and the company posted a net loss of $85 million. Rocket saw its Q1 revenue drop 25% from a year ago to $1.03 billion, and posted a loss of $212 million. And Kohl's saw net sales for the first quarter drop 4.1% to $3 billion. Like other DORK names, Kohl's was in the red for the quarter, posting a loss of $15 million. So, the DORK stocks, at least today, are officially losers. But there are a few meme-type catalysts that are pushing them into the public eye, such as short interest. Rocket and Kohl's both have more than half of their outstanding shares shorted, while Opendoor has more than 30%. All of those numbers are incredibly high. When investors short a stock, they're betting that the price will go down, so there's a lot of money out there betting that these names will drop. Retail investors can lap up additional shares in hope that hedge funds that are betting against a stock will find themselves squeezed and have to sell at a higher price -- similar to the infamous short squeeze of GameStop in 2021. We're back to 2021 I know there are lots of retail investors who enjoyed the 2021 meme stock fad that included names like GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and BlackBerry. I wasn't one of them. In fact, I wrote pretty stridently against investing in meme stocks, because I see it as a sure way of losing money over the long term. When you're trading on pure momentum without a solid underlying business, you're just asking to lose your money. Some of the DORK stocks are already showing major volatility. Kohl's, which normally has a trading volume of 13 million shares, saw 209 million shares traded on July 22. The stock price jumped 120% over a two-day period, but has since lost nearly all those gains. Opendoor became hot when a hedge fund manager put a price target of $82 on the stock, which had been struggling to remain at more than $1 and avoid potentially being delisted from the Nasdaq. Now Opendoor is up 380% in the last month (although at this writing, it still trades for less than $2.50 per share). The stock saw massive trading volume of 1.8 billion shares on July 21 and 1.07 billion shares on July 23. (Its average volume is only 164.8 million shares.) Krispy Kreme's shares haven't been as volatile (probably because the short interest is comparatively low). But it still had more than 152 million shares trade hands on July 23, compared to its average trading day of 8.2 million. Rocket Companies also saw action July 22 and July 23 as more than 51 million shares changed hands each day, versus the company's average trading volume of 15.4 million shares. But the reality is that you can't time the market, and many more people lose money than win trades with meme stocks. Because short-term stock prices are a product of supply and demand, you can't predict how a stock price will move -- and if you guess wrong, you could sustain some big losses. How to invest My advice is to hold back. There are hundreds of better choices than a meme stock, and you should instead be looking for names with good fundamentals, decent profit, and a sustainable business model. But if you are determined to invest in DORK stocks, hedge your bets. Invest responsibly, with only a small part of your portfolio that you are willing to lose. You never want to overplay your hand, particularly with volatile investments -- and those include DORK stocks. Should you buy stock in Krispy Kreme right now? Before you buy stock in Krispy Kreme, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Krispy Kreme wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,063,471!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,041% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 183% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025 Patrick Sanders has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends BlackBerry and Rocket Companies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Is Investing in "The DORKs" a Good Idea Right Now? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
