Home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond's wild ride as a meme stock darling appears to be coming to an end after an up and down week. Cheddar News takes a deeper look at the trading volatility, the financials, and where it goes from here after r/wallstreetbets favorite exec, Ryan Cohen, sold off his stake in the chain.

Closing Bell

Volatile Week for Bed Bath & Beyond Comes to a Close

and Chloe. It's now time for our stock of the week. Today we're looking at bed bath and beyond, which has had a volatile week to say the least. Take a look at shares of ticker symbol B B B Y over the past five sessions. It was driven higher earlier this week by meme stock traders who followed activist investor Ryan Cohen's lead in investing in the company. It was at the top of its mentions to rising some 70% on Tuesday before leveling off a bit, ending the day of 29% as a result of a massive short squeeze, zooming out to a one month chart. The stock is actually up significantly, but still, this has nothing to do with the actual financials of the company, which analysts say are not good. Its physical stores are struggling, mightily tanking sales and a dismal balance sheet are putting pressure on the chain. It now has to offer huge sales to get rid of excess inventory. Yesterday, we were joined by Melissa Gonzalez, founder of the Lioness Group, who actually warned about investing in companies without looking at the financials. Here's what she had to say. It depends on what's causing the short, uh, to happen. So it's, it's, the stock is heavily shortened because there are true performance issues. Then there's validation to that. Um, and so it's, it's a rally that's happening against that, but it's, it's kind of a dangerous one because at some point it could fall out of the bottom. Um, you know, we kind of saw that correction happened with Gamestop where there was definitely a lot of momentum into it. It really drove the stock up, but at the end of the day, the fundamentals are going to matter. It becomes too irrational at some point where the valuation at what this stock is trading at in comparison to comps that have better fundamentals, better margins, better price to earnings ratios. Um that's, you know, that's going to cause a correction and we're seeing the consequences of that. Today, Bed Bath and Beyond is plummeting back to Earth after Ryan Cohen sold off his holdings. It's down here just over almost 42% they're down $7.74 a share with just a few minutes left in treating an sec filing released thursday showing Cohen's RC Ventures sold its nearly 10% stake coming away with an estimated profit of up to $60 million. The Gamestop Chairman did not reveal a reason for dumping the stock, but most analysts covering Bed Bath and beyond have a sell rating on the stock with one revealing an 80% downside risk for the price. And obviously that makes a lot of sense here, Hannah, you know, it was just at the end of june here that Bed Bath and beyond. Did oust its turnaround Ceo, Mark Triton after seeing, you know, same store sales crash about 27%. So obviously like we've been saying with these meme stocks, the stock price, not necessarily reflecting the high The actual company and they've really used a lot of tactics here, especially because of the meme stocks on the popularity that they were seeing bed bath and beyond in particular. They made a push in 2021 and 2022 stocking stores with private labels and no one had really heard of hoping it would kind of attract a new niche and new demographic. It didn't, but do you remember bed bath and beyond. They used to do really well for kids going back to school, college kids going back to school that was really a popular retailer for just that. But now I think with online shopping and just there's so much competition out there and of course lower prices than a lot of people just aren't walking into the brick and mortar stores of bed bath and beyond. Speaking of college Hannah was one college student really, you know cash in at the right time jake Freeman making a profit of $110 million just 24 hours before this news from Cohen so super interesting. But you know I want to mention that this isn't your average university kid, he you know got $25 million from family and friends, he interned at a vis excuse me VC firm and you know he is you know obviously not your average university student here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean my family has not given me $25 million