Those who bet on the most obvious short in the history of mankind got the heads handed to them.
Every stock-market IPO cycle has this minute. And afterwards is all downhill. And I wish I could be the guy who’d correctly pinpoint the very moment when peak-insanity in IPO stocks occurs, down not only to the day, but the very minute, and then bet on it correctly. So maybe I won’t be that guy, given that I’ve been on record for years as to why I’m not shorting anything anymore in this crazy market. But I have a candidate for this pinpoint minute of peak-insanity: Today at 9:59 a.m. Eastern Time.
This was the minute that the shares of Beyond Meat [BYND] hit for a moment $186.43, giving this company a market capitalization of about $11 billion, billion with a B. This is not some monolithic monopolistic iconic corporation. It’s a small maker of fake-meat hamburgers and hotdogs with just $40 million in sales and $6.6 million in losses last quarter after 10 years in business – just small-company stuff. And it’s competing with a gaggle of other fake-meat hamburger makers.
The IPO price was $25, set on May 27, giving it a valuation of $1.5 billion, which was already nuts for a company of this minuscule size. The next day, the first trade took place just after noon, at $46, whereupon the price jumped, and shares closed at $65.75, giving it a market cap of nearly $4 billion. And it went from there. Friday, shares surged another 39%. Today until 9:59 a.m., shares surged another 34%.
From the IPO price to today at 9:59 a.m., in less than two weeks, shares soared by 645%. What is nuts is how much the value of this little-bitty company surged from an already nutty IPO valuation.
Beyond Meat is not a biotech company that has gotten FDA approval to sell its cure for cancer that it can flog for $10,000 per daily dose. This is just a fake-meat hamburger and hotdog maker with plenty of competition.
This is not to say there is no market for fake-meat hamburgers and hotdogs. History has proven time and again that, when bombarded with enough hype, marketing, and advertising, we will buy and eat anything.
And just for reference, this is what this burger is made of, instead of “beef,” according to Beyond Meat’s website:
Water, Pea Protein Isolate*, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Contains 2% or less of the following: Cellulose from Bamboo, Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Natural Flavor, Maltodextrin, Yeast Extract, Salt, Sunflower Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Dried Yeast, Gum Arabic, Citrus Extract (to protect quality), Ascorbic Acid (to maintain color), Beet Juice Extract (for color), Acetic Acid, Succinic Acid, Modified Food Starch, Annatto (for color).
As you can see from the ingredients, of the 270 calories in this industrial product, 170 are from fat. But fresh peas have practically no fat and are absolutely delicious.
It’s nice to have a choice at the grocery store. And it’s good to get consumers to spend money. That keeps the economy rolling.
And the entire IPO razzmatazz has put this company on the map. Everyone is talking about it. The IPO and the surge of the shares afterwards was free propaganda. It’s all over the media. People who’d never heard of this small outfit before are now citing the CEO by name in locker rooms (happened to me). And it’s not even in a high-growth industry, but industrialized food, an industry that has near-zero growth rates.
So now we have a company that at 9:59 a.m. today was worth $11 billion.
From the first day of trading, it was the most obvious short in the history of mankind. It was so obvious that everyone shorted it. Short interest has been huge. And these shorts – including big guns like Citron Research’s Andrew Left – have gotten their heads handed to them.
Part of the insane 39% surge on Friday and the 34% surge this morning was short-seller panic, where they tried to close their short positions by buying the shares, and having to chase the share higher and higher as they skyrocketed, and each time a short seller desperately bid up the shares to close out the short position, it drove those shares even higher.
Volume today was huge, for a company this small. There are only about 60 million shares outstanding. On Friday, 23.9 million shares were traded. Of these trades, short volume accounted for 6 million shares, or 25% of total volume. Today, 24.7 million shares were traded.
BYND shorts lost $398 million just through Friday, according to research S3 Partners cited by CNBC. And they lost another bundle today. It was a monstrous short-covering panic. The costliest bet is the most obvious short in the history of mankind.
From 9:59 a.m. this morning through the close, shares dropped nearly 10% to close at $168.10. So that was a relief for short-sellers. But after the 34% jump this morning, shares still ended the day up 21%.
It is this kind of head-scratcher that forms the ideal candidate for pinpointing the very minute of peak-insanity. This is the craziest IPO in at least a decade. But this is not to say that something even crazier won’t come along, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon for a while to drive it up into the stratosphere before it comes unwound, with the usual suspects as bag-holders. But this generally doesn’t happen until after enough shorts have been taken out the back and shot just before that peak-insanity minute.
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This is madness…
…THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAA
Yes, with all these money printed by stupid FED
Like being addicted to drugs. More, more, more, more. All logic and rationale is gone, just looking for that one bigger, stronger hit, no matter what it is or how poisonous it is, ever increasing euphoria, until the last hit.
This is the financial version.
Peak stupidity.
Go veganism! Hype! Hype! Hype!
(Don’t know the CEO’s name though.)
(- and don’t really care about one company.)
I can come up with a nice conspiracy theory about this … in our lifetimes the effects of global warming are going to become very evident.
It might be a case of the vegans essentially saying, “Follow me, if you want to eat”.
It’s going to get very hard to raise cows. But food tastes tend to be very fixed. The only reason I love tons of different kinds of fish and seafood in general, and in general follow a sort of Asian diet is, I grew up in Hawaii where this was the normal diet.
So you’re not going to get Americans to give up their burgers. But if they can get that same taste/feel from veggies, they might go for it. I remember food truck hamburgers at my college having a fair amount of soy in them, and I often had the vegetarian chili at the health food store lunch counter because it was cheaper than the chili with actual beef in it – it had TVP, Textured Vegetable Protein, in it instead.
Two things:
In a Canadian grocery chain, two 4 oz burgers sell … for 8 dollars. That’s 16 dollars a pound for fake hamburger. It ain’t cheaper any more.
The other thing is that vegetarianism causes people to generate lots of gas, so if it were adopted on a large scale, it would certainly negate all the benefits of somehow reducing the effect of cow farts and the planet would still die in 12 years due to global warming (if AOC is right about the 12 years).
Sadly, I believe AOC may be right about the 12 years. Go on YouTube and look up “Guy McPherson” I can’t find any faults in his math.
I eat a ton of veggies these days and can’t remember the last time I’ve had a good fart. Because I’ve decided to go low-carb (health) and only eat cold-blooded creatures (Buddhism) I just don’t pass the gas like I used to.
I think my main “beef” with Beyond Meat burgers is, they sound like they’re really, really, processed.
Alex:
AOC was optimistic – according to Guy, we have only 7 years left until human extinction. 10 years from 2016. Paul Erlich in the ’60s claimed that the population would be dying off by the hundreds of millions per decade beginning in the 1970s. In the 1970s, the New Ice Age was to have the equivalent effect. Despite all this bad news it’s advisable to continue planning for retirement, living our short lives, and working and paying the bills. I must confess I did like it better when the US had 120 million and Canada had only 11 million. More is not necessarily better.
But it reminds me about an old New Yorker cartoon, where a fellow with a long grey beard walks around with a sign reading ‘World Ends Tomorrow’.
It’s been his lifetime career.
This valuation makes no sense. Are we at Peak Insanity in the stock market?
Wolf,
We all need to embrace the future. Remember, even if Beyond Meat sounds like a faulty premise, it gets us on the way to the green future. If everyone can adapt to their products, we’ll be well on our way to getting rid of farting cows, and the evil meat industry that practices torture on animals and we can start to help the Earth. This is what is meant by the Green New Deal, it’s not perfect, but at least it’s a step in the right direction to reducing the issues we have with global warming.
If they make a little money on the side, well, we aren’t a communist society.
[\sarcasm]
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. This is insanity. But at least its not Uber or Lyft or Tesla, those guys are going to lose money no matter what. These guys are kind of onto some type of trend, and who knows, they might be the next Chipotle. With a vegan burger that tastes just like your every day hamburger, may be you have a chance that some day they’ll turn a profit. Just wait until next quarter, when they lose even less money.
The problem for Beyond Meat is they are not trend setters like Tesla was. They haven’t got prime mover advantage like Uber. Fake meat burgers were already around 35 years ago if not more: I still remember the advertisement jingle.
I am sure this company has plenty of groupies like Tesla has who will go to ridiciculous lengths to convince everybody, starting from themselves, how revolutionary this company is, but their “secret ingredient” is pea protein, meaning basically legumin (aka vegetable casein). It was already well known to Justus Von Liebig who extracted it from a wide range of leguminous seeds.
None of the ingredients posted by Beyond Meat are exclusive to the brand: any food company can buy them on the food ingredient/additive market. This means competition, lots and lots of competition, and with no prime mover advantage: it would probably take longer designing a captivating package and coming up with a good PR campaign than actually putting the stuff into production.
Allow me a final note: I ruined a perfectable respectable career in chemistry by taking a course on TPS so I still know a thing or two on the matter. When I read “expreller-pressed canola oil” I could not help but chuckle. “Expeller pressing” just means the seeds are squeezed in a single step using an expeller, a mechanical screw press which was introduced in various designs between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX.
These people are just an ordinary food company, and a one trick pony at that, who piggybacked on the present stock market insanity for some free publicity.
The other problem I see is, Who are the volume buyers of this product?
Sure, the vegans are very noisy on ‘social’ media, but, how many are there actually? However many, there will be a lot fewer when adding the qualifier ‘vegans with discretionary spending money’?
In my experience, the customer segment who are interested enough in ‘healthy foods’ to also pay well for foodstuff of ‘the proper quality & provenance’, are not at all interested in ‘industrial foods’.
So, IMO, this will product end up right next to all the other junk- and junkier- fry-up or toaster-oven stuff in the supermarket freezers and the competition on price is very sharp there.
Nobody buying that stuff cares a lot about it’s qualities, probably the ‘beyond meat’ burgers will go in the bag next to a load of ready-made hamburgers for a barbecue ‘in case someone is vegetarian’.
Possibly, possibly they can get, for example, McDonalds to buy their product because of the brand recognition and because McD’s already have a ‘Vegan’ burger (which is full of industrial crap, IMO) this could be the ‘Premium Vegan’ burger. But then they will be pushed hard on price – A normal McD burger costs about 20-160 cent in total and sells for 2-5 EUR.
I don’t really see the business.
Isn’t Burger King planning to offer patties of the Beyond meat rival Impossible Foods in its restaurants?
I think A&W was the first chain to hype them.
I would be interested in having fake meat, or manufactured meat as part of a normal diet. Even though I will continue to eat real meat as long as it exists.
There are plenty of non vegans who would probably eat some amount of fake meat if it were cheaper. Or similar cost and wanted to feel like they were taking some of the pressure off the the real meat market to produce so much low quality meat.
Long term fake meat or lab grown meat is likely to be the bulk of meat in our diets.
Still this particular company is still a massive gamble. And also I dont believe they have the most popular fake burger. The impossible burger sounded more promising as a replica of real ground beef.
Is impossible food the one with hemoglobin in their burgers? I see a billion plus market value for that.
lab-grown-cloned meat is the future.
Ew.
Chicky nobs and soydines for all !*
*see Margaret Atwood’s MaddAdam trilogy
And let’s not forget the “Secret Burgers”…
The source of the canola oil Beyond Meat uses is what I wonder about. North-central North Dakota is where quite a lot of canola is grown, and about half of the growers there apply glyphosate (Roundup) to their crops a few days prior to harvest. This is referred to as desiccation, and it is used on non-GMO crops all too often.
Could anyone at Beyond Meat comment back as to how and where they source their “Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil?”
Desiccation is more common for peas and lentils than on Canola. Worry about the main ingredient more than the oil.
Anywhere between 85 and 90% of the canola grown in Canada and the US is ‘Roundup Ready’, meaning it’s genetically modified to be glyphosate/glufosinate resistant. So good luck spraying it with glyphosate to kill it. ;-)
I could probably tell you more had I picked Agritech over Chemistry at the Uni, as I was split between the two.
Canola is made from rape seed. There is no such thing as a canola, it is a made up advertising name.
Canola is one of the few foods that you can call by its advertising name ( due to the Pure Food & Drug Act ).
MC01,
On Beyond Meat’s website, they claim, “Our products are made from plant-based ingredients that are free from GMOs, soy, and gluten.”
Bayer Cropscience was one of the two companies interested in buying my family’s traditional wheat seed genetics company nine years ago. They now have a GM canola that is tolerant to both glyphosate and glufosinate (phosphinothricin, made by Bayer).
My main point is how does Beyond Meat source canola oil, which is the third ingredient, that is not GMO, and is not sprayed with Roundup (if it is non GMO) prior to harvest?
General Mills is in the process of converting 34,000 acres near Pierre South Dakota to be completely organic, and this is mainly for Annie’s brand, which is a subsidiary of General Mills. That is the ultimate in vertical integration, but I doubt that Beyond Meat is doing the same.
If you do not grow the crops yourself, or if they aren’t grown under contract and ‘supervised’, there’s no way to know what’s been applied to the plants and what ends up in the finished food product.
By the way MC01, thank you for your excellent contributions to WolfStreet!
Dan:
The Roundup is applied during early growing stages for weed control, not for harvesting. Spraying Roundup ready Canola before harvesting does nothing, the few crops dessicated tend to be peas or lentils. Canola oil isn’t harming anyone in the chemical sense.
“a one trick pony at that, who piggybacked on the present stock market insanity for some free publicity”
Kinda like Theranos ??
Do the Beyond Meat head-honchos wear collarless guru-$tyle tunics .. only in culinary white ?
The difference is that Beyond Meat has an actual product to sell: some may like it and some may find it unappetizing but somewhere there are refrigerated warehouses full of boxes and a factory churning out legumin-based patties. It may lose money at every turn and have dozens of competitors breathing down their neck but at least it’s a real company.
Theranos had nothing but a slick corporate image which included a board of directors stuffed full of huge Beltway names who probably had zero idea of what was going on, not because they were kept in the dark but because they didn’t care.
Well, BYND is falling today, so those who shorted yesterday probably had a field day, and are busy closing out their positions today. Same for the options buyers.
I do think it is a bit crazy though that people are so hard up on these meat substitutes, they want the taste, but not the bad side effects. Yet, it is hilarious that no one has bothered to read the ingredients list, which are just about the same as a meat burger.
For my part, if I want to torture myself that way, I’d just stick with salads and fruits, which are pretty good anyway. And if I want a burger, I’m going to In N Out. People rail about industrialized food, yet somehow, this Beyond Meat crap is actually in vogue. It’s just amazing what people will buy into these days in the name of being whatever the fad of the year happens to be.
Substitute meat has been around since 1960 or so, when Ralston-Purina started producing food-grade soy protein isolate on large scale. Soy protein isolate had been used before as a crucial ingredient in… fire-fighting foam, with demand from the US military during WWII helping to kickstart large scale production.
This is no new technology by any stretch of imagination, and I am literally at loss to explain how Beyond Meat could be sold as the usual “disruptive” company stock market speculators love so much, especially considering a trip to a couple local shops is sure to turn up several direct BYND competitors.
I don’t know if Postmates has gone public yet but it will be yet another food-related IPO to keep an eye on, and for all the wrong reasons: ton of cutthroat competition due to no groundbreaking tech and/or monopoly, labor issues, far from solid financials…
At least it does contain some bamboo “fiber”!! LOL!
Heck, just take a gander at some of so many other “eatable” products ingredients…….in our “food(s)”!
“What Fools These Mortals Be”
(Shakespeare)
Bamboo fiber is actually a byproduct of rayon (viscose) manufacture: there are ways to extract very fine fibers from bamboo using purely mechanical means but the costs are very high and used only for high-end fabrics.
The bamboo pith is extracted from the hard trunk using steam and then mechanically crushed together with bamboo leaves: some of it is set aside as food additive, the rest goes into cellulose dissolution and re-formation to become rayon. Hey, I still remember this stuff! :-D
Bamboo fiber is added to this concoction to provide structural strength and hence make it look more like an ordinary hamburger instead of a suspicious mush. Its composition is almost exclusively cellulose, so it’s no worse than eating green salad, chard, cabbage or any other leaf vegetable.
Still it doesn’t warrant a market cap of several billion dollars, bamboo or not. ;-)
Beyond Meat = Beyond BS.
Beyond Meat is Beyond Me
I saw some Beyond Beef in Whole Foods the other day. I’m considering buying some to try and I can report back.
It’s the Food-of-the-Gobs, doncha know !
When you absolutely, positively can’t wait for the options on Beyond Meat to list and you need to lose your money today: then short, short, short.
They already have options.
They make Tesla premiums look like the bargain of the decade! July 19 155 PUT Strike premiums are 33… WTF ? It has to bust a Freddie Mac decline to make money, and liquidity is super dry on their Options. Spread on Bid-Ask is about 4 dollars to that strike.
Looks like the June 19 Calls cashed out today, they got paid!
The real joke to me is the contents of the product. Who, that have a concern about what they eat, as in vegan type people, would be interested in this product?
While I have not had a Beyond Meat burger, I enjoy eating Morningstar Farms’ Spicy black bean burger from time to time. No, it does not taste or look like beef, but they are surprisingly good. I suspect that I’m not alone in that the grocery store is always well stocked with a bunch of different varieties of veggie based stuff.
There’s a market out there as Wolf points out.
A TV program profiled this company, and apparently their burgers are supposed to taste just like beef. Seems hard to believe. But if they do, maybe the high stock price is somewhat warranted. The production of beef is a big contributor to climate change, and as I’m experiencing record hot temperatures in the SF Bay Area today, I’m hoping we’ll take more action to combat it.
This comment makes me weep for America.
@ Petunia,
Could you elaborate?
Tks,
Rose
Indeed, more money for BYND and I can’t wait for Impossible Burger (to IPO) making the beef industry obsolete. Those evil farmers and their farting cows need to go.
First step in the new Green Deal, baby, money for everyone who owns the right stocks.
Check out the movie “Cowspiracy” it’s quite good, and doesn’t preach veganism, just states the facts.
Well, that seems to be self-correcting to a degree. The current production of beef will become prohibitively expensive without access to abundant foodstuff for the cattle and the Midwest is still flooded!
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/06/midwest-flooding-the-corn-and-soy-crops-and-knock-on-effects.html
Forces countering this is Trade war with China – there are Soy not being bought by China, about 30% of the Corn and Soy are going into ‘bio’-fuel boondoggles, so there is a buffer.
The ‘indicator for change’ could be significant drop in the price of beef, I’d interpret that to mean that farmers are culling herds because they can’t afford to feed them. Or perhaps the creation of some new government scam-for-farmers where the meat is going into storage. The EU did that sometimes in the 1980’s to keep beef market prices inflated, before giving up all pretences and just subsidise farmers directly.
I haven’t tried these beyond burgers but I’ll likely purchase them instead of the usual beef the next time I go to the grocery store.
I watched this recently and think it’s something that should be required viewing:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
If this is what the millenials want to stop then maybe they aren’t so bad afterall. I can say I’ve never been so embarrassed at what my generation has done for a few dollars.
Yeah… what’s the weeping about, Petunia? Is it because we’re not eating enough chicken mc nuggets as a patriotic duty? If you want to do some weeping, watch “Dominon” – it is (was) on Netflix.
A friend was in a bet with another friend on who could avoid meat the longest. I had Thanksgiving dinner at one of their houses and we had Tofurkey. It was pretty wild. The ball of turkey substitute sits kind of heavy in the tummy, but with the gravy it really kinda resembled some kind of space Turkey from the future. It tasted (with the gravy) like Turkey although the texture wasn’t there.
I have eaten the meat burger substitutes. In fact I have tried almost every one on the market. Most are palatable.
The worst, by far, is Beyond Meat. Faux pink slime that is going to turn both vegans and carnivores off. If you like a juicy meat burger, this is not it. It lacks flavour, texture and most importantly aroma.
If you are vegan, you are going to detest it. It looks too much like meat without any of the redeeming flavour attributes. Just bland and pasty.
Plus it costs two to three times a real meat or veggie burger. I wanted to try it before I bought the stock. It was a waste of $5.
I’ve been vegan for over 30 years and I tried two of their products: the frozen crumbles that you put in stir fry and their burger. There was very little taste, just chewy texture. And I really don’t know what real meat tastes like anymore, but it did kinda remind me of what I think it would taste like — yuck.
So I really don’t think vegans are their target audience.
“…of the 270 calories in this industrial product, 170 are from fat…” oh yeah, that’s better (not!). So the next IPO is bound to be another company that’ll come up with a healthier non-vegan substitute when it becomes obvious that everyone is keeling over from plugged arteries.
Or just start eating fruits and vegetables. Grains and starches. so easy. Its weird that vegetarian restaurants have meat names on their dishes. Why do we have to pretend? Just bring rice, veggies, lentils, tea.
Going animal free is a good thing for all of the obvious reasons, but eating this beyond garbage nullifies the health benefits. Society has a need for taking a good thing and distorting it for the dream of riches. Please never watch tv.
I’m vegetarian with no interest in meat or food labeled as a meat like product. Somehow marketing appears to miss the meaning of vegetarian/vegan.
It is ironic that pea protein is back without another highly hyped vegan product.
Remember “Just Mayo” and Hampton Creek?
What’s really amazing is that the “tech” isn’t even American. I can’t speak for the Impossible Burger, but Hampton Creek sourced its pea protein out of Japan – which is where the vegan protein substitute was developed originally.
“This is not to say there is no market for fake-meat hamburgers and hotdogs. History has proven time and again that, when bombarded with enough hype, marketing, and advertising, we will buy and eat anything.”
Like animal flesh that slowly rots as it passes out your colon?
Anything other than rocks and metals slowly “rots” as it passes through the colon – even a vegan burger or a plain banana. There is a dense culture of bacteria in our intestines that causes this “rot” and sees to it that we can extract some nutrients from what we eat so we can live another day. It’s called “digestion.”
Ahem ,,,, the only nutrient that the colon absorbs is water. That is the colon’s sole purpose. The small bowel is what absorbs all the other nutrients.
Red meat has been fairly solidly linked tin the medical literature o higher rates of colon cancer
I love hamburgers and steaks as much as anybody, but I do recognize that red meat is not a healthy dietary item. Neither is fish, for that matter, due to all the heavy metals and other stuff that fish ingest and store in their bodies. Chicken farming practices in the US allow for arsenic in the feed, which can build up in your body also.
Of the vegetarian proteins, I have gotten to really love tofu skins, or yuba, and seiten – fried wheat gluten.
Let the Macro-neurotic* food diet virtue signalling begin ! …
*hat-tip to J.M. Greer for that little gem.
‘;]
well, it’s also kind of a fermentation tank for fiber…
Maybe Zoomev is a flipping bird and needs those stones in his/ her diet ?
What do you reckon Wolf ? :)
Decomposing plant-based material is not the same as rotting animal flesh … the more animal flesh rotting in your colon the more likely you are to get colon cancer.
Worthy of my Vegan little sister, Zoomev: ‘flesh’ ,’rots’: only she would add, talking to me, ‘You fascist b……d!’
Guess what: meat and fish, eggs, milk, etc, kept your ancestors alive when crops failed, and animal fibres and skins kept them warm and dry.
Worth pondering.
Life expectancy back then was about 30. Worth pondering.
Says you ..
No, not me. So says this website: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
It’s silly to harken back to primordial times to defend something. How many of us would be dead now if it weren’t for antibiotics, surgery (appendicitis would have died from it not so long ago), and innumerable medical discoveries. It’s time to give up the primal screaming and deal with current information. Extolling the wisdom of grandmothers is one thing, but mine wouldn’t have known about basic germ theory if she were alive, nor how to use a friggin’ smart phone.
In the days before vaccines and antibiotics.
During the Dot Com bust of 2000 it was: Pets.com, Webvan.com, eToys.com, DrKoop.com, etc
2019 it’s BYND. Surprisingly it’s being pitched by somewhat reputable brokerage houses.
I think the millennial investors are about to be fleeced.
Surprisingly?!?!
Sarcasm?
If not,
I guess u were born after the 2000 internet bubble.
The most famous shills were from the biggest wall st names. I used to have arguments w my Dad about this stuff. His argument, “how can they be lying, they are with XYZ bank.” And I would just bang out the numbers, but it didn’t take. He seems to have needed to believe. Or more likely it was bc my Dad was a very straight up / good / no BS guy, and he simply couldn’t fathom the things that drove these folks.
Everyone ripped Amazon and Tesla…of course, how can an entrepreneur beat up on Ford Motor or Barnes & Noble – impossibe…and when Henry F. paid twice as much as industry practices, he never had a chance!!!… PJS
Soon, someone important will declare real hamburger meat “healthy” like eggs and bacon (now). Then it’s curtains for BM!
Do an internet search for implication of vegetable oil (including evil margarine!) in Macular Degeneration. Your eyesight is not worth the marketing hype around a snail oil stock. Real butter is OK as is olive oil (and other larger molecule oils that don’t need industrial processes to extract). Anything that has an ingredient list like a chemistry set is evil. Food “lientists” are evil (search Ancel Keys). If your grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, then *don’t*buy*it* Millions of years of evolution of animals and plants cannot be ignored just because some mad lientist says it can. This is one stock that needs to crash quickly.
“If your Grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, then don’t buy it”
A great truth
Indeed. How did folks 150 years ago survive and reproduce without someone besides their mom telling them what to eat. Musta worked. We are here.
Where do Amish people get computers?
It might be good to recognize that blind belief/faith in orthodox lientific dogma is just as much a religion as any other belief systems that one might contemptuously and self righteously sneer at as beneath them. It says in the bible that they will drink poisons (or chemistry set ingredients) and it will have no effect. I for one am not willing to be a lab rat to test biblical or lientific beliefs just so some snake oil stock can reach ridiculous prices. But I do believe granny.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipNmimT45_m-4AcPBaEEzAXrkic6O8FOaWR8Uu4t=w609-h810-k-no
My dog won’t eat the stuff, and he eats anything.
Brant: Smart dog!
Trust your dog.
Mine eats cat poop. Are you sure about the “wisdom” of dogs?
Cats Rule, Dogs Drool
Yeah, but both mammals enjoy taking a roll onto god-knows-what … like the stinking halibut guts some moron left nearby that our neighbor’s dogs had a field day with !!
What i don’t like are the ingredients…yeast extract, dried yeast, potato starch, modified food starch, and natural flavors (from what i read is a big loop hole for garbage ingredients in the name of natural..if natural then why not list it??). There are plenty of better products: Amy’s Burgers, California burger, and many, many more made with multi vegetables, mushrooms, etc..and none of those bad healthy ingredients. Plus, i have eaten at places that make there own fresh veggie burgers with fresh vegetables. I would say a good options strategy is cookin!
You are perfectly correct to be concerned about the ingredients. Yeast extract is one of many code words for MSG.
Congratulations – they made a chemical concoction that “tastes good” because they added MSG! This has been the trick with processed food for decades now.
Is this food “healthy” for you? Not with the trans fats from the canola oil and MSG, which is an excitotoxin that kills brain cells, and other heavily processed ingredients.
Just one more insane invention of the technocratic elite along the lines of making us think the only way to feed the planet is if we all eat insects (any insects I encounter will be eaten by the chickens, not me). Seeing the amount of food you can grow on 1/4 acre is astounding and destroys the idea that food is a scarce resource.
Yeast extract has nothing to do with MSG. Yeast is an organism – a type of fungus. MSG is monosodium glutamate – an amino acid. Please don’t propagate nonsense. Let this be a reality check on the quality of the information sources you follow.
Ched and ZB,
You guys both have it partly wrong:
“Autolyzed yeast extract, like yeast extract, soy extracts, and hydrolyzed vegetable protein, contains naturally occurring MSG (monosodium glutamate). Food alarmists have often reported this ingredient as a “hidden source of MSG in foods.” Foods using autolyzed yeast extract cannot claim to be MSG free with labeling such as “NO MSG” or No added MSG.” MSG, as the sodium salt of glutamic acid, when it is used directly in foods, must be listed as such, but it does not have to be listed when it occurs in ingredients like autolyzed yeast extract. Many people have reported adverse reactions to MSG, but there has been little clinical evidence linked to such reactions.”
https://culinarylore.com/ingredients:what-is-autolyzed-yeast-extract-in-foods/
MSG is a salt form of the naturally occurring glutamic acid. short form history here:
www dot myrecipes dot com/extracrispy backslash torula-yeast-umami
Gandalf – I have nothing wrong. Yes, glutamate is an amino acid and living things contain it as one of the 20 canonical amino acids. That is a far cry from “is MSG”. I specifically did not bring this up because it would continue the false equivalence.
Gandalf – To clarify, saying I’m wrong or that yeast is MSG would be like saying “your steak, tofu, and whey protein are MSG”.
Beyond BS for Beyond stupid people and Just in time for wall street to slaughter them like the cows they all are…..
Alex Vieira has been pushing this company in his “algo”
After reading the article and 17 comments I noticed my Zombie meter’s needle is wrapped around it’s stop post!
Sir, I always love love your work, but you missed the first and most critical issue for a classic pump and dump!!
There are ONLY 4.4 Million shares on the float!!
Just checked it today. Vancouver hustlers are pikers compared to the Wall St. Mafia.
This idea won’t fly with vegans or vegs but for the rest of us how about a burger that was a blend of maybe 80 % veg and 20 % meat?
It’s pretty much a consensus that the North Am diet has too much meat for optimum health. There is all kinds of diet advice out there (I mean from MD’s) but I’ve never heard of one saying we should cut back on veg.
I made such a burger at home with meat, beans and veggies. Or with fish or chicken and some veggies.
I thought that’s what the McD’s burger was. Soy filler + some ground beef added.
Eddie Murphy from the film Raw and his bit on homemade burgers is on you tube…
I thought it insane when the capitalization of this stock exceeded that of GM … and that was when it had a much lower price than it hit today.
Belay that last statement. Market cap only $9B plus.
The Beyond Burger is great when properly prepared, almost indistinguishable from a rare beef burger — without any of the food safety issues of real ground meat. That being said, great product or not, as the article pointed out, they have plenty of competitors, some of which also make very good products. Of course, the Beyond Meat company stock is absurdly overvalued, almost as much as Australian real-estate.
… without any of the food safety issues of real ground meat.
Well, I am a food luddite. I would think that if ‘bad bacteria’ won’t infect it, then those ‘good bacteria’ living inside my gut and digesting stuff for me probably won’t like it a lot either, which is probably not very healthy. My solution to this ‘problem’ is to buy better quality meat and then cook it correctly. If I couldn’t afford good quality meat, I would not buy any!
I my opinion this product plants its butt right between two chairs: If we don’t want to eat meat for whatever reason, why is that need served by something that looks like meat, with loads of additives to make it look like the meat we don’t want for whatever reason? And if we want meat, well, why not buy good quality meat and treat it properly!?
I really think good food should just be honest about what it really is.
A very simple dish of green lentils, dried tomatoes, garlic, maybe with some panchetta (or alternatively a small dash of soy sauce with veggie stock for ‘vegetarian’) together with some bread and butter on the side is a perfectly solid and presentable meal even if it is simple and basic stuff.
If it needs more ‘schwung’, some red wine will work well (some into the dish, the rest at the table).
Making something look, taste and feel like something else feels dishonest to me, I personally like to know what I am eating, whether it is meat, fish or ‘vegetarian’. Children are the same, unless they are taught otherwise by giving them ‘children meals’ and keeping them out of the kitchen. It is, IMO, a great sin to not teach children how to cook and that the food that is on the table is the food there is!
+1000
Because these are the same Imposters who persist on calling ( almond extract or water) Almond milk!!
The stupidity of these folks never fails to amaze me!
Well said, faj-it appears we have yet another case of the tool (alternative and chemicobiologically altered, and well-advertised, ways of satisfying human hunger) becoming more important than the mission (general good nutrition). As with many, many things in our technoindustrial society, it’s now much more important to find a way to make a quick buck off of the plethora of available tools and leave the subsequent societal/financial/environmental wreckage for a declining number of capable ‘someone else’s’ to deal with.
May we all find a better day.
A comedian whose name I don’t remember once said, “They’re always trying to make vegetables look like meat, but you never see anyone trying to make meat look like broccoli.”
In America, neoliberal burger eat you …..
Crazy. $40M in revenue and loses 15c for every dollar of fake meat they sell, yet have a market cap bigger than Burger King.
I think it doesn’t matter at all what a hyped and IPOed company does nor its financial condition. The important thing is a new stock to pump and play with. Until now there have always been greater fools around.
FAKE.
Fake growth, fake money, fake financial stability, fake jobs, fake inflation numbers, fake income growth and finally, why not fake meat.
No thanks, I’ll pass on the meatless “meat”.
Hormel Foods (HRL) is a real meat company. Bought in 08 at 14 now trading today right at it’s 200 DMA. Sensible. Slow and steady as it goes.
Not like some ‘fly-by-night’ high flying short slayer, with a valuation that is completely unwarranted. Absolute stupidity. Now that really does say something about the “investing” atmosphere of Wall street.
I tried to short the stock just after 10:00 am on Schwab, Td Ameritrade and Interactive Brokers and couldn’t find one share available to short. I kept getting message that the brokerage had no shares to short. Strange if a lot of shorts from lower price levels are covering there should be a few shares to short.
I won’t comment on the valuation, the discussion here does a good job arguing why it’s ridiculous. However, my girlfriend is vegan and I happen to eat a lot of vegan food by association. Here are some of my random observations from the last five years, all anecdotal of course.
– I’ve noticed more vegan restaurants opening up, and the food is getting better. A couple of our local haunts (San Jose) seem to do great business. Clientele USED to be mostly younger white hipster types, lately I’ve noticed more older people, families, Indian and Vietnamese people.
– Vege/vegans are people too and get lazy. Sometimes you just want something that tastes decent, is easy, and tastes familiar. We keep vegan chicken nuggets and Daiya mac n cheese on hand for this reason, it won’t blow your mind but it only takes 10 minutes and it doesn’t use animal products.
– If a restaurant doesn’t have some halfway decent non-meat options, we don’t eat there, because it’s not fun if only I’m enjoying the meal. If they’re able to substitute a veggie burger into their regular menu with some other good veggie sides, they’ve now got two paying customers.
– We like to grill and go to backyard bbqs, and she wants to be able to throw something on too. It can’t all just be grilled onions and baked potatoes.
– I have friends that are interested in eating less meat but don’t know how. It can be a difficult lifestyle, especially if you eat out a lot, and if you’re hungry without many options you may just give up and eat fast food. I have no idea if any of these people would be long term converts, sinceyou do need some level of dedication to pick a fake burger over the real thing.
– Vegan mayonnaise is basically a solved problem. Vegan butter is severely lacking. Vegan baked goods can be great but usually aren’t. Vegan cheeses were awful for a long time, some of the newer brands are getting very close. None of these things will fool your grandma in a Pepsi challenge, but they get close and give people more options. It sucks eating quinoa and broccoli for every meal, trust me.
Sorry for the long comment!
Max,
My spouse acquired food allergies 4 years ago ( All cow dairy, eggs, wheat, and cabbage) I’d really appreciate if you’d share what you consider the vegan mayo brand that is a solved problem. We’ve tried about 5 vegan mayo’s, and they were all terrible. And I agree that vegan butter is awful.
Sorry to all for going way off topic here.
2GR2G, does she also have less severe troubles with mustard and garlic / onion?
ArcticChickens,
Always had problems with garlic. None with mustard and onions.
I’ve got a similar situation. In my case it seems to be related to mercury poisoning from amalgam fillings. Won’t help in the hunt for vegan mayo, but maybe check out Andy Cutler’s chelation protocol. Been a huge help for my health.
It’s obvious, people have a natural craving for meat……
Also fish, bugs, hell back home in Hawaii, kids love to plucking limpets off of the rocks, scoop ’em out of their shells, and they go right into their mouths. It’s a delicacy.
Tonight’s stir fry was veggies, and then on top of them, a small salmon kama (I guess in English it’s salmon collar) and a couple of whole scallops, not just the muscle but the mantle, liver, etc. What I love about salmon kama is my local Japanese market sells them cheap, around $2, and it’s just about the most tender meat on a salmon. Late night snack just now was dried seasoned conger eel. Nummy!
Anthony,
“It’s obvious, people have a natural craving for meat……”
Most Japanese don’t. And my wife doesn’t either. Hindus don’t. Many others don’t. This is Western or maybe just US industry propaganda also propagated on TV by the CEO of Beyond Meat.
The craving for meat is almost entirely the craving for the seasonings and stuff that surrounds it. If you really liked meat, you’d eat it raw or cooked without any accompaniment at all. So… how often do you order steak tartare but without seasonings and flavorful veggies?? Like… never. It’s b.s. about the meat craving. It’s been shoved down our throats for years.
I used to think that, too, and thought that I couldn’t get enough protein. You only need 10% of your daily caloric intake as protein. And there are lots of plant-based proteins.
Wolf-at the risk of being excoriated for the pun, may I reprise H.L. Mencken’s observation that “…no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public…”?
A better day to all.
I was carnivore for 15 years, vegan for the next 15 years. I never craved meat when I was vegan. Now I selectively eat seafood and a little meat, plus cream in my coffee and eggs, but Wolf is right.
No craving for meat. The only cravings I have while traveling is for natural unprocessed food.
The “craving for meat” is because humans have another taste sensation called umami that most people generally love
In totally vegetarian and meatless cultures, usually from Asian/Buddhist/Hindu cooking traditions, you can get a great umami flavor from fermented soy beans, mushrooms, cooked tomatoes, cheese, etc.
The basis of the umami taste comes from amino acids or small peptides or peptide-like molecules. Presumably, umami taste seeking exists because humans need protein in their diet and this helped the cavemen find it
MSG and yeast extract also add umami flavor to food, which is why they are used. Soy sauce is fermented soy beans, as is miso soup – these have great umami also
Now Wolf, your talking about red meat, as opposed to fish/seafood, with regard to the Japanese diet generally, do I have that correct ??
polecat,
Meat as in any meat – red or otherwise. Fish is not considered “meat” to my Catholic understanding (no “meat” on Friday meant “fish” was served).
The Japanese have a craving for their type of glutenous rice, if they don’t get it for a while, that’s for sure. The portions of fish they eat are rather small.
I have a craving for fresh fruit. If I don’t get at least some fresh fruit in a 24-hour period, I get withdrawal symptoms. Right now it’s summer-fruit time in California, and I’m in hog heaven ;-]
I can go vegetarian (not vegan) for months at a time without missing anything. But I gotta have my fresh fruit.
I mean it is pretty crazy, but is BYND really “peak IPO” this cycle? Or did TLRY already take that title and BYND is just the post-peak runner up?
TLRY is a good case study on when to short BYND. Once it flirts for 2 or 3 hundred dollars, go ahead and short it. I would buy puts, but considering how volatile BYND is, it’s not even worth it.
As nice as it is to think this has to be peak insanity, as long as cheap money is flowing I believe it will get even crazier.
BYND actually has a product… if you remember late 1999 and early 2000 there were companies with only a website, a 17 year old CEO, and no paying customers IPO’ing in the billions.
Processed meat is a carcinogen. Red meat increased risk of cancer.
Funny how those who like to ridicule the stock of something like BYND – and the tree-hugging vegans to boot – don’t give a crap about the damaging effects of real meat: cancer, multiple internal diseases, proliferation of antibiotics, environmental damage (particularly climate change), the absolute torture of the animals that are eaten, etc. Not to defend the bull-pucky of this company and its stock, but there’s a piling-on effect here in the comments that is pretty revealing. If enough comments about how stupid and hyperventilating the vegans are, will you feel better about you’re ignorance on the matter of meat production?
We have identified one of the BYND pumpers. Sorry about the downgrade today.
“Real” meat isn’t cancer causing. You are referring to processed meats. (Ham, bacon, salami, pepperoni, etc.) If you find it in pre-packaged meals consider it processed and unhealthy( ie- hungry man dinners, frozen boxed pizzas).
The climate argument is ridiculous, 9% of emissions come from food. That covers cattle production and also covers grains and vegetables, the meat market would account for 6% of all emissions. Rice, grains and veggies making up 3% isn’t an amazing stance for going vegetarian.
Did you get your 9% emissions “fact” from the stable genius? How often have you shot deer or raccoon in San Francisco? I live around hunters, and, yes, they eat non-processed meat. Some swear that they’ve never eaten any meat that they haven’t personally killed. But that’s the exception, big exception, to the rule. The rule is, the VAST majority of Americans eat processed meat. And the growing, growing, growing majority of Americans are obese. And… and… and, the obesity rate is highest in those states where most of the hunting is going on… as in, the South. You know, Praries, there’s a logic fallacy going on when you pick some idiosyncratic example and try to generalize it. Have a couple of cheeseburgers and think about it.
Maybe it’s the term “processed” that you’re concerned about. Do you think that the hamburger that one buys at most (almost all) grocery stores isn’t “processed”? It’s just semantics to think that “processed” is limited to salami and such.
Fast food burgers are processed. Wonder bread is processed. Food that doesn’t mold is always bad for you, no matter what is being mentioned – meat, grains, veggies all can be bad for you once chemicals have to be added. As for the figure of 9% that is what your country has to offer us for argument, the rest of the world is under 15% so it is a safe assumption the numbers aren’t far off.
As for arguing obesity you should look at sugar and salt. I have seen plenty of round vegetarians who love to salt their food for flavour and drink sweet drinks of fruity nature. These beyond meat burgers full of oils and cholesterol are far worse than home made patties – both veggy or meat.
You don’t understand my side of the argument, that’s why you think I only want you to eat meat. I want you to eat real food, my family has raised cattle and planted grains and even peas and lentils for generations. I want all food to be supported, because attacking the meat market and ignoring the rest of the industry is simply cherry picking what you like.
I disagree with your analysis that if only 6% of emissions are attributable to livestock, 3% for grain and veggies isn’t a big deal. Well, 6% livestock is DOUBLE the figure of veggies. That is significant. But if you compare feedlots to grass-fed, range fed livestock, that’s also a huge difference as you probably know. The trouble is… can even a small improvement in GHG emissions, cruelty to animals, water pollution, waste production, antibiotic use, hormone use, and other “problems” associated with meat production, make a difference? In my opinion, it makes a real difference.
Well, Praries, I hope you’re treating the animals with some degree of decency. Hard to even imagine that with the efficiency of meat production today. See “Dominion” if you have the gumption for watching how poultry, hogs and beef are treated in Australia today. There’s just no reason for allowing that kind of treatment to animals that you’re going to slaughter anyway. I know there are trashed humans all over the world, ones that do horrific things to children, wives and other humans, but spare the criminal treatment of animals if you can.
Sorry about the rant but we may not need the “meat” we’re so used to eating. At least not in the megatons of consumption that’s happening today.
This share price says a lot more about the effects of money printing than the particular business. Like trying to spot short opportunities of Weimar era bread loves by careful analysis of wheat production & consumer taste trends. When in reality money printing added a zero to the price each week, the shorts are killed in scores and can’t find the flaw in their thinking.
Yes it does take a couple of grains of plausibility to set off a bubble, and I can tell you guys that the urban millennials are getting increasingly worked up about meat and particularly beef. We’re not far from the point where eating beef will get you serious negative social scoring from this audience.
And yes they have money and they spend it on those feel-good items. they generally live in houses paid for or owned by the parents, and often have been gifted another property that yields them rental income. The job income is just on top. They work from Wework and it’s no coincidence that “responsible”/vegan-type food places flourish around their branches.
Do you get paid for your stereotyping? You should be. You’ve got it nailed.
Do you get paid for your astroturfing? You should be. You’ve got it nailed.
Leser, you might want to visit a hog farm in the Carolinas for an afternoon. Provided you don’t get sprayed with the spray of hog waste shot into the surrounding fields, you might think differently about that savory bacon on a BLT sandwich. And if you get inside one of these hellish dungeons where they’re penned, you’d better not take any pictures. It’ll be a felony. No sh#t!
The hype around the company (months) before the IPO was amazing. The story placement was intense. Revolutionize food, save the world. Lots of folks like that story. I give someone credit for that. Well done.
That is what I attribute the current price to.
As a vegetarian, I look for veggie fast food when traveling.
I don’t plan on trying that burger. not into frankenfood…
There is another IPO coming down the pike in a week or two for Chewy the on-line pets supply business. It is the usual money looser owned by another money looser Petsmart. It is such a convoluted ownership scheme as only about $100 million of the new money goes to Chewy and the rest to Petsmart. It seems like it is just a controlled release of a tiny sliver of equity in a junk rated company to peg market value high enough so private owners of Petsmart get immediate $700 – $800 cash out of their equity for tiny sliver of Petsmart ownership. It seems the worst of low interest money affects and wall street dish off to bag holders.
Chewy is nothing more than Pets.com without the sock puppet. Knew that when I saw the first ad. Remember the product was, is and always will be the stock…
For those hungry for financial gossip, Chewy reported losses of $337.8 million for FY2017 but “just” $267.8 million in red ink for FY2018.
PetSmart, a private company, bought Chewy in 2017 for $3.35 billion… and PetSmart itself was bought in 2014 by London-based BC Partners for a cool $8.8 billion from the previous owners.
In no way this is the usual cash grab by a PE firm which will end in the now depressingly familiar retail bloodbath. I am super cereal!
This is reminiscent of pump and dump schemes that have become more common recently. However, as far as faux meat is concerned, if the large increase in meat prices of the last few years continues more and more people will become involuntarily non-meat eaters. I can’t say whether this product is good or not but the proliferation of meat substitutes in supermarkets seems to indicate an already growing demand.
I wonder how many people who bought the stock have tried the product.
About a year ago I tried all the veggie burger selections I could find. The only product I like is the Beyond Meat burger. The Impossible burger is not on retail shelves yet. The competition’s faux meat does not appeal to me.
Now, I’ve grown to prefer the Beyond burger to real burger meat. To me, real meat is just plain gross, except I do make a great rib eye, nothing can compare to that. A good cut of meat is $23 a pound.
The local grocery will stock a range of competitors. Beyond is a premium product and will find a small niche.
40 years ago we would laugh at those who complained about smoking, anyone who didn’t drink was odd (my boss had a cocktail cabinet in his office) and vegetarians were probably communists. Fake meat is the future but maybe not this company
(applause!)
Great article and both hilarious and thoughtful comments. I tried to step back with a birds view, (bird brained…I know:-) and can only conclude this Society is long long overdue for a face slapping dose of reality and hard times. There’s too much money, wealth, and stupidity out there in too few hands. This IPO deserves to be shorted, and the people who invested in it deserve to lose their shirts. All the hunger in the World and the reality of so many people in NA trying to put three squares on the table with limited opportunity contrasts mightily with a product full of chems made to look and pretend to be something it’s not. Crazy.
Beyond meat substitutes reminds me of those adds for jeans that come pre-washed, faded, with rips….worn by hot chicks in full war paint who wouldn’t know a days work (that actually wears out jeans) if their life depended on it. Or tatooed up hard case look-alikes who are about as threatening as a bank teller on Sunday. I’m with Petunia on this….I weep for us.
And here I thought vegetarian fast food was a bag of carrot sticks, and some fruit?
You ever read the ingredients on a bag of store bought bread? You’ll never buy one again if you have. Just like pretend meat…..Good article.
I’m with you and Petunia, except I don’t weep. I feel anger and scorn. How could we as a people come from the spirit of, say, 1945 to where we are today? Lots of hubris driven by ignorance, everywhere, that’s how.
I like to think I’m out of it. CERTAINLY will be soon – I’m 88.
RD Blakeslee:
Welcome to the “88” club!! LOL!
The only sure thing is that, “As things ‘change’ they seemingly remain the same”!
What too many have forgotten: “Everything in moderation”.
Re: “I like to think I’m out of it”:
Sometimes “Modern Life” works in my favor. Thankfully, West Virginia enjoys a stereotype that keeps the sheep away.
USA Today “reports” that ours is among the “least fun states”:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/06/11/fun-things-do-most-and-least-fun-states-us-per-wallethub/1414599001/
Because we’ve become fat brained and lazy minded ..
Oh, and one moar thing ..
“Honk Honk !”
‘;]
The company has no moat.
The shorts are being expeller pressed
A prime example of the extraordinary delusion of crowds.
Beyond pumped.
Excellent comment Petunia
I hate the way some new fad comes along and there is this friction that develops where people are pressured to taking a side. I will counter this fad by saying I won’t say what I eat, and I don’t care what you eat, I just ask that you leave the plants, pets, and insects around my house alone. As far as investing and IPOs, I will NEVER invest in an IPO, so my chips are off that gambling table. My idea of a good investment is my actively managed regulated utility fund I bought 10 years ago with a 4% load. There, I bucked ETF the trend, but I like this 29% 1 year return on such a sleepy quiet investment, where I had no expectations at all.
it’s all in the name. “beyond meat”. If this company’s name had been “veggie burger” it would have flopped. The “green new deal”. A new way, a new life, a new and better generation! Ha Ha! Get real
“I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” – Wimpy
That just about sums it up.
Looks like the Beyond Meat pump & dump is going to separate quite a few greedy fools from their money. Tanking hard after a predictable analyst downgrade.
Meanwhile, the Keynesian fraudsters at the central banks keep coming up with “reasons” why they need to hit CTRL-P, i.e. inflation is too low. I doubt if a single member of the 99% who are being pitilessly screwed over by the Fed, BoE, ECB, etc. and their financier controllers shares that view.
Great short-term trade on the upside which i already got out of. It looks a lot like what happened with bitcoin during its salad days before ignominously plummeting.
Even the best growth stocks in the past 15 years haven’t sustained such a tulip/south sea pace and this won’t either.
In the near term though, rationality isn’t at work but in the long run reality will have to be reckoned with.
The concept is solid. A bartender in NY is making beyond alcohol cocktails. N/A drinks have in the past been a lot like veggie burgers. Then who came up with the idea to kick up the caffeine drink? Red Bull. Sometimes it involves taking something out. Food technology is big. The rate of globally overproduced fiat dollars only underlines the success of the whole endeavor. All the criticisms fail on the salient issue, they are first over in a new market. Recent study shows chicken is just as harmful as red meat, which is the industries way of promoting plant based protein.
BOOM!
No worries.
Beyond Meat just crashed now down 27%.
Long blood in the street.
A new class of “bag holder’s” gets educated.
I am, at this very moment, enjoying a home plucked egg …. ummmm! .. and let me tell you, it is beyond delicious !
‘Before Meat’ … ‘;]
Just a quick plea: Can everyone stop talking about this in terms of being Vegan. I have been Vegan for decades and wouldn’t touch Beyond Meat. Just because something doesn’t have meat or other animal products, doesn’t by default make it healthy or desirable. Being Vegan is a multi-faceted choice, and Vegan’s are not one dimensional. But, can we just agree that the hype around Beyond Meat has nothing to do with Veganism?
Speaking for myself, I am Vegan for many reasons and am in no way EVER looking for vegan products to emulate meat. I just choose to eat simple foods, with minimal ingredients, preferably organic, and which are not processed.
someone left the meat on the grill too long A hamburger combo of a small float, fur fuel, stagnant markets, and it seems more indicative of a 11 year top than IPO crazies. is it a tell.?….umm yes
Read transcript of Druckenmiller (spelling?). Always thought he was a smart guy. He was really all over Yellen for not getting rates up when she could. He said you have to have a feds fund rate of around 4% or a lot of stupid stuff is going to happen with money. You look around and see it everywhere. Other saying I read somewhere yesterday is that it’s all ok til the debt doesn’t get paid back.
The same Andrew Left of Citron is gung-ho long on Revolve, an e-commerce site for women’s clothing, that was up 90% in 2 days after the IPO at 18. Maybe he’s trying to make back some of his BYND losses.
Revolve sells itty-bitty bikinis for 200 bucks plus, jackets for 3800, sweat pants for 800, socks for 100 dollars, and brass(?!) silver plated earrings for 1000, etc etc. Those are in Canadian dollars, so admittedly, a lot less if you order USD. The big sell is that you can just order and return the stuff you don’t like. They have a 47% return rate, but that’s not a problem.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/citron-research-ceo-is-long-on-revolve-221546072.html
I think this IPO is making the last run up of Bitcoin in 2017 blush a little…let’s hope this is not the new normal now under Trumponomics
correctly timing peak stock prices, i don’t buy stocks but I read some about ‘valuations, mark to market.. how it used to be etc’, a really thin slice of an app and a bunch of educated unhappy contractors (drivers) doesn’t sound very promising to me either, if I did. but it reminds me of something my gramps said to me once at the track. ‘you can spend all kinds of time studying horses, jockeys, track conditions, history, class etc. just to see the guy next to you choose the same horse because of the name or the color of the silks’..
so let me try this, well im living in the usa somebody get me a ‘Water, Pea Protein Isolate*, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oil, Refined Coconut Oil, Contains 2% or less of the following: Cellulose from Bamboo, Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Natural Flavor, Maltodextrin, Yeast Extract, Salt, Sunflower Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Dried Yeast, Gum Arabic, Citrus Extract (to protect quality), Ascorbic Acid (to maintain color), Beet Juice Extract (for color), Acetic Acid, Succinic Acid, Modified Food Starch, Annatto (for color)’ cheeseburger.. nah, dint think so.
If you own it–seeeeeeeeeellllllllll
Bought some November puts. Just saying.
The original .dot com bubble involved companies that were going to ‘change the world’ through innovative technologies.
Today’s IPOS involve (or will involve)
Fake meat company
Fake realty company -‘We Work’
Fake taxi companies- Lyft, Uber
Fake media company- ‘Zoom’- 20 billion market cap on 5 million in profit?
Fake hotel company (with spy cams in every room!)- ‘Air BNB’
I think the USA is fresh out of new ideas. Just look at the paucity of new good movies at the cinema, it’s symptomatic of a greater decay.
The end is nigh!
I think I’ll put together a IPO , and call it “Beyond Cornfed”… the concept of which is to buy up all of the corn belt acreage .. and then some .. return said land BACK to native prairie grasses, then re-introduce those giant 4-legged burgers on hooves- the Tatanka !!
A win-win .. the environment get a breather, and protein for all !! .. well, for those who can work flint and handle an atlatl that is … I’m talkin ‘real’ old-school.
‘;]
Hummm .. I see a novel ‘health’ app in the works too !
Anyone care to invest ??
It is almost as easy to find lunatics to invest in this valuation as it is to find crazies who can’t process the fact that MEAT tastes good. You only live a short life so you might want to get to the point of being honest with yourself sooner rather than later.
The mayority of stocks are handled by bots, dumb AI, right?
When a machine can sell and or buy stock in fractions of a second, anyone who does is as a mere mortal man is doomed.
Of course, bots are not better than their programers, so… considering this is not Tesla hype or “True believers”…
Maybe someone should look things from that angle.
At least the “Beyond Meat” burger is mostly made out of veggies. There are lots of other options out there, like falafel burgers.
Just stay away from the “frankenfood” Impossible Burger!
https://www.gmoscience.org/impossible-burger-boon-risk-health-environment/
Damn. I need to start my own psuedo-meat company and bring it to an IPO. I was thinking of calling it Soylent Green. The fake meat product consists of soy isolate, cellulose fiber, and people…oops, I meant stuff people will love.
@728huey: Someone already beat you to it! “Soylent is Fuel Good Food”
https://soylent.com/
A few weeks ago I was looking through the Business Insider. Nearly every second article was on Beyond Meat. I thought, apart from being a lefty liberal rag bought as cover by the decidedly anti-liberal Bezos, they have clearly sold their soul here. I knew nothing of the meat company but now it makes sense.
Beyond Meat is just another in a long line of companies making nearly the same non-meat hamburger. It contains Canola oil which was originally invented in Canada (CAN-OLA). It is mostly genetically modified rapeseed and is used in a variety of industrial applications.
No healthfood nut is going to buy this crap.
Read all about it: https://draxe.com/canola-oil-gm/