Shares of Carvana Co. CVNA pulled a sharp U-turn to trade higher in afternoon trading Friday, putting them on track to stretch their “meme”-like win streak to seven sessions. The online used car marketplace’s stock was down as much as 9.1% at the intraday low of $12.95, but was up 0.2% at $14.28 in recent trading. If the stock closes up Friday, it would mark the longest win streak since the eight-day stretch that ended July 12, 2021. The stock has now rocketed 122.1% the past seven sessions. The stock had shown “meme”-like tendencies earlier this month, amid a relatively high short-interest position in the stock, and the company also adopted a shareholder rights plan (“poison pill”) to block investors for taking advantage of the stock’s weakness to buy up a large stake. Short-interest, or bearish bets on the stock, represented 59.7% of the public float, according to the latest exchange data, or shares available for public trading. That compares with that of the original “meme” stocks, with short-interest as a percentage of public float at 23.5% for GameStop Corp. GME and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. AMC at 22.6%.
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