Shares of Beyond Meat (BYND) have been hammered all year as consumers turn away from ultra-processed plant-based meats in favor of traditional protein.
However, even by the company’s battered standards, its recent trading activity has raised fresh concerns about potential market manipulation, according to wealth adviser Kevin Malone.
On Friday, Malone noted that BYND traded a staggering 7.11 billion shares over the past week, roughly 20 times the company’s entire public float, or the number of shares available for trading.
Even more suspicious, the stock closed just below its “max pain” level — the price point at which the greatest number of outstanding options contracts (calls and puts) expire worthless.
That level is often seen as advantageous to large institutions or market makers who write those options, since it minimizes their payout to option holders.
Malone described the precise closing price as “statistically impossible,” implying that the result may have been engineered.
The unusually high trading volume and the exact alignment with the options “max pain” level could indicate that large players influenced the stock’s movement to benefit from expiring options positions — for example, by pushing the share price lower to render call options worthless.
Malone’s commentary underscores a growing frustration among retail investors who believe the market is tilted in favor of institutional traders and high-frequency algorithms and that they may be playing a rigged game.
There’s nothing rigged about Beyond Meat’s collapse
Beyond Meat rose to prominence before the pandemic as a promising alternative to traditional meat, touting plant-based products that mimicked the taste and texture of animal protein.
The company marketed its plant-based burgers and sausages as tasting similar to real meat — and for a time, it became a Wall Street darling.
However, consumer enthusiasm has cooled sharply. Shoppers have increasingly questioned both the taste and healthfulness of highly processed meat substitutes, leading to a steady decline in sales since at least 2022.
In the second quarter of this year, Beyond Meat’s revenue fell nearly 20% year over year, reflecting waning demand and broader skepticism toward the category. The company continues to face a mix of weak consumer demand, economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures, and intensifying competition.
Those challenges are now fully reflected in its stock performance. Shares of BYND are down more than 46% year to date and 68% over the past 12 months.
More strikingly, the stock has plunged about 92% from its initial public offering price of $25, marking a dramatic reversal for a company once hailed as the future of food.
