Shares of iBuying real estate company Opendoor (OPEN 44.00%) once again soared, trading roughly 71% higher today, as of 12:18 p.m. ET. The stock continues to surge on meme-stock trading activity and bullish social media posts from EMJ Capital founder Eric Jackson.
This meme stock could have legs
Opendoor has caught the attention of the meme stock crowd on Reddit's WallStreetBets, and high short interest also helped catapult the stock higher this month. As of this writing, Opendoor traded close to 600% higher this month alone.
Image source: Getty Images.
Not only are retail traders in on the stock, but so is EMJ Capital founder Eric Jackson. Jackson has a history of picking stocks that have turned into multibaggers. Some of his former bets that have worked out well are Carvana, Coinbase, Roku, and Alibaba. Yesterday, Jackson tweeted another post, reiterating his position from last week that Opendoor can get to $82 per share (the stock currently trades below $4 per share).
As an iBuying platform, Opendoor is in the business of purchasing homes from sellers online and in cash, and then trying to resell those homes for higher prices. In recent years, the macro-environment has proved challenging for the housing market. The iBuying model also hasn't been proven out, typically generating slim margins.
Meme stocks are always very risky
Opendoor is supposedly in the early stages of transitioning to more of a real estate agent-assisted model that analysts at Citizens JMP noted last month could be a more capital-efficient, higher-margin business. But the company still has a lot of work to do and is also dealing with high cash burn and high debt.
With the stock now trading at a multibillion-dollar market cap and still generating significant losses each quarter, it has clearly become detached from fundamentals and is likely to be very volatile, with the potential for big sell-offs down the line. Invest at your own risk.
