Costco hot dogs targeted by retail trader short squeeze
Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss how meme stock traders are targeting Costco’s hot dogs.
Video Transcript
- Yeah. One more thing I want to mention, since we were talking about GameStop, there's a story about Costco that caught our eye over the weekend as it relates to meme stock traders, who apparently on Reddit are now talking about a short hot dog squeeze for Costco. I don't know how else to describe it. As we all know, and we've talked about Costco a lot on this show, and perhaps the likes of BJ's and Sam's Club being a positive indicator for Costco because those companies reported relatively strong results within retail, but the Reddit traders have awoken to the fact that there are still $1.50 hot dogs at Costco.
- A buck 50.
- And that's something that the company has maintained very purposefully to allow people to afford the hot dogs. As a loss leader, it's sort of that one of their things with branding. And some of these Reddit traders are saying they're going to come in and buy 1,000 hot dogs at a time to try and squeeze Costco in some-- I don't know if anybody's actually going to go and do this.
- This is kind of funny and also kind of strange. But it's not in line with the original-- what I thought-- was the original Wallstreetbets movement. And that was geared towards trying to save companies, or invest in companies that had deep value, and not trying to short any particular company, make them go out of business. Costco is a household name. Is it a meme stock? No, it's way too big. But people care about it. I've eaten those hot dogs over the years.
So, yeah, if they want to go out and try to bankrupt Costco and force them to raise the price of their hot dogs, that's not going to be a popular thing. So I think they're going to lose on that front. But nevertheless, interesting to think about, and kind of a parallel with the Arizona Iced Tea, where they have maintained that at $0.99. Hopefully, they're not going after their-- I don't know if it's a public company.
- I don't think it's a public company.
- OK. Well, good for them.
- So that one they attack, I suppose.
- Yeah.
