(Bloomberg) — Rocket Cos. fell premarket, halting a three-day rally driven by sentiment that the home-loan provider was the latest retail-trader favorite for its high short interest.
The stock fell as much as 9.2% after RBC Capital Markets downgraded its recommendation to sector perform from outperform, with a price target that suggests a 28% drop. It had gained as much as 17% earlier. While mortgage demand is expected to continue to boost growth, that is now more than being captured in its current valuation, analyst Daniel Perlin said in his report.
Rocket hit an all-time high Tuesday after CNBC mentioned the company as a possible new target among traders discussing stocks on Reddit. The stock has more than doubled since it went public in August and now has a market capitalization of about $83 billion.
“It seems heavy short interest in the stock was exposed, driving a jump at the open and the dam burst once heavy open interest in $30 call options were triggered, fuelling another dealer gamma squeeze like we have seen with GameStop,” Neil Wilson, chief market analyst for Markets.com, said in emailed comments.
Rocket carries 46% short interest as a percentage of float, according to S3 analytics. The analytics provider published a report Tuesday identifying exceptionally high trading and option volume for the Detroit-based company’s stock, alongside a large amount of short selling into the rally.
Reddit comment volume for Rocket surged to nearly 19% of total comments on the forum WallStreetBets Tuesday, according to SwaggyStocks, a ticker and sentiment tracker. Rocket was the fifth-most-mentioned company on the market social media platform Stocktwits yesterday, at 3% of 271,666 stories carried on Bloomberg.
Rocket’s jump may have been a matter of time, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ben Elliott. “Rocket has been a fringe meme stock for a while, so I figured something like this would happen eventually,” he said.
Rocket’s fundamentals, however, don’t support the 16-17x price-to-forward earnings multiple implied by its March 2 close, Elliott said in a note. “Yet surprisingly resilient earnings may support a re-rating of the massive, tech-focused, nonbank lenders like Rocket and UWM if they keep performing amid rising rates.”
(Updates share price moves and adds analyst commentary throughout.)
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