Jim Cramer pitches the Beyond Meat long thesis

Jim Cramer of CNBC Mad Money fame has never been one to shy away from bodacious market calls that appeal to as broad an investing demographic as possible. In his time, he has inspired everyone from Eric Cartman to your granny (probably) to take a flutter on the market.

But, today before US market open, we were struggling to get our heads around this tweet from the dome-headed financial news host.

What on earth is going on here?

One generous interpretation is that Cramer likes fake meat purveyor Beyond Meat’s stock. Why wouldn’t he? After all the $9bn “growth” company grew, err, 11 per cent last quarter making its valuation of 13 times forward revenues seem totally reasonable. Depending on how you spin it, anyway. So perhaps that’s it?

Or perhaps Cramer is not so subtly signalling to the Reddit retail trading army of r/WallStreetBets that the stock is ripe for a short-squeeze. After all, on Monday he did suggest it could be the next meme stock, like dying cinema chain AMC.

To be honest we don’t have a clue.

But if the latter is the case, the tendie-hungry masses seem to have got the message.

In early trading, Beyond Meat’s stock is up nine per cent to $138 on absolutely no news. They did touch $144 earlier.

Cool.

Here’s an idea, though. If we (and yes, that means even FT Alphaville) want to shed the scaly reputation of professional financial journalism perhaps it is better if we don’t go around suggestively egging on the masses into so-called meme securities?

Actually, we’re talking about CNBC here aren’t we? Sorry. Our mistake.