MW Opendoor sees epic late-day wipeout during wild, roller-coaster day

By James Rogers and Joseph Adinolfi

Meme-stock mania is back, baby

In the span of about a week, Opendoor Technologies Inc. has gone from a struggling former pandemic-era darling to the talk of the U.S. equity market.

Shares of the iBuyer company went on a wild ride Monday, fueled by a surge of trading volume and a burst of activity in options contracts tied to the stock. At their peak, shares were up more than 120% on the day, before a sudden afternoon selloff saw Opendoor $(OPEN.UK)$ erase much of its earlier gains within the span of a few minutes. Shares were halted for volatility around 3 p.m. Eastern, data from Nasdaq showed.

See: Meme-stock mania returns as retail traders pump shares of this heavily shorted pandemic-era darling

Opendoor ended up closing at $3.21 a share, tallying a daily gain of nearly 43%, FactSet data showed. That marked the stock's highest closing level since February 2024, according to FactSet.

One trader who spoke with MarketWatch on Monday said the abrupt nature of the afternoon selloff had the appearance of a big holder dumping their shares.

Eric Jackson, founder of EMJ Capital, reiterated during a conversation with MarketWatch that he is a believer in the company's long-term potential, and that he has been surprised by comments comparing Opendoor to so-called meme stocks like GameStop Corp. (GME).

"I didn't know this thing was going to be a meme stock, I view this as a real business," Jackson told MarketWatch.

Asked if he had sold any of his shares in the company on Monday, Jackson declined to comment. But he said his position in the stock was a small portion of the overall float.

Derek Horstmeyer, a professor of finance at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University, said Opendoor has exhibited many of the classic meme-stock traits during its recent runup.

"Opendoor has many similarities to the GME surge five years ago," Horstmeyer told MarketWatch via email. "It has high short interest, a plunging stock price over the past few years, huge speculation on WSB Reddit, and the recent endorsement of an activist investor (EMJ Capital). These exact components were in place 5 years ago for GME."

Short interest as a percentage of GameStop's public float of shares is 21.4%. Opendoor's short interest was recently north of 20%, according to FactSet data.

More than 1.8 billion shares of Opendoor changed hands on Monday, a record for the stock, according to preliminary numbers from Dow Jones Market Data. That is substantially higher than the company's current public float, which stands just above 634 million shares, according to FactSet data. Public float measures the number of shares available to be traded by the investing public.

Trading in bullish call options and bearish put options tied to Opendoor also hit record highs on Monday. Calls outnumbered puts by nearly 2-to-1, with nearly 2.2 million bullish contracts traded, preliminary data from Dow Jones showed.

The turnaround for Opendoor comes less than two months after the company received a Nasdaq delisting notice after its share price fell below $1 for 30 consecutive business days.

On June 6, Opendoor said it was seeking approval for a reverse stock split, which raises the price of the stock by reducing the number of shares outstanding. The move was seen as an effort to get Opendoor back in compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements. But on X, EMJ's Jackson has been campaigning to convince the company not to follow through with the reverse split.

Social-media platforms popular with amateur investors were flooded with messages related to Opendoor on Monday. Reddit's WallStreetBets subreddit was one example, as investors bragged about their gains in a flurry of posts.

GameStop (GME), like its fellow original meme stock AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. $(AMC.AU)$, was reeling from the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns prior to the 2021 frenzy. However, retail investors, most notably influential trader Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty, sent the stocks skyrocketing in the early months of that year. By comparison, Opendoor saw its shares peak in early 2021 at above $30 a share.

Jackson has said on X that most investors had written off Opendoor and Wall Street wasn't paying attention anymore. However, his firm's AI model had flagged Opendoor "a few weeks ago."

The fund manager has cited Opendoor's aggressive cost cutting, its lack of national competitors and the potential for revenue growth as factors working in its favor.

He is keeping an eye out for Opendoor's next earnings report, due in early August. His hope is that the company reports what would be its first-ever quarter of positive Ebitda.

Tom Bruni of Stocktwits told MarketWatch on Monday that the Opendoor ticker had been the most active on their platform. He said the stock has seen a surge of interest since July 14.

Opendoor shares were up by just over 100% year to date as of Monday's close, but they have risen by more than 500% since the start of July, FactSet data showed.

-James Rogers -Joseph Adinolfi

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 21, 2025 17:16 ET (21:16 GMT)

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