A College Student Cashed Out a $110 Million Profit on Bed Bath & Beyond - After Piling $25 Million Into the Meme Stock Jake Freeman's fund revealed a 6.2% stake in the retailer in late July, then sold it on Tuesday.

By Theron Mohamed

This story originally appeared on Business Insider

Richard Levine/Corbis/Getty Images via BI

A 20-year-old college student raked in an estimated $110 million profit by selling Bed Bath & Beyond shares this week, capitalizing on the homewares retailer becoming the latest meme stock to multiply in value in a matter of days.

Jake Freeman, the head of Freeman Capital Management, revealed he owned nearly 5 million Bed Bath & Beyond shares, or 6.2% of the company, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on July 21. He sold the entire position on Tuesday, he disclosed in another filing this week.

Bed Bath & Beyond stock more than tripled in price from under $6 to over $20 during that period, as retail traders piled in hoping it would skyrocket in value like GameStop, AMC, and other meme stocks. Freeman spent about $25 million on his stake, or less than $5.50 a share, and sold it for north of $130 million on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported.

"I certainly did not expect such a vicious rally upwards," Freeman told the newspaper. "I thought this was going to be a six-months-plus play," he continued, adding that he was "really shocked that it went up so fast."

Freeman is an applied math and economics major at the University of Southern California, and co-published a paper titled "Irreducible Risks of Hedging a Bond with a Default Swap" at the age of 16. He told the FT that he has invested alongside his uncle for years, previously interned at a hedge fund named Volaris Capital, and mostly raised the money for his Bed Bath & Beyond bet from friends and family.

He appears to have lucked out with the timing of his sale. Bed Bath & Beyond stock fell as much as 19% on Wednesday after the retailer's largest shareholder and GameStop's chairman, Ryan Cohen, disclosed he intended to dump his entire 12% position in the company.

Bed Bath & Beyond shares had spiked on Tuesday after Cohen confirmed he still held bullish call options on the stock. Cohen helped spark GameStop's surge in January 2021, and kickstarted the wider meme-stock boom, by investing in the video-game retailer and pushing for changes at the company.

Freeman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Editor's Pick

Related Topics

Business News

Apple Moves to Sever Ties With Goldman Sachs — Here's What That Means for Apple Card and Savings Holders

The end may be near for one of the most prominent alliances between a technology firm and a banking institution.

Marketing

5 Link-Building Tips to Help You Rank on Page 1

Link building is one of the most challenging parts of any SEO strategy. Make it easier with five tried-and-tested strategies for building quality backlinks in 2023.

Marketing

5 Scrappy Ways to Create Quick Marketing Wins

Marketers are under pressure to create both short-term and long-term successes. Here's how you can create quick wins easily alongside your bigger strategy.

Marketing

How Modern Technology is Rewriting the Rules of Marketing

Over the past decade, we've witnessed a whirlwind of transformative changes that have redefined the very essence of digital marketing.

Leadership

How to Put the "Fun" Back into Your Business Fundamentals

It's time for business leaders to inject some fun into the fundamentals of a flexible working world.