Shares of Beyond Meat (NASDAQ: BYND) jumped as much as 12.6% early Wednesday, then settled to trade up around 6.7% as of 2:30 p.m. ET despite a lack of company-specific news.

As one of the most highly shorted stocks on the market, however, it seems likely Beyond Meat is benefiting from a potential short squeeze as bearish investors scramble to close their short positions in many beaten-down stocks.

Late yesterday, Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna, singled out Beyond Meat as one of the market's most-shorted stocks, with an exceptionally high 43.1% of its entire float -- that is, its shares available for trading -- currently being sold short by traders betting against the stock. But that percentage has also declined slightly over the past couple of weeks, from just under 44% at the end of October, indicating some short sellers may have already begun to (or at the very least are preparing to) close their positions.

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Source Fool.com