---
type: "Topics"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/topics/40131231.md"
description: "These past two days, if you don't mention $Avis.US in the group chat, you're out of the loop. For the entire month of April, it rose nearly 390%—not a typo, three hundred and ninety percent. On April 21st, it peaked at $692.70, only to drop -40.88% the next day. I've saved a screenshot of the candlestick chart for future reference, for when I forget how absurd the market can be. Many people are actually familiar with Avis; it's that car rental company at the airport with the green and yellow logo. One of the three major US car rental giants, it operates across three price tiers: Avis, Budget, and Payless, plus Zipcar. It makes money from both ends: airport travelers on vacation and corporate business rentals reimbursed for employees. The business model isn't novel; the real profit comes from travel demand plus the residual value difference when selling used cars, making it essentially a cyclical, capital-intensive play. Over the past three years, this stock mostly hovered around a few dozen dollars. So why did it take off in April? It has absolutely nothing to do with fundamentals. It's purely a short squeeze. Just look at two numbers: short interest at 25.55%, and a float of 35.32 million shares. This combination is the textbook squeeze setup—heavy short bets on a small stock, fueled by retail sentiment, forcing shorts to cover, which pushes the price higher, triggering the next wave of short covering, creating a cycle until the energy runs out. Everyone knows the GME playbook, and with CAR, even the meme stock sentiment was in place. So that $692 on April 21st wasn't pricing what Avis the company is worth; it was pricing "when will the next short seller capitulate." Once the energy dissipated, the -40.88% on April 22nd was the answer. My own stance is simpler: chasing this kind of stock is betting that someone more reckless than you will jump in after you. Gambling and investing are not the same thing; I don't play. If you really want to participate, don't touch the spot price; instead, buy a small position in puts or put spreads to bet on the moment the squeeze unwinds—at least your maximum loss is calculable."
datetime: "2026-04-23T10:33:47.000Z"
locales:
  - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/40131231.md)
  - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/40131231.md)
  - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/40131231.md)
author: "[水天异色](https://longbridge.com/en/profiles/27514818.md)"
---

# These past two days, if you don't mention $Avis.US…


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