Koss stock rose 480% Wednesday driven by online traders

Koss Corp. stock continued its ascent Wednesday as share rose 480% while the market overall was down.

Koss stock was trading at $58 a share when the market closed Wednesday, an increase of 480%. It got as high as $66 a share in the afternoon. At the same time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 both ended the day down more than 2%.

Koss' sudden rise is driven by online traders who have banded together.

Koss is one of a few stocks being targeted by traders who organize on social media. The traders, like the Reddit group r/WallStreetBets, pick stocks to buy and drive up prices. This is not traditional investing.

The idea is to buy shares of stock to raise the prices and force short sellers — traders who bet that shares will fall — to cover their losses. This drives up the price even more.

The video game retailer GameStop Corp. is another heavily shorted stock targeted by these traders. GameStop stock closed at $347.51 Wednesday, up from less than $20 a share at the beginning of the month. AMC Entertainment was up more than 300% to close at nearly $20 a share.

The Koss stock price first started to increase late Monday. It doubled overnight Tuesday from $6 to $12 a share. On Wednesday, trading opened at $17.52 a share.

The sharp increases were not tied to the actions of the company, such as the announcement of new products or reporting of quarterly earnings.

Koss last reported a 3.7% decrease in sales in the three months ending Sept. 30 in its most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It was the sixth consecutive quarter that the company reported a decline in sales.

In the last five years, the stock has never traded above $5 a share. For most of the last year, the stock traded around $2 a share. The 52-week low is 80 cents a share.

Sarah Hauer can be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram @HauerSarah and Twitter @SarahHauer. Subscribe to her weekly newsletter Be MKE at jsonline.com/bemke.