Oprah Buys 10 Of Weight Watchers And Stock Skyrockets Instantly Makes Her Even More Insanely Rich

Given Oprah’s proven ability to drive her legions of fans to spend money on almost anything, it’s no wonder that the news has people optimistic about the future of Weight Watchers, but financial experts aren’t of the opinion that the jump in Weight Watchers stock can simply be attributed to Winfrey’s publicly joining forces with the company. Another factor in the startling spike is what’s called a “short squeeze,” which happens when a bunch of short-sellers (who profit whenever a stock goes down in value, not up) are faced with a steep climb in price, and have to buy a lot of the stock in question to cut their losses. This can cause a stock already poised for a big jump, like, say, Weight Watchers, to go up even more in value. As for Oprah, money was the farthest thing from her mind when she made the decision to add her engine to the Weight Watchers train, at least if her press release on the subject is any indication. Here’s an excerpt: That being said, the multi-billionaire made a lot of money even by Oprah standards in her first day as a Weight Watchers board member and stockholder. Oprah bought 6.36 million shares in Weight Watchers at roughly $7 per share for a total outlay of around $44 million. At the end of yesterday’s trading session, the stock closed at $14 per share, so Oprah basically doubled her money in a few hours. Then the stock jumped another 30% Tuesday morning and is trading at roughly $18.3 a share as of this writing. At $18.3, Oprah’s 6.36 million shares are worth $116.4 million, giving her a $72 million profit in under 24 hours.  That’s enough to boost her net worth from $3.1 billion to $3.2 billion, assuming these gains hold.