Shares of Overstock.com briefly surged more than 23 percent Monday after Morgan Stanley Investment Management disclosed an 11.4 percent stake in the company.
The investment management division of Morgan Stanley has $447 billion in assets under management and its products include mutual funds and hedge funds. The unit said in a 13G filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it owned nearly 2.87 million shares of Overstock.com as of Nov. 30.
A 13G filing is typically used for passive stakes of between 5 and 20 percent of a company. Representatives for Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Overstock.com did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
With Monday's gains, Overstock.com shares were on pace for their best day since Nov. 9. The stock leaped 30.7 percent that day, after D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte predicted more than 60 percent in gains for it. Forte pointed to indications on Overstock's third-quarter earnings call that the company could sell its home goods e-commerce business to focus on bitcoin's blockchain technology through its Medici Ventures division.
Forte maintained his $85 price target on Monday, still nearly 52 percent above Monday's session high of $56.05 a share.
Overstock's gains accelerated in the last few months after news that the company is planning to launch a licensed digital coin trading platform through its subsidiary tZero and raise funds through an initial coin offering. The shares are up more than 200 percent this year.
Bitcoin leaped more than 9.5 percent to above $16,500 on Monday, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index, after the launch of bitcoin futures on the Cboe Futures Exchange Sunday night.
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