The bears are biting into Beyond Meat.
Shares of the fake meat company are down over 32% for the month of October, adding to a nearly 55% drop from the stock's July highs.
Friday's nearly 1% decline added to the pain, leaving investors wondering what to do with the stock ahead of its third-ever earnings report Monday and its IPO lockup expiration — after which roughly 80% of its outstanding shares will become eligible to trade on the public market . The latter happens Tuesday.
One such pro — JC O'Hara, chief market technician at MKM Partners — foresees more downside.
"We saw a parabolic rise" in the stock in July, O'Hara told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Friday, pointing to a chart of Beyond Meat since its May 2 initial public offering. "The stock went from [$]25 to 240, ran out of buyers at 240, and you started to see some profit-taking slowly occur."
Beyond Meat closed at $100.81 on Friday, still up over 300% from its IPO price.
"That profit-taking was relatively calm, but that really started to accelerate a few weeks ago," O'Hara said. "And — no coincidence — it started to accelerate as Beyond Meat broke technical support at 140. That is a level where over the last few months buyers have historically shown up and supported the stock. Buyers failed to show up this time."
Selling accelerated as a result, leading to several painful months for the company's shares. And while the stock has filled in the gap higher than it made in June, it's likely to spend some more time declining, O'Hara said.
"I'm looking for $85," the technical analyst said. "That is where I think the next support level should start to pick up."
That would be a nearly 16% decline from Beyond Meat's Friday closing price.
Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management, said that while the short-sellers might be feeling "gleeful" now, the bull case for Beyond Meat could shape up in the near future.
The fate of Beyond Meat and rival Impossible Foods is really going to come down to taste, Schlossberg said in the same "Trading Nation" interview..
"The bottom line is that Beyond and Impossible have been the first real true replicators of the taste of meat," he said. "The value here is really from the producers' point of view, because both alternative meat products are much easier to manage from a point of view of spoilage. This is why White Castle loves it. This is why Dunkin' loves it."
If consumers also love it, they could drive alternative meats to take up roughly 13% of the market, "in which case whatever dip you see in Beyond Meat, long term, is probably very much a buy," Schlossberg said.
"Fundamentally, from a very, very long-term perspective, it's just starting out," he said. "I think this is going to be the story to come as this is going to be very much a part of the consumer diet going forward."
