shares of avis budget group inc took a breather wednesday after some wall street analysts recommended that investors who owned them should sell them as a “short squeeze” triggered an “unprecedented” rally in the previous session analyst ryan brinkman at jp morgan said the car rental company’s fundamentals are “stellar” but after the stock more than doubled on tuesday valuations led him to swing to bearish from bullish brinkman downgraded the stock two notches to underweight after being at overweight since august saying the large runup in the shares were likely triggered by a “short squeeze” and now more than reflects “attractive” companyspecific and industry fundamentals “while we had only recently upgraded avis shares to overweight…and fundamentals are the strongest they have ever been the unprecedented run up in avis shares which already stood at record levels even prior to tuesday’s meteoric rise prompt our downgrade to underweight including given the consideration that the shares may have risen in part for technical reasons apart from the fundamentals suggesting the potential to normalize lower over the short term” brinkman wrote in a note to clients he more than doubled his stock price target to 225 from 100 but the new target still implied 370 downside from tuesday’s closing price on tuesday the stock blasted 1083 higher to a record close of 35717 after paring an intraday gain of as much as 2179 as blowout thirdquarter results followed a recent sharp increase in short interest or bearish bets while the stock soared ahead of the results don’t miss opinion stocks don’t get more meme than avis also read it’s not a typo the dow transports really rose more than 1000 points because of avis’ stock deutsche bank’s chris woronka who noted in a research note ahead of avis’ earnings that short interest had increased as the stock rallied downgraded avis to sell after being at hold since october 2019 he raised his stock price target to 210 less than a week after he raised it to 119 from 92 “our first order of business is to emphasize that this downgrade is not a call to short avis’ stock” woronka wrote “simply put it is a view that investors who owned the stock prior to tuesday should take profits” he said he simply couldn’t justify “using any reasonable traditional valuation metric” the more than 10 billion in value generated by the stock’s rally on tuesday he acknowledges however that the “unnatural and volatile trading in the stock” coupled with high short interest could lead to additional gains based on technical or shareholder dynamics “but to reiterate if we were in the shoes of an institutional investor and owned the stock currently from a fundamental riskreward standpoint we would sell it” woronka wrote the stock has hiked up 8576 year to date through tuesday while the dow jones transportation average djt  of which avis is a component has climbed 362 and the dow jones industrial average djia has advanced 178