A lot about 2019 was stupid in ways that seemed obvious at the time. WeWork’s IPO. BaFin’s short-selling ban. Facebook’s digital currency. Green Book’s Oscar for best picture. Abiy Ahmed’s Nobel Peace Prize. Boris Johnson. Lex Greensill. Baby Yoda. Etc.

Even in this crowded field of idiocy, Beyond Meat stands out. Shares in the shamburger maker rose more than eightfold in the weeks after its May 2019 flotation, its market cap topping out at nearly $14bn. By the end of that year the stock had dropped by two-thirds, and by the end of 2022 it was down another four fifths. It last traded above the IPO price in August.

A simple explanation for what went wrong is that people didn’t buy enough stuff. At flotation, the consensus was for Beyond Meat to turn free-cashflow positive by 2022 on compound annual sales growth of approximately 40 per cent. Instead, the company reported a 10 per cent drop in sales last year. That was after just 14 per cent growth in 2021, which had been helped along by keen inventory management.