My Not So Short Story on GME

Not an expert, but all day today seemed like a short ladder attack. And all the BS about silver. And these stories about how they miraculously closed so many of the shorts without there being a ton of volume. Lots of troll accounts on WSB popping up. Sure seems like a coordinated effort by the HFs to convince everyone to give up. I don’t have a lot of skin in the game, but the next few days look really promising to me. Guess we’ll see!

2 hours ago, fakebusiness said:

Can someone tell me a highly speculative stock I should buy? I want to burn some $$

FUTU

GME Short interest down to 39% of free-floating shares from over 114% in mid-January from massive covering in past week.

Now is a question of when the big boys are going to decide to crush the retail guys who decide to stay in too long. I would expect some motion up to try and get more retails on board and more option call buying before they just tank this thing back down below $20.

If interest really under 40%, going to be hard for retail group to have any real pull unless they are willing to lose everything.

35 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Now is a question of when the big boys are going to decide to crush the retail guys who decide to stay in too long.

At the end of the day, isn't a learning experience what everyone was looking for?

2 hours ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

GME Short interest down to 39% of free-floating shares from over 114% in mid-January from massive covering in past week.

Now is a question of when the big boys are going to decide to crush the retail guys who decide to stay in too long. I would expect some motion up to try and get more retails on board and more option call buying before they just tank this thing back down below $20.

If interest really under 40%, going to be hard for retail group to have any real pull unless they are willing to lose everything.

Plenty of autists willing to lose it all.

5 minutes ago, fakebusiness said:

Plenty of autists willing to lose it all.

excuse you, sir, we're just harvesting tax write-offs.

GME Short interest down to 39% of free-floating shares from over 114% in mid-January from massive covering in past week.
Now is a question of when the big boys are going to decide to crush the retail guys who decide to stay in too long. I would expect some motion up to try and get more retails on board and more option call buying before they just tank this thing back down below $20.
If interest really under 40%, going to be hard for retail group to have any real pull unless they are willing to lose everything.

Got any proof they’re down to 39%? Because these guys sure seem to be putting a lot of effort into making the retailers give up.

With low volume that we saw, is it really possible that they covered that much short position?

The short float got up to 140%. The shorts can get the float down below 100%, but they can never get it to 0% with all the synthetic shares out there. That's why it was such a big deal. There are more shares committed to buyers than there are existing shares. That situation needs to be made whole somehow. Some shorts need the share price to drop below $50 before they can start covering, as well, lest they face bankruptcy.

44 minutes ago, Eastwood said:

Some shorts need the share price to drop below $50 before they can start covering, as well, lest they face bankruptcy.

How do we know that? Is it possible to know price points shares were shorted at? 

3 minutes ago, Burt Macklin said:

How do we know that? Is it possible to know price points shares were shorted at? 

I'm not sure what real time data the funds have access to, but people have been pouring through this data...

https://www.sec.gov/data/foiadocsfailsdatahtm

Failure to deliver: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/failuretodeliver.asp

Quote

Whenever a trade is made, both parties in the transaction are contractually obligated to transfer either cash or assets before the settlement date. Subsequently, if the transaction is not settled, one side of the transaction has failed to deliver. Failure to deliver can also occur if there is a technical problem in the settlement process carried out by the respective clearing house.

When naked short selling occurs, an individual agrees to sell a stock that neither they nor their associated broker possess, and the individual has no way to substantiate their access to such shares. The average individual is incapable of doing this kind of trade, but an individual working as a proprietary trader for a trading firm and risking their own capital, may have the ability to carry out such an order. Though it would be considered illegal for them to do so, some such individuals or institutions may believe the company they short will go out of business, and thus in a naked short sale they may be able to make a profit with no accountability.

Subsequently, the pending failure to deliver creates what are called "phantom shares" in the marketplace, which may dilute the price of the underlying stock. In other words, the buyer on the other side of such trades may own shares, on paper, which do not actually exist.

If you crack open the Zip files on the SEC page linked above and Ctrl+F search for GME, you can put together a list of number of shares and strike price for failed deliveries. Here's a watered down version of what GME looked like on that list in December, being date/ticker/number of shares:

20201201, GME, 91971
20201202, GME, 1061397
20201203, GME, 1787191
20201204, GME, 999475
20201207, GME, 1002379
20201208, GME, 872292
20201209, GME, 721361
20201210, GME, 605975
20201211, GME, 880063
20201214, GME, 284296
20201215, GME, 170655
20201216, GME, 10784
20201217, GME, 500162
20201218, GME, 872523
20201221, GME, 619404
20201222, GME, 744478
20201223, GME, 700507
20201224, GME, 839699
20201228, GME, 351316
20201229, GME, 283294
20201230, GME, 648513
20201231, GME, 228358

That's a lot of shares, Flip Flop. All in the $13 - $20 range. If you crack open the Zip files on the SEC page linked above and Ctrl+F search for GME, you can put together a list of number of shares and strike price. It's more of the same in the first half of January, but I don't want to Long Cat the thread. We are waiting on the second half of January numbers.

Again, this isn't Retail's fault. Retail can't produce failed to deliver numbers like that. The brokers can, though.

Spoiler

Posted by

u/bcRIPster

 

 7 hours ago

 

82981028244

Follow the crumbs. $GME exposed the meta.

A friend of mine just sent this over to me. He's a noob and I'm a noob but in the true spirit of karma whoring for fake internet points I wanted to share and they said it's my funeral. Note we are both total retards, noobs and have no skin in the game cuz we too poor and can only afford plain popcorn, but we desperately want to see WSB succeed and Power to the Players! Do not take this as financial advice or god have mercy on your soul.

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Uh guys… so we may see a crash that makes Enron look like a joke. There could be more than a short going on here, and more than firms pulling capital from other companies to cover.

I don’t mean to go all conspiracy theory on you, but hear me out.... I think everything is going so off-the-rails not because of the short, but because Vanguard, Fidelity and BlackRock have sold more stock than exists. This is illegal (duh) but it has happened lots of times in the past. In fact, we didn't have real laws against it until 2008. We may see some bizarre moves if WSB doesn't sell, because some people need to hide some crimes. No joke. Here's why I think this may be the case:

---------- The Background ----------

Read this first to understand how naked shorts work:

https://www.sec.gov/about/offices/ocie/options-trading-risk-alert.pdf

Basically, to short a stock, you must “borrow” the stock from another account, usually something like a margin account. This is something that typically the clearing house does on behest of the fund doing the shorting. Most people don’t even know when their shares are being borrowed by a hedge fund for the purposes of shorting.

A “naked short” is when you short a stock, but don’t confirm that the stock you are borrowing actually exists. This can happen when a clearing house either purposefully or inadvertently (ahem, sure) lends the same stock more than once. This basically clones the stock, just like an item cloning glitch in a video game. There are now two copies of the same stock in existence being actively traded… at least temporarily. Hold that thought.

Naked shorts can be devastating to the company being shorted, as not only do they lose liquidity because of the short, the cloned stocks serve to dilute the value of the real stocks being held by artificially increasing the number of stocks being traded. Especially for small companies doing initial investment rounds, this practically guarantees bankruptcy: the diluted value limits the amount of capital they can raise, as the company never sees the cash from the cloned stock.

Now, after the 2008 crash the SEC in theory made this illegal. Obviously, this practice kills companies if the short succeeds or destroys markets if the short doesn’t succeed. Either way, someone gets hurt.

HOWEVER, there’s a catch: Because hedge funds and clearing houses are permitted to operate behind closed doors, the SEC can only detect a naked short when a “failure to deliver” occurs. When someone calls the short, either because of a buy or because someone withdraws the right to loan their shares, the person shorting then has 3 days to deliver. If they can’t deliver the share (because it doesn’t exist) within 3 days, then this gets reported as a “failure to deliver”. Now, the SEC may look past a few of these because floats do happen, but too many and the SEC is obligated to open an investigation.

But of course, that never happens. The clearinghouse only has to report the net deliveries, not the actual transactions. This means that as long as there is someone buying on the day the failure-to-deliver would occur, the clearinghouse can roll the transaction forward… basically just like floating a check. The non-existent cloned stock is bought with the new buy, and the sell of real shares that should have covered that buy is left open but doesn’t need to be fulfilled for three more days. The clock resets. This is sort of like somebody-I-know used to do by floating checks back and forth between two different bank accounts: keeping the money in the air for several weeks until payday by continually writing checks to cover checks. Super unethical, but does work.

But, this can’t be continued indefinitely. There are SEC rules that make it tough to do this for longer than 21 days. IANAL, I don’t know every loophole, but that’s my understanding.

This is why after 2008 it became so important for the hedge fund to bankrupt the target company. If the company goes bankrupt, then the shares cease to be and the books never resolve. Even some kinds of restructuring can keep the books from resolving. It’s still possible to cover this without bankrupting the company if you can get enough people to sell, but it’s easier to crash the company and just make it all go away while pocketing cash from more shares than were ever real.

---------- The WSB Play ----------

Ok, now read this:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4370860-gamestop-short-squeeze

This was basically the original WSB plan back from October. Don't worry about the plan... we know what's going on here already. Melvin Capital shorted by 140% which is more than the float. Gamestop had enough cash to cover debt so it seemed unlikely they would fail unless the hedge funds forced it to. Squeeze looks obvious when you lay it out that way.

BUT, there is one chart here that is super important when folks were trying to figure this out: look at the chart for institutional ownership!

https://i.imgur.com/Jh5AI8V.png

The top three names on that chart are Vanguard, Blackrock and Fidelity. As is suggested by the author, there is a strong likelihood that the top holders already loaned out all their shares to Melvin Capital. The shares had to come from somewhere, and this is the only place they could have come.

This is why some people thought this was a good move. Not just because there was a short, but because they could see that all the shares had already been “borrowed” which would force the hedge fund to buy at any price. There were simply no more shares available to option for any other kind of fuckery.

---------- The Expected Response ----------

Okay, so WSB made their move. And predictably Robinhood and a bunch of trading platforms cut the ability to buy GME. Seems obvious enough as a strategy to stem the bleeding, regardless of whether it is coming from Robinhood or, as they claim, the brokerage above them limiting trades for reasons. Whatever. Either way, this is an obvious response.

Likewise, there have been numerous pushes from the hedge funds to either convince WSB the positions are closed, or to convince them to change their position from GME to Silver.

Despite what the news is reporting, no one in WSB appears to be buying silver. Maybe someone is, but it ain’t them. I did a site-wide search for silver, then pulled the post history for all the accounts that made the posts--of which there are shockingly few compared to what the news media is implying. The only accounts promoting this appear to be mostly bots: they became reddit premium within the last week, or they are necro accounts that have no posts for two or three years until suddenly dozens of silver related posts in the last few days. Conversely, there are been numerous long standing accounts warning others that these silver posts are bots.

None of this is unexpected. Bots and media manipulation have been par for the course for political bullshit for the last few years.

Boots on the ground, I have literally no idea where the news media is getting this story other than a change in silver pricing. I am not seeing any such discussion in related communities, and certainly none that pre-dates the news stories! To be fair and avoid conspiracy: I don’t hang out on twitter. There are retail traders outside of Reddit, and perhaps the media is clumping multiple groups together and mistaking Twitter for Reddit. Wouldn’t be the first time. Even on 4chan /b/ is not /pol/ and so on. People make that mistake all the time, so the misrepresentation may be entirely unintentional. I know the internet is a weird weird place and not everyone gets how it works.

The last expected response is the fact that many of the hedge funds bought new short positions, especially assuming that most of Reddit would sell on Friday. (Which they did not) There are additional short positions held that expect WSB to fold within the next week. This coincides with the news reports expecting people to try to collect their profits. Of course, many people don't intend to do that. They aren't worried about the profits they want to see hedge funds go down.

But all this movement leads to an obvious question: If there are no shares available to borrow, then what are they borrowing against for the short??

---------- Clearing Houses are Sus ----------

Okay, soooo…. We expect Wall Street to prevent buying GME, which they have; and to unleash bots to change sentiment, which they have; and to promote news stories to try to change the situation, which they have.

BUT, with all of this, there are two retail trading platforms that are still allowing GME trades: Vanguard and Fidelity. There is also one firm that started buying GameStop themselves five days ago: BlackRock. Sound like a familiar list?????? These are the firms that held the shares that the hedge funds were borrowing against to short.

Now, if all the funds are trying to stop the bleeding, WHY would these firms still allow trading when no one else is… much less start buying themselves?

Unless…. The shares DON’T EXIST.

You can’t float a check between two accounts without writing another check. Someone needs to buy the shares in order to push the failure-to-deliver of the non-existent cloned stock into the future, otherwise the gig is up and the SEC finds out. If Vanguard and Fidelity become the only source for Redditors to buy from, then they can keep moving the doomsday clock forward. BlackRock can do the same thing by buying the stock themselves. Not as good a position, but not a lot of other choice if they need the books to read clean. Ok, someone with more experience than me can surely explain this better as there are some gotchas, but that's the basic gist.

More proof those shares don’t exist? This academic paper from last year gives a clue:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3673531

Even if you own shares, you can’t vote in a shareholder’s meeting if your shares have been loaned out. Less than half of GameStop shareholders were eligible to vote by April of last year, with even fewer by August! There were so many shares borrowed SIX MONTHS AGO that it was affecting GameStop’s ability to hold a quorum among shareholders.

Now the paper was only concerned about how short selling was affecting company’s ability to administer. The idea that these were naked shorts never came up AFAIK. But knowing what we do now, this seems increasingly likely.

Also, for good measure beyond academia, this was in the news from last year:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-investing-giants-gave-away-voting-power-ahead-of-a-shareholder-fight-11591793863

If you look at the volume that WSB has bought since then, and the amount held in options, and the amount of shares that have been borrowed against in the last week or two as hedge funds have placed a second set of shorts… well… it sure looks like there are way more shares on the market THAN EXIST. Of course, without having the records from the clearing houses, AFAIK there's no way to know for sure. Only the SEC can do that.

I don’t mean the bet WSB played… that Marvin had 140% of the FLOAT. I mean that Vanguard, Fidelity and BlackRock have sold more than the TOTAL SHARES that EXIST.

That's a completely different problem and it's punishable by jail time. Not a joke. It's basically counterfeiting stock shares, although that's not the terminology used. If this is true, who knows how many other times they’ve done this. Or maybe it's not true, and they just really like the stock??? If BlackRock started buying five days ago, and the longest they can likely do this is 21 days, then the doomsday clock doesn’t run out until at least February 17th. If Wall Street can get WSB to sell before then, then they won’t get caught and won’t go to jail. But if they don’t…. well, this will make Enron look like chump change.

If enough people hold until the end of February, and this is truly the situation, then there is a chance that major parts of Wall Street are going to IMPLODE.

---------- The Conclusion ----------

Apes need diamond hands until the end of February in order to get the SEC involved, most likely somewhere between Feb 17th - 19th. Whether or not this will happen is anybody's guess, but if it does all heck may break loose!

Wall Street will probably do everything in their power to prevent that. There are too many top players involved. Crazy moves are likely because stock brokers are smooshy and jail is uncomfortable.

This may effect the market. (Duh) Bloomberg may be correct, but not at all for the reasons stated. But, that said, I wouldn't panic if it does. I think it will be fine in the long run, but that's a whole other set of reasoning for another day.

Standard Disclaimer: This is not financial or legal advice. I am a retard and I have no idea what I am talking about. This is entirely speculation.

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Edit: here is the link to my second attempt to post to r/WSB, maybe a mod can reverse the removal? The post still shows listed on my end: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/la9ms9/follow_the_crumbs_gme_exposed_the_meta/

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Edit 2: Ok so don't ask me for stock advice. I don't know stocks and neither does my friend. We both think holding is the right move but beyond that we don't know and could even be wrong about that. And furthermore I don't want this to come off like we're accusing these companies of nefarious deeds. We don't know what is going on. The data is sus. The activities are sus. Google is your friend and the post tries to list sources for the research. Do your own research though! For ducks sake this is a rando post on UserSub. I'm happy to see the love but this is a one shot research dump by someone who knows nothing about this topic.

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Edit 3: u/traveljg has commented that Blackrock is on the record for selling not buying but I don't know enough about any of this to challenge the idea one way or another and my friend is off on some other crusade at this point so he's worthless for questions. This is why it is SUPER important that you do your own research and not take advice from a rando.

reddit thread on shenanigans and still there's big hope ^

 

S3 data says nah games already half over and stock price tanked while at it

 

nobody trusts shit right now

 

 

I read that the shorted shares were around 61 million...? Volume was way higher than that earlier last week meaning those initial shares can easily get covered with that volume. The stock is very liquid.

Daily volume: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GME/history/

Only thing that is curious to me at this point was the failure to deliver thing. Not sure if that means anything.

Was holding through at least Tuesday thinking there still might be juice in the hype aspect. 

Without going down the conspiracy rabbit hole my thoughts are that the cats out of the bag at this point. Sure Melvin was punished by Joe Redditor but other billionaires and finance guys with access to billions are all over what's going on at this point and most seem to have stayed away outside of free publicity being for the 'little guy'. If it was as easy just busy as many shares as possible and name your price in 3 weeks we would have seen gigantic whales go in on the long side.

So think most of the value at this point would be in hype and riding the volatility. 

There's a interesting parallel between the invisible machinations of GME, and silver (/SI if you want to sound like  you have a Bloomberg terminal)

There's a long-standing, multi-year theory that the supply of silver is manipulated -- theres less actual silver than the institutions represent on paper --  and a run on physical silver would also cause a gigantic squeeze.  Guys who have traded silver futures experienced that when theres a run on the price, "they" raise the margin requirements, and basically force the traders out of their bullish position. 

Now that there is a run on Gamestop, the margins requirements get cranked on the brokers, limiting their clients ability to trade GME, and effectively pushing them out of bullish positions.  Again. 

The argument on paper is that there is lag in the trade settlement, and brokers and clearing houses dont want to be left holding the bag if clients pay for $400 a share and then panic if goes to $100/share and they can't collect the $300.  But if clients are NOT trading on margin - if its cash - you deduct $400 out of cash balance of your client, you no longer have risk.  Anyway

another broker gets the "squeeze"

 

https://twitter.com/freetrade/status/1356566554901626885

 

 

 

Freetrade

 

@freetrade

 

Latest update Our US execution partner has restricted buys on $GME, $AMC, and $NOK today. If you placed a buy order overnight, these will be cancelled by 3 PM today.

 

12:34 PM · Feb 2, 2021·Twitter Web App

Hard to believe that so many of the short sellers jumped out of their positions so quickly. I understand the short term cost to them to keep a short position but they were buying back in at the worst time possible. Especially given that no one thought 300+ was sustainable.

were they really that scared that WSB and other investors were going to take GME to 1000?

That all depends on whether you believe the shorts actually got out. A lot of people aren't buying that story. No doubt they've gotten out of SOME of them, but I don't see how it could be nearly as much as what a few outlets have reported.

nobody knows unless we see their trading record, but its likely many of the "original" shorts (in double digits price) covered days ago, and replaced by new shorts around this triple digit price range.  And they could be anywhere from slight loss to bigly profitable at the moment.

Yep, think its likely the original shorts mostly got out and new ones got in closer to the top. 

Robinhood and other brokers should see jail time (I know that will never happen). 

Mark Cuban on WSB wrapping up his AMA:

Final thought. First thanks for the great questions. Thanks for changing the game. Thanks for taking on Wall Street. Thanks for making kids around the country if not the world( including my son and daughter). WSB changed the game far more than everyone on this board will ever get credit for.

That said, you will do all this again. You will go after WS and the next time you will be smarter. There was only one thing that messed you all up: RobinHood and the other zero commission brokers that everyone used didnt have enough capital to fund the fight. They let you down in a big way.

When you load back up, fight a broker with TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in assets on their balance sheet. Someone that can be there when the fight starts and wont blink an eye.

No disruption is easy or happens in a straight line. Stay with it. I am a believer

now would be a really a good time for cohen and the management to start executing their shelf offering make a statement.

they couldnt really have issued shares at the midst of the euphoria.  they risked being responsible for poking a needle in the balloon and possibly considered breach of duty to their shareholders.

now that the price has --seemingly -- stabilized, they could announce issuance of the shares and make a short but well crafted statement about how the proceeds can shore up their balance sheet and these are their great plans for the future of the company, yadda yadda yadda.  would be a nice positive jolt to the stakeholder, and would not seem exploitative of the price.

2 hours ago, 52-80 said:

nobody knows unless we see their trading record, but its likely many of the "original" shorts (in double digits price) covered days ago, and replaced by new shorts around this triple digit price range.  And they could be anywhere from slight loss to bigly profitable at the moment.

Yup after all of this it's probably going to show shorts closed during Mon/Tue/Wed run up made all that money back and then some shorting the crash from 300-400 level while RH and others said no more cookies for retail. 
The man comes out ahead. By a lot. Like usual.

Can't wait to see the SEC (or is it brokerage level data) that gets reported by monthly on shorts. The reddit/twitter narrative vs the data will be fun to reconcile.

 

Cuban made a good point when asked about conspiracy of the likes when WSJ/CNBC were reporting heavy that SLVR was the new target and GME was bust. Cubans response was basically "It's not a conspiracy it's just media is lazy. Don't give them too much credit. There is no real research, they see a screenshot and run with. Less coordinated media manipulation and more lazy/copycat reporting"

 

DFV YOLO HOLDING

Spoiler

 

 

13 minutes ago, cam4mav said:

DFV YOLO HOLDING

  Hide contents

 

 

jaysus.

the dude held tight. 

hes already pocketed a couple of millions in cash, from exercising (and selling) and/or closing earlier calls that he held (had to - they were expiring), but taking 13M haircut is never fun.  20M, if you count peak from monday.

the guy is also now a public figure, so there cannot be conspiracy behind him being bankrolled by ryan cohen, insider trading, etc.  dude would visit the clinker FAST.  i suppose he also has massive public pressure against dumping  50,000 shares at what-is-now the peak. it would make a terrible look.

so he held tight and took a 13M loss. shit.

Just now, 52-80 said:

jaysus.

the dude held tight. 

hes already pocketed a couple of millions in cash, from exercising (and selling) and/or closing earlier calls that he held (had to - they were expiring), but taking 13M haircut is never fun.  20M, if you count peak from monday.

the guy is also now a public figure, so there cannot be conspiracy behind him being bankrolled by ryan cohen, insider trading, etc.  dude would visit the clinker FAST.  i suppose he also has massive public pressure against dumping  50,000 shares at what-is-now the peak. it would make a terrible look.

so he held tight and took a 13M loss. shit.

RIght. A year ago he probably didn't have "multimillionaire / face of internet rebellion against wallstreet" spaces on his 2021 Bingo Card

 

Just imagine that somehow the shorts aren't actually out as much as is being reported and the yolo bro's hold strong and keep enough of an outstanding share percentage to cause a squeeze over the next month or two. Internet rallies behind it again. Stimmy checks go straight into GME on cash accounts not margin nonsense like RH. DFV never sells. It starts. GME goes past the moon all the way to heaven. He's already Jesus to that crowd. If that happened he'd have one up on Jesus, actually following through on a promise [to come back / cause the real squeeze]

YOLO

 

 

 

3 hours ago, DonkeyCigars said:

Mark Cuban on WSB wrapping up his AMA:

Final thought. First thanks for the great questions. Thanks for changing the game. Thanks for taking on Wall Street. Thanks for making kids around the country if not the world( including my son and daughter). WSB changed the game far more than everyone on this board will ever get credit for.

That said, you will do all this again. You will go after WS and the next time you will be smarter. There was only one thing that messed you all up: RobinHood and the other zero commission brokers that everyone used didnt have enough capital to fund the fight. They let you down in a big way.

When you load back up, fight a broker with TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in assets on their balance sheet. Someone that can be there when the fight starts and wont blink an eye.

No disruption is easy or happens in a straight line. Stay with it. I am a believer

It definitely seems like the short squeeze was in full effect until Robinhood and other brokerages quit letting retail buy the stocks. I’d love to see an alternate reality where that doesn’t happen and see how the short squeeze plays out. 

14 minutes ago, cam4mav said:

RIght. A year ago he probably didn't have "multimillionaire / face of internet rebellion against wallstreet" spaces on his 2021 Bingo Card

 

Just imagine that somehow the shorts aren't actually out as much as is being reported and the yolo bro's hold strong and keep enough of an outstanding share percentage to cause a squeeze over the next month or two. Internet rallies behind it again. Stimmy checks go straight into GME on cash accounts not margin nonsense like RH. DFV never sells. It starts. GME goes past the moon all the way to heaven. He's already Jesus to that crowd. If that happened he'd have one up on Jesus, actually following through on a promise [to come back / cause the real squeeze]

YOLO

 

 

 

Do people know who this guy is IRL? That is not something I would want public in the event that I finally said "Alright y'all, gonna take my millions." and caused a huge dump making many people lose a lot of money.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Hank_Hill

Yeah he was doxed. He's literally the face of this now. They put his face on the cartoons

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

3 minutes ago, Hank_Hill said:

Do people know who this guy is IRL? That is not something I would want public in the event that I finally said "Alright y'all, gonna take my millions." and caused a huge dump making many people lose a lot of money.

WSJ did a piece on him.

I warned that there would be shenanigans starting up in all this. I still don't see how they can possibly unwind the entire short position and will be buying back in for a small amount if the price gets right, just to see what happens. But no one, absolutely no one, should be or should have been yoloing at this. It proved out that I wasn't tilting at a windmill, but once I saw the exact size of the giant, I turned my horse around real quick. Yolo time cutoff was June.

Even more surprising in all this is the market jumping up so much. I had orders ready to go for VXX calls and SPY puts for this week and canceled them Monday morning. I think we saw the market shudder twice under the weight of the situation, and I was confident that a correction was going to be triggered this week, but now it is acting like a great weight has been lifted. It would be amazing to see GME be the biggest bear trap in history, and therefore be the greatest bull trap for the broader market, but with all the shenanigans you will essentially be gambling that Wall Street actually does lose to the little guy. Might as well take that yolo money to a roulette table.

Edited February 2, 2021 by Eastwood

1 hour ago, cam4mav said:

Yup after all of this it's probably going to show shorts closed during Mon/Tue/Wed run up made all that money back and then some shorting the crash from 300-400 level while RH and others said no more cookies for retail. 
The man comes out ahead. By a lot. Like usual.

Can't wait to see the SEC (or is it brokerage level data) that gets reported by monthly on shorts. The reddit/twitter narrative vs the data will be fun to reconcile.

Here is the Gamestop trading volume:

Not that its a surprise but you can see how much it started to fall off a cliff on January 28th (last Thursday).

1 hour ago, cam4mav said:

DFV YOLO HOLDING

  Hide contents

 

 

Oof. Like winning 4 roulette spins in a row and going again. 

Reddit thread attempting to not be ape smooth brains and actually find some current verifiable data about where they stand. Answer is..... They don't know shit

Spoiler

 

 

 

mini catalyst!

 

https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gamestop-appoints-chief-technology-officer

ex AWS and ex CHWY folks come onboard

15 hours ago, ztejas said:

Oof. Like winning 4 roulette spins in a row and going again. 

He’s parked almost $14m in cash.  He doesn’t need to work another day in his life. 

Edited February 3, 2021 by EuroHorn

By my rough math, DFV had $800k invested, and he’s banked $13 million. He’s way off his highs, but he’ll still bank tons more profit even if the stock settles way back down to a “normal” valuation. If he sold now, the WSB crowd will follow as fast as possible, tons of people will lose their money, and he’ll be hated. If I were him, I imagine I’d ride it out to the end. The potential upside is much more than the downside

13M @ 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate is 520k a year.  Dude doesn't have to work a day for the rest of his life without even touching the principal.  I wouldn't sell either, the public might haunt him down.

 

Could make a decent steady income selling covered calls against those shares.

1 hour ago, SquishMitten said:

By my rough math, DFV had $800k invested, and he’s banked $13 million. He’s way off his highs, but he’ll still bank tons more profit even if the stock settles way back down to a “normal” valuation. If he sold now, the WSB crowd will follow as fast as possible, tons of people will lose their money, and he’ll be hated. If I were him, I imagine I’d ride it out to the end. The potential upside is much more than the downside

All of this, added to the expense of being a pariah versus the marketability/bankability of being a meme legend (e.g. commercials, paid speaking, trade show circuit, alt-coin sponsorships, etc.)

21 minutes ago, 52-80 said:

13M @ 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate is 520k a year.  Dude doesn't have to work a day for the rest of his life without even touching the principal.  I wouldn't sell either, the public might haunt him down.

 

Could make a decent steady income selling covered calls against those shares.

My new dream job is pulling a DFV and  then wheeling for the rest of my life. 

10 minutes ago, DonkeyCigars said:

All of this, added to the expense of being a pariah versus the marketability/bankability of being a meme legend (e.g. commercials, paid speaking, trade show circuit, alt-coin sponsorships, etc.)

lol.  we are truly living in a brave new world

LOL. They are going after the reddit dork. Of course. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/roaring-kitty-gamestop.html

A GameStop Ringleader’s Videos Draw a Regulator’s Attention

Keith Gill was an early endorser of GameStop on his YouTube channel. But a regulator in Massachusetts wants to know about his day job.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Anastasis

On 1/28/2021 at 5:37 PM, EuroHorn said:

How would selling short on the secondary market force GME into bankruptcy?  The underlying financials and balance sheet for GME is what was forcing them into bankruptcy.  The short sell was a bet on the inevitable.  Although I would agree that being allowed to go over 100% doesn’t make sense. 
 

When this is all over GME will most likely go into bankruptcy unless they change their business model pretty quickly 

SIAP but their balance sheet was not driving them into bankruptcy even before the stock rocketed. The short sell was out of ignorance and a bet that GME can't pivot their business at all before people no longer want physical discs. Lots of people (like 38%?) still want physical discs and GS still has like 100M members. GS pulls in like $8B per year and they had a lot of cash on hand and were already working on ways to transform their business model. They have more time to adapt than you and the HF thought.

19 hours ago, SquishMitten said:

By my rough math, DFV had $800k invested, and he’s banked $13 million. He’s way off his highs, but he’ll still bank tons more profit even if the stock settles way back down to a “normal” valuation. If he sold now, the WSB crowd will follow as fast as possible, tons of people will lose their money, and he’ll be hated. If I were him, I imagine I’d ride it out to the end. The potential upside is much more than the downside

since he already had tons of cash converted from the other expiring calls, he could have very well used it in a separate account to buy puts for the downside protection.  thats what i would have done

11 hours ago, B00M said:

SIAP but their balance sheet was not driving them into bankruptcy even before the stock rocketed. The short sell was out of ignorance and a bet that GME can't pivot their business at all before people no longer want physical discs. Lots of people (like 38%?) still want physical discs and GS still has like 100M members. GS pulls in like $8B per year and they had a lot of cash on hand and were already working on ways to transform their business model. They have more time to adapt than you and the HF thought.

Not really. Any business seeing its revenue plunge like this is not in good shape. Not a guarantee they go bankrupt, but successfully transforming their business model is less likely imo. 

Yeah, GameStop was caught flat-footed when a sea change began in the industry. Video games were, and are still, becoming more of a lifestyle brand than brick and mortar retail industry. They threw Sherman in as CEO, and he did great in the brick and mortar space, but it was a huge signal that the GameStop board still just didn't get it.

I initially bought in due to the short interest issue, but Cohen was a tremendous surprise and a game changer for the company. What the older generations, even a large chunk of Generation X, doesn't understand stand about video games as an art form is the emotional attachment to the experiences provided by the games. Cohen lapped the field with Chewy because he understood the emotional connection with pets and created a "customer centric" rather than a "product centric" model that capitalized on that. If he can accomplish the same with GameStop, then I could see them capturing at least 35% of the total North American video game sales alone, which is going to be over $50 billion in a couple of years, and that still leaves online services revenue, their rewards membership revenue, their revenue sharing with Microsoft, and their expansion into PC hardware and collectibles.

Like I said prior, GameStop may just be shaping up to be a very dangerous company in this space and I'm excited for them.

I'm an idiot, and don't understand any of the technicals of trading- so please be gentle and don't mock me, and explain this to me like a 5 year old...

Can I short Gamestop now?

Is there some particular reason I can't?

Can I choose my own time horizon for doing this thing?

I can't imagine that the value of the gamestop stock should be more than about 12-15, maybe 20, tops?  It's free falling at 78, but I have to imagine at some point in time market will determine what the actual value of the company is and that's still way lower than it is right now. Is it possible for me to short?  Is it possible for me to maintain my position as long as I want to?  Can I protect my downside risk and short where I can't lose more money than I put into the trade (I.E. something like if it's at $80 right now and I want to short 100 shares- can I put in a buy order for those same 100 shares at $160 and will that serve to limit my downside to just the $8000 or so that I'd be wanting to lose?)  B/c this seems like a pretty easy way to 3X or 4X my money when it goes back down to more or less where it was before this roller coaster started...

Thanks for the advice for those who understand this shit more than me (which I assume is everyone posting here).

 

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by Wulaw Horn

Yeah, you can short it. And yeah, you can keep the short position as long as you want, except that I think brokerages reserve the right to take the shares back at any time, and every once in a while they do that. So unlike a long position, a short position can actually be taken from you. Or maybe I’m full of shit.

1 hour ago, Eastwood said:

 Cohen lapped the field with Chewy because he understood the emotional connection with pets and created a "customer centric" rather than a "product centric" model that capitalized on that. 

chewy is successful b/c 

 

1.)  they're the cheapest anywhere b/c....

2.) ... they incentivize you to get all of your pet food there by giving discounts 

3.) they have fast shipping that actually arrives on time or before the indicated date

4.) their customer service is amazing

Edited February 4, 2021 by gsoda3

I wouldn't think about shorting it until official short float info comes out. If share liquidity is still low due to a greater than 100% institutional ownership and a high short float, which is what got us here in the first place, it's still a powder keg that will go off on any positive catalyst. This is a lotto ticket stock until the whole situation unwinds. Anyone betting on either side with everything going on around it outside of the market is gambling.