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Comment by rednerrus | Hacker News Reader

It's what's driving TSLA's wild growth.

Unlikely, for the gamma squeeze to work on TSLA, the Market Makers need to hold the shares after the options expire. Otherwise when the options close, they wouldn't need to maintain their exposure. For reasons we don't know, the shares remain high even after the expiration.

I don't get it, how?

1. Retail investors buy TSLA calls.

2. Market makers sell these calls, and so buy TSLA shares to cover their position.

3. Due to #2, TSLA shares appreciate, as well as the calls from #1.

4. Retail investors see all the money being made, and FOMO in to buy more calls; go back to #1, repeat.

Would this really happen be a relevant dynamic over long time periods? I would assume that at some point the market makers get nervous and stop selling calls?

Why? they have cover and already pocketed fees

It does not have to be long time its up more than 5 folds in the last few months.

By long time periods I meant > 1 day. Maybe for a few hours some algorithm can do it's thing mindlessly, but then some real person will look at holdings with human judgement and start worrying. But I guess it depends who you think will be doing the marketmaking, and how stupid you think they are.

tsla is up 22x in the past year and a half

TSLA has a pretty small float which is a large part of that.

Ok, I see so around #3 sell to close? Or do you take the underlying?

Sell to close before expiration, it's usually never worth getting assigned shares.

It's not. Tesla's stock price is driven by supply and demand. Even after a 5-for-1 split, there still is not enough float. Many shareholders are true believers.

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