You're forgetting the stock is 125% over shorted. There literally isn't enough stock for shorts to cover their current positions. That's why there is potential for infinite, (huge) gains as long as everyone holds.
In reality, when a short covers they buy back the stock and pay back the broker or market maker they borrowed it from. Then the broker or market maker sells it again. Then the short can buy back the same share, over and over again, as long as they can find someone to sell it to them. That "as long as they can find someone to sell it to them" is what's going on here - if everybody HODLs, the stock doesn't circulate, and the shorts have to pay increasing amounts to incentivize other weak hands to sell. But total short interest > 100% doesn't mean anything other than that there are a lot of shorts whose need to cover might blunt some price declines. Unless those particular shorts are right up against their margin limits, they can just hold the short position open until WSB loses interest.
Shorting a stock at $300, when it was trading at $16 last month is pretty much the definition of huge upside.
Note that if you short at 300 and it flash jumps to 1000 you are toast.
Shall be an interesting week.
Edit: looks like it's already falling apart, the price is down 30% on post-market trading! Expect things to get real once the market opens up.
Is that true? I tried and failed to verify.
I know someone who tried to convince VW management to do that during the Porche/VW squeeze. They didn't but I see no reason why another management team wouldn't act differently.
* The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had previously conducted multiple investigations into his business practices but had not uncovered the massive fraud.*
While there isn't 125% available to buy in one go, there is trading happening, HedgeFund2 can be buying and returning their loaned shares this week, HedgeFund3 can be buying and returning theirs next week, HedgeFund4 the week after, and at no point does any group need to buy 125% of available shares all in one go; where does the time limit that causes the squeeze come from?
The shorts collectively have losses on paper of $35bn+, which is a lot of money even for well-capitalized Wall Street funds.
Further, all hedge funds have internal risk limits, which include limits of their exposure to a single equity. Should the collateral requirements exceed this limit, then their internal risk compliance team will ensure that the short position be at least partially closed to keep them within their limits.
How is it possible for a stock to be 125% over shorted? What does this mean?
Have a read from Matt Levine's "Infinite Game" from yesterday:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-26/will-w...
To quote:
> Falcone owned some bonds of a company called MAAX Holdings Inc. “After hearing rumors that a Wall Street financial services firm was shorting the MAAX bonds and also encouraging its customers to do the same, Falcone decided to seek revenge.” So he bought all the MAAX bonds. Then he bought more: Short sellers would borrow MAAX bonds (presumably from him), and then sell them to him, so that he ended up with “22 million more bonds than MAAX had ever issued.” Then he stopped lending them out, forcing the short sellers to buy bonds to cover their shorts. But there were no bonds to be bought, since he owned them all (and more).
> Falcone stated that the Wall Street firm should just keep bidding for the bonds. Falcone acknowledged that the Wall Street firm would suffer some losses doing so, but told the senior officer and the others that sometimes you are just on the wrong side of a trade.
* How shorting works normally:
Alice thinks the price will lower this week. On Monday, Alice borrows a stock from Bob. She sells that stock immediately on Monday. On Friday at the end of that week, she buys a stock again and hands it back to Bob, plus a small fee for his troubles. If the stock price went down during the week, you can see that Alice made a profit.
* What happened for Gamestop:
Melvin thinks the price will lower this year. Melvin borrows a stock from Rudy. Melvin sells that stock, and unbeknown to him he sells it back to Rudy. Melvin borrows another stock from Rudy which unbeknown to him he sells again to Rudy. While there exists only 1 stock, Rudy now has 3 stocks of which he borrowed 2 to Melvin. Melvin owes Rudy 200% of all available stock, which he needs to hand back at the end of the year.
* What is the short squeeze Rudy/Reddit is currently doing on Melvin Capital?
Well, in reality, Melvin Capital has 1.5 stocks borrowed for every stock in existence (I'm not sure how much of the total stock was actually liquid, so I'm not sure how many rounds Melvin needs to go through to cover all their shorts).
Today it is the end of the year. Melvin needs to hand Rudy back the stock. However, the only person he could buy it from, is Rudy himself. Now Rudy is free to set an arbitrary price for his stock AND meanwhile buy up all other available stock at ridiculous prices. The only stock Melvin can buy, is from Rudy, or from other people at at least Rudy's price point. And Melvin needs to buy that stock to then hand it back to Rudy, after which Rudy can sell it yet again at an even higher price point for Melvin to hand it back again. Rudy makes a lot of profit, by squeezing out Melvin after making the market illiquid and overpriced. Effectively, the game is such that the entire capital of Melvin is now for Rudy. Melvin must buy something from Rudy, no matter how high Rudy sets his price.
An alternative is for Melvin to borrow another stock from Rudy, handing it back to cover for the last borrow. However, this way Melvin is only digging himself into an even deeper hole stacking up fees (the fee Melvin pays for Rudy's troubles is currently at a 130% interest rate).
* What is on the line?
Melvin Capital is 3 billion. The question is how much Reddit is Rudy, how much stock Reddit managed to control. If Reddit manages the squeeze, the squeezers will basically share among each other 3 billion. If Reddit does not manage, a lot of people will hold a lot of Gamestop stock at probably way lower prices than they bought.
Melvin Capital appears to have received a capital injection of 3 billion from Citadel today, doubling the stakes in an all or nothing with Reddit. So wallstreetbets is now standing to either gain 6 billion or losing a lot of money. Which sounds big to us, but is probably just another Wednesday for wallstreetbets...
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/hedge-fund-targeted-by-reddi...
Are they accurate to the hour? My impression was that this information wasn't reported at a regular cadence, but I have no idea.
Some people are saying that Melvin Capital lied. That seems unlikely: my guess is that you'd go to jail for a long time if you lied about your purchases to manipulate the market on such a grand scale.
Isn't it more likely the company will go bankrupt and the traders will 'only' have their most recent £10M bonus to fall back on?
they would be forced to liquidate their other holdings before going bankrupt no?
The sensible people will take their (massive) profits, and those who believe the "as long as everyone holds" rhetoric will be left with losses, probably on margin.
You buy the stock for $200 but of the $200, $100 is money that you've borrowed. Because the stock is now at $350 your assets cover the margin easily. but if the suddenly becomes liquid and gaps down to $2, you owe $100 and only have $2 dollars in assets with which to cover your margin loan. You get a margin call and the bank force sells your stock then takes your car, your house, etc to cover the $98 you still owe.