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Comment by wintorez | Hacker News Reader

The actual squeeze hasn't started yet.

I’ve been surprised to have seen this kind of comment here at HN more and more this week. The specific claim in this comment is one that is being made at /r/wallstreetbets, among many others. Over there, users seem to delight in repeating statements like this and not providing any supporting evidence or adding their own arguments. I think being an echo chamber is meant to be part of the fun of that subreddit at this moment.

But why do this on HN also? I can only guess that the users here are personally invested in GME and are hoping to increase their own profits by spreading the word and convincing more investors to join in with them. If this is the case, it seems to be at odds with how Hacker News is generally used and I am surprised to see it being tolerated so much by the administrators.

> But why do this on HN also?

I have never seen HN comments get as bad as the past few days. There have been multiple 1000+ comment threads. I've seen oodles of comments that are just sentence fragments barely more coherent than "to the moon". Righteous fury and conspiracy theories abound. This has clearly struck a nerve and bridged the gap between HN and reddit more than ever before.

I was surprised at these narratives being repeated so many times here with only a few people refuting them:

* GME was illegally shorted 140%, maybe by one company, and a stock being shorted 140% is somehow intrinsically bad/evil/shady. None of this really seems to be the case regardless of the utility.

* GameStop was being driven to bankruptcy by hedge funds shorting it. I'm not sure what the logic is here.

These narratives almost seemed designed to rationalize the manufacture of a short squeeze; something the SEC seemingly has some strong opinions about.

I've been in and out of this site for many, many years now. I came back a few months ago, having been away for quite a while. It was noticeably different even then. At that time, it was all about the US political situation. It's not necessarily that the focus has become more political — although it undoubtedly has — it's more that the comments are skewing more towards memes and triviality. Sad to see; let's hope it's just a phase.

The populism here on HN has been indeed disturbing, what with nobody willing to look at it from anything other than the lens of 'Robin Hood Fury'.

People talking in terms of 'shorts', 'positions', 'rights to buy' etc. or any kind of analysis, are missing the point - mostly what is happening here is straight up mania on a stock.

This is a study in memes not markets.

Since people can't bitch about politics on HN, RH gives them an avenue to vent.

Sorry, I should have backed up my statement. Apparently, most hedge funds are actually doubling down on their short positions, believing people who are holding will sell. GME is still shorted more than 100%, so it's basically a game of chicken between short and long gamers.

The problem is the shorts have to pay interest, so they need an out ASAP, while the sentiment of the longs is that they will hold indefinitely.

Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor, and I don't even have any of the shorted stocks. I'm just following the news.

That’s my understanding too. Although most places don’t have cited data. How do I check how much of a stock is shorted, and what’s their deadline.

I imagine that once the hedge funds are forced to buy, the holders will dump it and they’ll be a sell rally on r/wsb. That will be the bubble burst.

But like anything else, there’s so much vested conflict of interest, it’s hard to know who to trust.

Right now everything is speculation, nobody knows anything during the rally as the shares don't point to who owns what and who is shorting. So if anyone says the squeeze hasn't happened yet, it just their opinion.

For all we know the hedgefunds got out of their short positions and retail is pumping the stock higher. Or conversely hedgefunds are still short and waiting for the rally to fizzle until it collapses and then they reap huge gains.

Or it could explode higher like this week(the big squeeze), the point is nobody knows with any certainty what will happen. I never thought tesla in a million years would be a $800B company but I and many like me have been proven wrong. its whats great about investing, there are always surprises all the time.

> I can only guess that the users here are personally invested in GME

bingo

I'm the original commenter. I don't have any of the shorted stocks. I only find the story fascinating. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because it's technically true? Regardless if it's likely to happen or not the actual squeeze - the closing of shorts when there's no available stock to buy - hasn't happened (and maybe never will) yet.

That's not something you can know for certain. It's possible that hedge funds closed their early shorts, but now, the mind-boggling valuation has inspired a wave of new shorts.

> I am surprised to see it being tolerated so much by the administrators.

I think its been a tough month for the administrators and they're more interested in policing more... serious... politics that keep coming up around here.

Standard "HODL" or "Bitcoin hype" has been around Hacker News for a while. Hell: remember that this site is ultimately owned by YCombinator, a venture capitalist group. Hyping $$$ talk is tolerated a bit more around here not necessarily because the admins agree with it... but because its adjacent to what they do.

wouldn't it be a squeeze every time a short position has to be closed out?

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