I understand that there's no guarantee one will be able to exit it successfully even if it flies so high that it crashes the market. However I don't see a better insurance for people who don't have access to options/inverse etfs and don't want to sell their stocks.
As of mr. DFV, I'm sure he'd like to close his position at the current price. But my guess is that he prefers to hold for his reputation. Since he already guaranteed more money than he would ever need, it's not a bad decision. The other option is that he believes it's going climb even more, which is possible. But don't assume people hold for any reason other than making money. Once the squeeze is over it will fall like dominoes.
This is true for every market participant, the fun situation here is that the short squeezers know that what they are doing is risky, but they don't care, because it's fun to take risks, and anyways they have better chances than buying lottery or going to casino.
If the market doesn't crash then GME can go to $0, as it won't be needed for the insurance purpose anymore.
(1) fund degrossing as the initial driver - already happening
(2) everyone is being reminded of 99/00 mania
(3) uncertain regulatory environment surrounding trading
(4) worries of systemic risks created by bubble
GME going higher is likely to trigger it more than it dropping off right now
Are there other companies that have "hidden" short interest in this way? Are some of the big unexplained market moves in companies without short interest some of these "hidden" shorts unwinding before everyone finds out?
Is that legal? Manipulating report agencies to manipulate the value of a stock?
There are multiple Congressmembers interested in this situation. That could be a very dangerous game.
But as I understand it, the Market Makers like Citadel are only required to be market neutral in terms of their statistical exposure at the end of the day, and don't need to report their long/short position. On the other hand, brokers aren't required to be delta neutral, but do report their long/short position. You can probably hide a lot of these shorts in this baby. I guess this also doesn't count short interest that's in bespoke one-off derivatives that hedge funds and investment banks trade between themselves.
Also, nobody has to tell Ortex what their short interest is. The only true numbers we can sort of trust are the twice monthly delayed reports. Ortex is just a third party service provider that goes around calling brokerages and doing some stats on the market to see how they think the short interest has changed.
So, I can see it being pretty low risk even if you do get caught.
I think (with very low probability, but it is an explanation) this could also be why we're seeing random 100% spikes in unrelated stocks that claim to have approximately 0% short interest. Some hedge fund somewhere is in some sort of hidden short, getting margin called, or nervous, or just de-risking and getting out of an off the books short trade, causing a mini short squeeze. There are a couple companies with suspicious pops this week, and I'd be on the lookout for more of this activity on Monday. Could just be people getting out of high volatility positions though, or freeing up capital for other things. But that would be selling pressure, not buying. So, -\?/-
My key takeaways here are that there was probably a little fraud (maybe someone found a bug in some broker that let them do some sort of infinite shares glitch), maybe a little rolling of shorts (but not by anyone big), and probably a lot of writing of covered calls by the likes of Fidelity and Blackrock as a way to get income generation while at the same time acting as a limit sell order (albeit one that you can't take down). Coupled with some early botched PR and celebrity pumping etc, and even my own speculation, this feels almost Q-like in it's explosive growth and conspiracy-theory oriented thinking.
After everything I've seen this week I think I actually have the highest faith I've had in a long time in our financial system.
I saw a tweet that I cannot find right now, unfortunately. It showed that de-grossing M-W of this week was nearly at the same level as March of 2020.
People said Tesla would crash when Tesla doubled a year ago from $200 to $400, and then to $900, etc., and then it did a 5-1 split, etc. Yes it did crash 20% in August, but from a price that was so high that it was still considerably higher than it was last year when the pundits were warning of a bubble.
Few foresaw the S&P 500 would surge 70% off the lows from Covid and make new highs later that year. The pundit consensus what that that it would be a bad, deep, long bear market.
Same for the post-Covid tech boom, which few foresaw too.
GME is not crashing as everyone is expected it to, even with Robinhood restricting buys. It is up huge today. I think this has a lot more to run, IMHO. More shorts will get squeezed out next week.
Like Tesla, GME may not really end badly at all and just keep going up and up.
I own some GME and not worried. Yeah, it is not that much of my total net worth, but I have found that heeding warnings of bubbles usually just means selling too soon.
If GME does crash, there will be no systemic risk or anything like that. It will be an isolated event.
Of course it might not happen.
The stock is worth what people think it’s worth. If people keep buying and holding, then it is worth what it is worth.
What is the reasoning here? Are you under the impression GME wouldn't crash right alongside the market? This isn't BTC or gold we're talking about. It's just another stock.
The insurance pays up if they buy your share.
Do you have another idea how it could end?
I share your skepticism that it would actually happen this way, but it seems at least somewhat plausible.
Well ... yeah. Today it hasn't.
I do believe it will last at least one more week, though, yeah. And I'm putting money where my mouth is.
The best part in all of this is that you're free to short it if you disagree. See where that leads you.
Never shorted a stock in my life. Not going to start now. I cannot predict when this will stop. Nither can you. What currently holds everything together is the unknown. People don't know who, when, and how the shorter s are going to close their positions. Once things will clear out I predict it's gonna be the beginning of the end.
Just to be clear. I don't think it will crash to nothing any time soon. It will keep trading much higher than what it was pre this saga. When I say crash I mean down around 70-80% from its current value of $330.
Honestly, I don't think it is and there would be more media attention if it was. The firms that are shorting GME only have something like $50 billion AUM. Lehman Bros was around $600 billion and was a lot more integral to the markets. The only real issue would be a lack of liquidity, which isn't going to cause a crash alone.