Not sure I follow. The hedge funds are shorting the stock, debt holders are converting to stock, Retail (and plenty of big players) are buying and holding. 3 different parties.
WSB also seems to misunderstand the short interest. They're pushing the idea that short interest must start going down to indicate the squeeze has started. They're not accounting for (or deliberately ignoring) the fact that new short positions can be initiated at $360 which will be profitable when the stock inevitably falls. Reddit can't keep the stock high forever with a never-ending stream of buyers. That's why they've now shifted to pushing the narrative that everyone should buy and hold $GME to hurt Wall Street, which isn't really true either.
WSB is also pushing the narrative that everyone is holding (or hodling) $GME shares and refusing to sell. This is perhaps the strangest claim of all, since it's so easily debunked by looking at the huge daily volume of shares traded. Shares can't be traded unless a buyer and seller agree on a price. The volume is extremely high, which means plenty of people are selling their $GME all day every day.
WallStreetBets has devolved into a blatant pump-and-dump megaphone.
> Reddit can't keep the stock high forever with a never-ending stream of buyers
If keeping the price high is dependent on a never-ending stream of new buyers, you've devolved into a ponzi-scheme.
The fact that retail brokerages temporarily limiting new buyers "caused the price to crater" speaks at least a little bit to this interpretation as well.
Not buyers, holders. The buyers are guaranteed for a while due to the short interest.
> The fact that retail brokerages temporarily limiting new buyers "caused the price to crater" speaks at least a little bit to this interpretation as well.
It cratered and then rocketed back up within the hour. GME has been super volatile and yeah, cutting off the people interested in buying is going to temporarily lower demand which lowers the price, no surprise there.
I feel like this should have led to more interesting problems already.
Like, suppose there is a company which is going down the drain and two of its competitors are willing to pay a few peanuts for its carcass and nobody else wants it at all. It's e.g. 50% shorted, so they each end up buying 51% of the company because 102% is less than 150%. What happens now?
> They're not accounting for (or deliberately ignoring) the fact that new short positions can be initiated at $360 which will be profitable when the stock inevitably falls.
That's still a risky bet given the amount of media coverage this story is getting. The volatility of that stock right now is absurd. And if it goes high enough, even shorts who got in at a crazy price could get busted by an even crazier price.
> Reddit can't keep the stock high forever with a never-ending stream of buyers.
It's a war of attrition at this point, isn't it?
You have the shorts who would really like to wait until the price crashes before closing their positions, but the higher the price goes the more collateral they need to continue shorting the stock. So they end up having to borrow money from people willing to risk losing it in exchange for (presumably) a high interest rate. If the price gets high enough for them to run out of willing creditors, they go bust and anybody who tried to bail them out loses the money they put in.
On the other side is everybody who is holding the stock and is going to keep hyping it until that happens, because if there is a short squeeze they make a mint but if it crashes first then they end up eating it instead of the shorts.
Anybody who thinks they know who is going to come out on top has a better crystal ball than me.
Also, can anyone explain to me why there are so many short positions rather than just buying puts?
Short squeezes are short, temporary events. Even with borrow fees in the range of 30-50% (per year), it's a small price to pay for a short-term play. It's not realistic to expect the general public to continue pouring money into Gamestop stock to keep the price propped up.
Keep in mind that shorts can also exit and re-enter their short positions with high frequency. Not all of the shorting activity is long-term shorting that started <$10
And of course, the original Melvin Capital claims to have exited their original short position. WSB wants us to believe they're lying, but I'm inclined to believe them.
However, consider this: If this short squeeze was as easy as WSB wants you to believe, why didn't a well-capitalized hedge fund cash in on it already? It's not like WSB planned this in secret. It was literally headline news on a top-10 website for weeks.
As you said, the hedge funds are certainly making a lot of money here. Early investors are making a lot of money. However, we don't actually know how many of the short positions entered at $2 or $200 or even $400. Smart hedge funds will make a lot of money by taking short positions on this stock, selling their borrowed shares to Redditors looking to get rich, and profiting by exiting their short positions when this finally crashes. Those shorts will cause the "short interest" number to stay high, or even increase, as this situation goes on.
I would be surprised if there aren't already multiple hedge funds doing just that.