I was onside with the retail investors during the short squeeze against wallstreet hedge funds. But I don't think that narrative holds anymore and its beginning to look like stock manipulation
That narrative was never really accurate, there were plenty of hedge funds long too.
It doesn't have to be manipulation. Just a bunch of people and goading each other in a presumed David-against-Goliath "fight", investors trying to predict their and each other's movements, and funds trying to capitalize on investor irrationality, in a market situation (high short interest) which is strongly susceptible to such fluctuations.
I'd agree that goading and memeing shouldn't be considered manipulation on their own, but there's a reasonable number of specific lies being mixed in. There was a big thread on Reddit yesterday purporting to prove that nobody closed their short positions and the real short interest is an order of magnitude higher than commonly believed.
Is GME still in high short interest? I understand shorting it when it was $15 in December, I understand shorting it when it goes to $300 or $250, but I don't understand how it gets to $250. Given that GME's entire thing is that it doubles in price for no good reason, you'd be an idiot to short it at $50 or $70, at this point.
By the same token you would be an idiot not to. Everyone knows GME stock is worthless, was pumped by delusional people and is bound to go down. We are in a Moebius strip of memelords and shorts feeding off each other.
Shorts cost money to maintain, you can get margin called and lose everything, and the upside of shorting a $15 stock at $50, when it occasionally balloons up to $300 is... Not great.
As Paul Newman said "If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you."
I don't think I've ever seen that attributed to Paul Newman.