Update 2/4 - someone went ahead and spelled out the mechanics of the squeeze quite well and I would like to give their post attention https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lc8vgo/slv_is_not_going_to_get_squeezedslv_is_the_trojan/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Update 2/2 - I am able to comment again. I messaged several mods on Reddit and the mod account on Twitter. None of them responded but it appears I am able to comment again so I assume one of them lifted my ban
Update 2/1 - I have been banned from posting on WSB. I guess they aren’t yet deleting my post here given the media attention. If this was a rogue mod I’d appreciate being restored the ability to post on WSB. I’m open to talking to any mods
Update 1/31 - there have been tons of 'what to buy' questions so I added a clarity post, hope it helps. It's also getting downvoted to hell because its not about GME so that's discouraging. The speed at which the downvotes flew in makes me think someone made bots to crush new posts related to SLV (or maybe anything not GME). It makes no sense for this post to have 93% upvotes and my new one to have 28%.
I have not sold my GME to buy SLV. I had a small pre-existing position in leaps I bought months ago.
Created an official Twitter handle not sure if I’ll use it, but didn’t want anyone to impersonate me on there
Here is the longer DD for the short squeeze case for SLV, a follow-up from my shorter post a few hours ago. Note that I talk in first person as this is something I’m going to do. Everyone is free to do as they individually please and copy my trade if they’d like to. I think it’s absurd that forces at be think this forum is manipulating by posting publicly but that’s where we are at right now.
First things first, I'm not doing this until the GME rise is done. I am long GME but am going long SLV immediately after.
Update 1/29: due to the manipulation and collusion of citadel, hedge funds, and brokers to change the rules and rig the game in their favor. Who likely knew ahead of time and bought puts right before and calls at the bottom, GME is too important to abandon still. SLV is still my next play but GME needs to go to $1000 and these people need to go to jail.
If you just want to know what to buy skip to the end
I present 2 investment DDs in this post, the short squeeze and the fundamentals. If you want to see what to buy
The short squeeze:
Buy SLV shares and SLV call options to force physical delivery of silver to the SLV vaults. Also buy physical silver bullion. The best possible thing would be to take physical delivery in the futures market if you have access to do so.
The silver futures market has oscillated between having roughly 100-1 and 500-1 ratio of paper traded silver to physical silver, but lets call it 250-1 for now. This means that for every 250 ounces in open interest in the futures market, only 1 actually gets delivered. Most traders would rather settle with cash rather than take delivery of thousands of ounces of silver and have to figure out to store and transport it in the future.
The people naked shorting silver via the futures markets are a couple of large banks and making them pay dearly for their over leveraged naked shorts would be incredible. It's not Melvin capital on the other side of this trade, its JP Morgan. Time to get some payback for the bailouts and manipulation they've done for decades (look up silver manipulation fines that JPM has paid over the years).
The way the squeeze could occur is by forcing a much higher percentage of the futures contracts to actually deliver physical silver. There is very little silver in the COMEX vaults or available to actually be use to deliver, and if they have to start buying en masse on the open market they will drive the price massively higher. There is no way to magically create more physical silver in the world that is ready to be delivered. With a stock you can eventually just issue more shares if the price rises too much, but this simply isn't the case here. The futures market is kind of the wild west of the financial world. Real commodities are being traded, and if you are short, you literally have to deliver thousands of ounces of silver per contract if the holder on the other side demands it. If you remember oil going negative back in May, that was possible because futures are allowed to trade to their true value. They aren't halted and that's what will make this so fun when the true squeeze happens.
Edit for more detail: let’s say there’s one futures seller who gets unlucky and gets the buyer who actually wants to take delivery. He doesn’t have the silver and realizes it’s all of a sudden damn difficult to find some physical silver. He throws up his hands and just goes long a matching number of futures contracts and will demand actual delivery on those. Problem solved because he has now matched the demanding buyer with a new seller. The issue is that the new seller has the same issue and does the exact same thing. This is how the cascade effect of a meltup occurs. All the naked shorts trying to offload their position to someone who actually has some silver. My goal is to ensure that I have the silver and won’t sell to them until silver is at a far higher price due to the desperation.
The silver market is much larger than GME in terms of notional value, but there is very little physical silver actually readily available (think about the difference between total shares and the shares in the active float for a stock), and the paper silver trading hands in the futures market is hundreds of times larger than what is available. Thus when they are forced to actually deliver physical silver it will create a massive short squeeze where an absurd amount of silver will be sought after (to fulfill their contractually obligated delivery) with very little available to actually buy. They are naked shorting silver and will have to cover all at once and the float as a percentage of the total silver stock globally is truly miniscule.
The fundamentals:
The current gold to silver ratio is 73-1. Meaning the price of gold per ounce is 73 times the price of silver. Naturally occurring silver is only 18.75 times as common as gold, so this ratio of 73-1 is quite high. Until the early 20th century, silver prices were pegged at a 15-1 ratio to gold in the US because this ratio was relatively known even then. In terms of current production, the ratio is even lower at 8-1. Meaning the world is only producing 8 ounces of silver for each newly produced ounce of gold.
Global industry has been able to get away with producing so little new silver for so long because governments have dumped silver on the market for 80 years, but now their silver vaults are empty. At the end of WW2 government vaults globally contained 10 billion ounces of silver, but as we moved to fiat currency and away from precious metal backed currencies, the amount held by governments has decreased to only 0.24 billion ounces as they dumped their supply into the market. But this dumping is done now as their remaining supply is basically nil.
This 0.24 billion ounces represents only 8% of the total supply of only 3 billion ounces stored as investment globally. This means that 92% of that gold is held privately by institutions and by millions of boomer gold and silver bugs who have been sitting on meager gains for decades. These boomers aren't going to sell no matter what because they see their silver cache as part of their doomsday prepper supplies. It's locked away in bunkers they built 500 miles from their house. Also, with silver at $23 an ounce currently, this means all of the worlds investment grade silver only has a total market cap of $70 billion. For comparison the investment grade gold in the world is worth roughly $6 trillion. This is because most of the silver produced each year actually gets used, as I have mentioned. $70 billion sounds like a lot, but we don’t have to buy all that much for the price to go up a lot.
**If the squeeze happens, it would be like 40 years worth of their gains in 4 months **
The reason that only 8 ounces of silver are produced for every 1 ounce of gold in today's world is because there aren't really any good naturally occurring silver deposits left in the world. Silver is more common than gold in the earth's crust, but it is spread very thin. Thus nearly every ounce of silver produces is actually a byproduct of mining for other metals such as gold or copper. This means that even as the silver price skyrockets, it wont be easy to increase the supply of silver being produced. Even if new mines were to be constructed, it could take years to come online.
Finally, most of this newly created silver supply each year is used for productive purposes rather than kept for investment. It is used in electronics, solar panels, and jewelry for the most part. This demand wont go away if the silver price rises, so the short sellers will be trying to get their hands on a very small slice of newly minted silver. The solar market is also growing quickly and political pressure to increase solar and electric vehicles could provide more industrial demand.
The other part of the story is the faster moving piece and that is the inflation and currency debasement fear portion. The government and the fed are printing money like crazy debasing the value of the dollar, so investors look for real assets like precious metals to hide out in, driving demand for silver. The $1.9 trillion stimulus passing in a month or two could be a good catalyst. All this money combined with the reopening of the economy could cause some solid inflation to occur, and once inflation starts it often feeds on itself.
​
What to buy:
Edit 2/24: I now advocate buying PSLV for shares, physical metal if the premiums come back down, and if you want options then SLV is still ok for that.
I will be putting 50% directly into SLV shares, and 50% into the $35 strike SLV calls expiring 4/16. This way the SLV purchase creates a groundswell into silver immediately that then rockets through a gamma squeeze as SLV approaches $35. Price target of $75 for SLV by end of April if the short squeeze happens.
Edit: for the part of your purchases going into shares, some people recommend PSLV because they think SLV might start lying about having the silver in their vault. Or that the custodian will be double counting, ie claiming that the same silver belongs to multiple people (banking on the fact that people wont all try to get their silver at once). So if you buy SLV shares and calls, that's great. But I think it could be prudent for us to buy options in SLV (no options on PSLV) and shares in PSLV. It all depends on how paranoid you want to be. There is a lot of paranoia in the precious metals world.
Alternate options:
- buying physical silver; this also works but you pay a premium to buy and sell so its less efficient and you take fewer silver ounces off of the market because of the premium you pay
- going long futures for February or March; if you are a rich bastard and can actually take physical delivery of 1000s of ounces of silver by all means do so. But if you simply settle for cash you are actually part of the problem. We need actual physical delivery, which is what SLV demands and is why SLV is the way to go unless you are going to take delivery
- miners; I don’t recommend buying miners as part of this trade. Miners will absolutely go up if SLV goes up, but buying them doesn't create the squeeze in the actual silver market. Furthermore, most silver miners only derive 30-50% of their revenue from silver anyways, so eventually SLV will outperform them as it gets high enough (and each marginal SLV dollar only increases miner profits by a smaller and smaller percentage)
Details on SLV physical settlement:
When SLV issues shares, the custodian is forced to true up their vaults with the proportional amount of silver daily. From the SLV prospectus:
"An investment in Shares is: Backed by silver held by the Custodian on behalf of the Trust. The Shares are backed by the assets of the Trust. The Trustee’s arrangements with the Custodian contemplate that at the end of each business day there can be in the Trust account maintained by the Custodian no more than 1,100 ounces of silver in an unallocated form. The bulk of the Trust’s silver holdings is represented by physical silver, identified on the Custodian’s or, if applicable, sub-custodian's, books in allocated and unallocated accounts on behalf of the Trust and is held by the Custodian in London, New York and other locations that may be authorized in the future."
Join me brothers. Lets take silver to the moon and take on the biggest and baddest manipulators in the world. Please post rocket emojis in the comments as desired.
Disclaimer: do your own research, make your own decisions, everything here is a guess and hypothetical and nothing is guaranteed, not a financial advisor, I have ADHD and maybe other things too.
Bear case: silver does tend to sell off if the broader market plunges so it’s not immune to broad market sell off. It’s also the most manipulated market in the world so we are facing some tough competition on the short side

My ex and I divorced three years ago. She was cheating, but at this point I don’t care about the relationship anymore. The pending lawsuit has nothing to do with her or him, but rather their actions.
My ex and I have a son 13m that we split time with 50/50. He’s a great kid that interests have changed a lot tbh as I imagine more kids/teenagers tend to do through the years.
One thing my son was heavily into at some point was legos. He use to play with them all the time, and personally I think they’re a great toy for different reasons. I use to love playing them with him, and to this day I still collect boxes that I leave unopened as a collection.
Well when my ex and I divorced she got with someone who loved legos more I guess? From what I know he loves making creations and building the sets in. I don’t care.. seems cool. He does one thing I think is very very weird.. He uses crazy glue so the sets can’t break or pieces can’t be lost. It seems so weird to me.
The issue is, I was out of town for all of three days last week for medical reasons, and my son wanted to get his ps4 so he could play it at his moms. This isn’t out of the ordinary at all and he has a key, so he let me know he would be stopping over for it. I told him to have fun when I saw him on the entry camera. My wife’s husband was with him which was a no-no. I told him via speaker to not go in and to wait on the porch.
He flinched but walked in any way. I sent my ex a text telling her to call him and tell him he’s one minute away from a cop call. He left my home with a bag in hand which I didn’t think much of because my son had his games too.
Well my son texted me later that evening and said he didn’t know it at the time but he’s pretty sure SD took some of my sets. These are all old sets and two are worth big money. When I got home I confirmed the missing sets and called my ex. She had no idea but he admired he took them but it was so son could have the sets to complete his collection... my son doesn’t even like legos anymore and told his mom he wouldn’t steal from me.
My wife asked how much it would cost to replace them and unfortunately it’s more than their savings. Actually, it would take their house down payment plus more. I told them if they didn’t pay in two weeks I was suing and pressing charges. The price in the sets makes it a felony.
My ex and her husband are saving for a house which would give my son more space when he’s there, but those sets were going help pay for his education someday or a home of his own. I filed the police report and have talked to a lawyer and we’re moving forward with the suit.
Everyone is calling me a joke because they are just toys, but I don’t get it. They are worth real money.. I’m not rich guys. I needed those to help with my sons future... but again taking this money does deny my son things at his moms house.
AITA here??
Edit* I’ve been asked to add these facts.
The sets have been opened which more than half their worth, and one was glued together. The damage was done already.
The stolen items are:
Kings Castle Milk truck Lego land train Carousel And the glued one was a Star Wars snow speeder.
Some of these are one piece of a larger set. So if you lose one of five, you lose the value of one produce plus the value of the set as a whole.
Second edit*
Ex wife and boyfriend are the same as ex boyfriend.. I’m just a bad writer.
Third/final edit for this post*
I know I haven’t been here much but I have read many of your comments and taken them to heart. I know my spelling is poor guys, and I apologize for the format. Calling me names in my private message was not called for, and I am not a scalper. I enjoy buying these sets and do not intend to sell all of them, but I want my son to go to college and not worry about debt, so I want to sell the ones that I can to help. I never had the smarts for higher education but my son is not me, and I love him and want him to do better.
Around 4:00 PM I called the local state police and met at their facility. I gave them all I had and gave my statement.
My son is with me starting tonight so when I picked him up I sent him into GameStop and called his mom. I told her I had filed charges and I asked the cop to call me when everything was done so I could give him the opportunity to turn himself in. I wanted to be better than he treated me. I’ll save her reaction for a real update btw—- can someone please tell me how to update because I don’t really understand the steps in the main notes.
I told my son when we got home what I did and why. My son said that I did the right thing because he didn’t want his step dad to think it was ok to do it again, and if he didn’t go to jail he’d rather be her away from him so it isn’t weird.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.
​

Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...
​
..
​
BOOM
​
Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

For those confused why BUY and HOLD are the investors best strategy - both to stick it to hedge funds and profit - this post is to map this out.
HEDGEFUND RISK
First understand what's at risk for the hedge funds. According to S3 analytics, HFs have lost $20B on $GME so far. Other reports have come out that hedge funds have lost 15-20% of assets so far this year. Using these two numbers we can make an estimate they have $80B at stake here (Citadel was worth $33B on Jan. 1st so I believe this to be close). Because Citadel and Melvin struck a deal, we can assume they are all in this together. This prevents a prisoners dilemma for any one of them and makes retail investors battle $80B vs. say an individual worth $2B.
Now let's assume short amount is 100% of float and they have reduced the high debt on Thursday's shady tactics. This means to calculate daily interest we take:

• 50M shares in float (according to Fin Viz)
• 25% interest rate = .25/365 = .07%/day
• Share Price = $300

$300*.07%*50M = $10.2M in interest/day.
At $300 share price and $80B in funds as long as they continue to acquire the minimum # of shares needed they can keep this up for 21 years.
So that's their situation. The question they are asking then is how do we improve our situation and ensure we gather enough shares to keep this going?
​
HEDGEFUND GAME THEORY
Ok so now assume you are a huge asshole that steals from poor people and has no respect for others. You need shares and you want to exit your position so you can make money elsewhere*.* How do you do this?
There are three tactics likely:

1. Settlement

• Let's go back to our shares needed (50M) and value of the hedge funds ($80B). Dividing that out we see that if they pay $1600/share they would be bankrupt.
• To avoid bankruptcy but get out they likely will look for government intervention that has them pay $500-$1000/share
• So how would you do this? You first use your friends to convince retail investors that your share is worth less than $1K. Retail investors might even have an organization like SEC say they are protecting us - after all $500/share is more than retail investors paid. You then settle behind the scenes with your cronies and come out with PR about how great this is! (fuckers)
• This is their best course of action because retail investors cannot do jack shit against it
• Edit: As others have pointed out the settlement could be with other hedge funds that own shares, not just government intervention

​
2A) Test Pricing - Low

• The first test they did was to see if they could scare us. A ladder attack costs them nothing. And if they keep price low enough they don't have to pay out on higher issued options.
• Clearly the ladder attack was very effective Thursday and Friday up until ~2:30pm (I'll explain why later). I expect them to use this as needed to keep price in a range

​
2B) Test Pricing - High

• Another strategy is to find a price cliff. Essentially they let price run up a bit and hope that everyone sells to lock in profits. This is more risky and will be used cautiously.
• However I can't state this enough - we might see price rise substantially on Monday in hopes that retail investors sell.

​
3) Work with GME to Issue Shares

• If they think buying is dying down, a share issuance allows them to grab a number of these shares and exit
• The reason this is not their best outcome is twofold: Retail investors can help subdue with a huge buy attack and GME has little incentive to upset a large portion of retail investors
• Still, keep your eyes out for this to happen as it will be a pivotal point

​
Well this all sounds good and I need to get back to my yacht. Let's do some price testing and call up our buddies to solve this in a couple weeks. This can't go tits up.
Wrong. Retail Investors still have the power.
​
RETAIL INVESTOR GAME THEORY
So now you are a smooth-brained ape. What can you do to stick it to the twats?
​

1. HOLD

• If everyone holds then HFs can't get shares. This leads to a long, drawn out fight or settlement. But guess what - at least the HFs are losing millions of $s a day and unable to screw around with other stocks
• This benefits the new retail investors because eventually your short-term gains become long-term gains (less taxes)

​
2) BUY

• How do you prevent a wall of selling slowly lowering the price? You build a wall of buying slowly raising the price!
• Whether you realize it or not retail investors almost lost Friday afternoon. RIs had two days where buying was diminished (fuck Robinhood) and therefore the ladder attack let HFs set whatever price they needed. Thankfully retail investors pulled it off in the final minutes (maybe thanks to a whale)
• If retail investors continue to commit limit order buys to prevent the ladder attack from lowering price AND continue to adjust their limit order buys UP the price will go UP
• This is the most important though - the retail investor must commit to the idea that there is no longer a "dip". Price is now pre-squeeze and post-squeeze
• If they can do this the retail investor wins. The post-squeeze price will be where most retail investors want to sell (hopefully VERY HIGH) and all shares purchased post-squeeze will make profit

​
3) FIND WHALES

• Anyone named Elon that wants to commit to the cause and also hates short sellers?

​
4) DO IT QUICKLY

• HFs are spending 24/7 trying to find a way out. The longer RIs let this drag on the longer a settlement is likely

​
RETAIL INVESTOR WINNING - WHAT TO EXPECT
Now that we understand that what will winning look like? Well we have two outcomes:
​

1. Successful Buy Wall Overwhelms The Shorts

• This could literally happen tomorrow with enough power
• The price will gamma squeeze, then squeeze, and then game is over
• Watch for massive market dips

​
2) Retail Investors Own All The Shares

• While unlikely there could be a situation where everyone is HOLDING and shorts can't get their shares
• A ladder attack will lower the price to get retail investors to sell - imagine a slow steady drop to $20/share
• After waiting it out a month or two eventually the HFs fold and a real buy and a real ask will go through at whatever the retail investors deem the share price to be (again hopefully VERY HIGH)
• EDIT: THIS IS VERY UNLIKELY AND JUST THEORY. IT WOULD BE HISTORICAL TO SEE 100% OF ALL SHAREHOLDERS NOT PLACING AT LEAST ONE BUY AND ONE LIMIT SELL.

​
TL;DR

• Hedge funds want to drag this out waiting for a settlement or retail investors to sell
• The retail investors best strategy is to BUY and HOLD.
• A successful retail investor strategy eliminates the idea that there is "a dip" to create a buying wall. There is only pre-squeeze and post-squeeze prices.
• A buying wall - supported by a swath of limited order buys - by the retail investor will move price up slowly day after day until this over
• One well-intentioned whale could end this tomorrow if they really cared
• Don't be surprised to see a settlement with government or another party come through if this drags on

​
^{This is not financial advise. Do your own DD.}

[I know I said final edit, but I made a final final edit below, and preserved the original post at the bottom. I'm disorganized, sue me.] 2nd-to-FINAL EDIT: Toning down the Rhetoric. We need real data, can this be mathed out? I like that guys idea of a shareholder meeting. GET THESE FUCKS IN JAIL. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
ALLEGATION: SECURITIES FRAUD, NAKED SHORTING COLLUSION BETWEEN MELVIN AND CITADEL
​
Let's roleplay, retards. I'll play the billionaire fuckhead who wants to bankrupt Gamestop, because I think it'll be a fun story to jerk off to.
​
I hatch a brilliant little plan to short them to death. Here's my plan.
​
I collude with the company who invested in me, who processes my transactions, to make the world think I have 5 Million GME. This happens. I don't know how, but keep going with me.
​
So now, all I have to do, is NEVER let one of these specific 5 million GME shares out of my account, or the jig is up. They'd be caught as a FAIL TO DELIVER if someone ever got their hands on one. So how do I never sell one of these? Shorting!
​
But no no guys... not just regular shorting. We... we would short. EVERY. TRANSACTION. EVEN THE ONES THAT LOSE US MONEY. It's more important and valuable to me to pay for a clean share off the market to boomerang back, than it is to release one of my POISON SHARES into the market and get found out. Luckily, I know a clearinghouse that sits in front of all my transactions, and can help with this little bit of intercepting magic.
​
So, we do this for a while. Hey, wait, a big order came in, there wasn't enough float in the pool to boomerang clean shares, oh shit, we let a couple go. Well, let's wait and see what happens.
​
< INSERT LINK HERE TO THE FAIL-TO-DELIVERS ON GME SECURITY OVER TIME > https://i.redd.it/1wpfodbyb6f61.png
​
Oh, shit. Things are warming up. People think Gamestop might really come back. If there's a lot of trading, they might've found out about my 5 million FAKE POISON shares, when the clearinghouse comes to deduct it from my account.
​
Oh, shit. It happened. A lot. Look at those fail to delivers. They're everywhere on $GME, and only on GME.
​
The jig is up.
​
I don't want to get caught, so I hit my "omfg algorithm" button, that will liquidate and put any asset in my entire portfolio in front of those buy orders for GME. I know, the redditors are idiots, so I'll HEDGE THIS POSITION with another profitable meme position.... like AMC.
They decided "FUCK IT" eventually, and traded in their FAKE SHARES for REAL MONEY at some point during this, and those are FOUND OUT WITH FAIL TO DELIVERS. THEY ARE SLIDING ALL THEIR ILL GOTTEN GME GAINS INTO OTHER STOCKS, PROBABLY THRU OTHER BROKERS, SO THEY CAN BERNIE MADOFF THIS BITCH AND RUN AWAY WITH ALL THE MONEY.
​
THOSE ARE FAKE SHARES, "CREATED" BY CITADEL AS IF MELVIN OWNED THEM, AND ALWAYS FRONTED (SEE: LAUNDERED) CLEAN SHARES WHENEVER TRANSACTIONS WOULD HAVE COME IN FOR THEM. AND THERES WAY MORE THAN 5 MILLION AND ITS NOT JUST MIGHT NOT JUST BE GAMESTOP. [Edited, im retarded]
​
​
​
​

​
Final final Edit/addendum [lol i know, i'm unorganized, shutup] 2/5/21 3:51pm EST: I am still here, I am still convinced, and I am still advocating. I however will not be posting here anymore. I am preserving it via an internet archive screenshot, and logging off for good.
The amount of ACTIVE disinformation is a data point. Look at the seemingly unrelated geopolitical panic boilling over among the rich and well connected specifically. Look at the people who have been victimized by this behavior in the past, finding their courage to speak up. Most of all, look at the data. Keep your head in the math and data. Create mathematical models of your own to represent the forces that YOU KNOW are in play, and come to your own conclusions.
​
I spent the past 2 days kind of sweating a lot, and freaking out. Am I gonna die? They gonna put a hit out me? Am I in danger?
​
NO. These are lazy fucking idiots. These guys' wives boyfreinds don't even wash their own fucking car.
​
You don't have anything to fear. Their crimes are in the open, in daylight, with data. They committed them so nakedly, so lazily, so sloppily.... The data PROVING this has been in the open for what, like weeks? months? Think of the MILLION other securities they could have done this to instead of pushing that gamestop threshhold over 100%. These are just LAZY ENTITLED FUCKING CUNTS. They are willing to risk SYSTEMIC FINANCIAL SYSTEM COLLAPSE because they got too lazy to fucking copy paste their strategy on a new thing.
​
And you know what I am? I am lazy too. And we're all sitting at home, being lazy, and we're gonna take your ILLEGALLY GOTTEN LAZY GAINS and put them to true good use.
​
Cool, right?
​
==================================================================================================
REDDITORS YOU MUST REALIZE, THAT THIS ALL CHANGED THURSDAY. A DYING RAT DOES NOT LAY DOWN TO DIE, AND THE DEATHBLOW WAS NOT DEALT THURSDAY.
==================================================================================================
​
They are now actively ponzi scheming. You can again, see it in the trends. Its hydraulic flow of capital, across securities, to protect their one, poisoned, fake stance. This is MASSIVELY ILLEGAL to cover with borrowed. I didnt know what the fuck a ponzi scheme even WAS until I started trying to find a way to explain my stupid fucking waterfall analogy.
​
Do you know why % held by institutions was above 100% for way too fucking explainably long? Those were the fake shares that citadel and melvin colluded to make. Melvin as a short seller, wouldnt look suspicious if the "institutional % held" by them was high.
​
Do you know why % of float went down, that wierd S3 data anomaly? They started selling. Their. Fake. Shares.
​
Do you know why we see lots of fail to delivers occurring? Those are those fake shares showing up in the drains.
​
It's been a ponzi scheme all along. Just, it was being held WITHIN the single GME security. But, on thursday, they got caught. The financial world was either sleeping on it, or in on it, and wasnt prepared for them to get caught. Either way really doesn't matter right now, as the result was: RAISE THE MARGINS. LET THEM DIE. ...... oh also we mightve just fucked a bunch of smaller brokers.... like, a lot of them, by essentially making them have to have 10x more operating capital than they do..... well.... whatever, everyone sees the writing on the wall. If they believe, they'll raise some more capital. Please correlate this with the actual facts surrounding robinhood, 212, etc halt of trading. They DID fuck up too with their reaction, I am not excusing them. But look at the actual events.
​
So they were caught. Nothing to do now, but to sell their fake shares. They've been doubling down on shorts this whole time since probably $20, all the while leaking faked shares into the pool. We all hold fake shares. There's no way of knowing anymore. The well is poisoned.
​
We need to force a shareholder vote now, to get a tally. We need to force the SEC to do their goddamn jobs and fast, go freeze these criminals assets COMPLETELY, NOT THE GME SECURITY ALONE, because they are GETTING AWAY WITH IT via a naked ponzi scheme.
​
The bomb is no longer contained within GME. They detonated their bomb on thursday, when they got CAUGHT, and decided that its jail no matter what, so they clicked the algorithm named "PONZI SCHEME" and fucking started making calls to drum up disinfo. Do you understand the criminal motive, of a 100% defeated foe (fake shares revealed), to do another criminal self preserving move (ponzi)?
​
Up until Thursday they were using legal mechanisms to push back from being found out. When they got caught, they switched to illegal ponzi mechanisms. I'm a fucking ape and I can understand this criminal motive.
When the ponzi algorithm runs out, you are left with a stock GME that has a market cap representing $0 of melvins dollars, and a market cap of whatever other securities they are funneling their money into, representing $all of melvins dollars. Do you notice how, if melvin also held some sort of position in those other companies, melvin still has his dollars? And do you notice how there are exactly $0 of melvins money to squeeze out of GME when the correction actually occurs? P O N Z I
THEY WILL WIN, unless the REGULATORS COME AND DO THEIR GODDAMN JOB. And remember, the villians here have already released the poison into the well. It's gonna be very very very VERY hard to unpoison this shit. Do the regulators just say that, hey, that amount of lead in your drinking water is fine now?
​
Let's see whose side they are really on.
​
I've forwarded it to a diverse range of tiplines and media outlets. I am not enough. One retards voice will never be heard. Apes strong together. APES STRONG TOGETHER.
​
Only the light of day will reveal all these SQUIRMING, MISINFORMING, MONSTERS hiding in our system. The data is there. Only those who DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT, are not seeing it. They are the paper handed bitches, who are barking as loud as they can BECAUSE THEIR JAW IS MADE OF STYROFOAM AND FAKE SHARES.
​
You and I are all 2am_spaghetti, because 2am_spaghetti is just some fucking nerd who knows how to game systems (IN VIDEO GAMES) and can see some fucking patterns in this system. These monsters are game theorying real life, and they just lost. But rather than pay the cost, they are literally trying to hit reset by doing a manuever that has historically nuked the entire system, counting that the lay person doesn't know enough. Because it worked in '08. And who knows how many other times.
Make your own judgement, apes.
​
​
​
​
​

Original post below.
​
please help me, I'm resorting to just sending people reddit DMs, I am 110% certain of this, you can call me the time traveler
Their stoploss algorithm is modeled after HYDRAULICS across their whole portfolio. The squeeze has a pressure relief valve, and this is it.
https://imgur.com/MHmpwVe Edit: maybe a better explanation? :: https://imgur.com/gallery/5t9QgEc
Imagine using your car jack while the handle is twisted open. No pressure, fluid is just movin around. Even in this state, sometimes if you pump it fast enough you can see little jumps of life. The real solution though, is to Tighten it up, now we have a pressurized system.
Visualize their algorithm as a cascading waterfall, pouring portfolio-wide capital to the very bottom until there is literally nothing left and in which case it EXPLODES. We hit that thursday with those reports of 5k bids being filled right before everything shut down. But in this waterfall, the only stock they HAVE to defend is GME. They already are out of water, but theyve erected an insanely big waterfall that hides where they are out of water up top, and fills it in by the time its time to fulfill at the bottom buy. The hole has ALWAYS been there the moment they overshorted, and it remains. Its why they didnt bail at 20, or 80, or 115. THEY CAN'T AS LONG AS THOSE NAKED SHORT VOLUME > FLOAT. This was the math all along.
This also explains the Fail to delivers on GME, the clearinghouses are finding the fake shares in the drains while Melvin tries to chlorine this pool.
TLDR: The mathematical strategy of the situation is to reduce the blue area's leverage (multiplicative), and grow the maximum red force (additive).
​
We have to reduce blue to win, or come up with an incredible amount of red, quickly. If we don't, all of yellows dollars will flow to the other meme stocks / negatively correlated stocks and THERE WILL BE LESS TENDIES == LESS TOP END OF SQUEEZE. IN FACT, GME TENDIES ARE BASICALLY BEING GIVEN TO THE OTHER STOCKS, IN AN EFFORT TO MAKE COSTS LOW, SO THE COST OF COVERING THOSE FAIL TO DELIVERS IS MANAGEABLE.
Melvin (or to be fair, whoever originally authored and held the naked short shares) is using TIME as their ally - THE FAIL TO DELIVERS == THE AMOUNT OF NAKED SHORT STOCK, and IF THEY RUN OUT THE CLOCK, ALL OF THEIR FAKE STOCK GETS CAUGHT IN THE DRAINS AND IS PAID FOR BY WHOEVER PAYS FOR THAT SHIT AND THEY DO NOT GO TO JAIL
This theory connects the dots.
Please if you have an in with wsb mods etc, forward them this to read. Ive been trying via modmail, posts, everything. Anyone with a platform needs to know this. Since all the memes are booming like an ETF, the profits on the others are being just siphoned into GME which holds their ultimate loss - the naked shorts that we KNOW they have on GME.
EDIT2: omg melvin is so sinister. They knew redditors would bandwagon. They are using our own UNFOCUSED HYPE against us to prop up GME. PLEASE HELP ME BE A MEGAPHONE, WE HAVE TO GET THE WORD OUT.
EDIT: 💎💎🙌🏼🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

This is a story of how patience is key, and how letting someone else get revenge for you is by far easier than doing it yourself.
The setup
I live in one of those doubled up houses where they build two houses adjacent to eachother with mirrored layout, so we share a wall but are otherwise completely separate.
For years, the house next to me belonged to a nice old lady who you never really noticed or had any trouble with. When she died and the house was resold, the troubles began.
The target is someone who I will refer to as Jack Sparrow, for reasons that will become clear later. Jack owns a sizeable construction business, does some real estate on the side. He buys the house and rents it to a bunch of foreign construction workers that work for his business. I say foreign because it is relevant to the story: there are rumors Jack is doing some shady stuff to have these work for him dirt cheap, by claiming that they're national workers in their native country (and paying them according to that wage, and not the much higher minimum wage of my country). Not exactly on the up and up. Possibly unreported labour as well.
Anyways, he stuffs 4-6 of these in said house for them to live while they work here.
Now I do not have anything against foreign construction workers. But these guys living next door have two traits that are very problematic: they are extremely loud and they do not give a fuck about anyone else. We're talking non stop music and partying starting Thursday evening throughout the entire weekend, untill they leave at 5 am Monday morning to go to work. Seriously I dont know how or when they sleep, it is literally non stop. We're talking 'I'm wearing headphones but still cannot hear my own sound over their music' loud, since it would appear that they've designated the living room (adjacent to the shared wall) as the party room where the fun happens.
At first, I do the neighbourly thing and just suck it up, thinking 'its just one party, just one weekend'. After the third one in a row, I go over to ask them to turn it down, since y'know, night disturbance, its technically illegal to blast music this loud (hearable on the street and across the street by my other neighbours who have also complained).
I'm met with a halfhearthed 'so sorry, will fix'. Except nothing changes. I go over several more times, each time angrier, each time met with 'but its not loud'. If I can hear your music in my own house, over my own tv and music, I would say that it is in fact, too loud.
I contact Jack, since he is their landlord, and explain the situation, after which I'm met with an abrupt 'sorry not sorry, not my fucking problem'. Basically Jack told me to get fucked.
So I involve police, and call them every time things get out of hand. After about a dozen calls, sometimes even twice in the same night, it is clear that even regular police interference doesn't help the situation.
I should mention that I am a lawyer, so I know what the next legal steps are. I also know that other than a token paper from a judge saying 'their music is too loud' I'm not really going to get anything. Things would (like they already sometimes had) become a cat and mouse game where they would blast their music extremely loud to piss me off or to wake me up, for a few brief moments, so that by the time I could get proof or police show up, there would be no music.
I'm deadlocked with my only further option being pretty useless and a waste of time.
At this point I'm biding my time and just waiting till something changes. I'm not saying that I condone people who bludgeon their neighbour to death with a rusty pipe, but I do somewhat understand what would drive someone to that point.
The mistake
One day I'm at home and I notice quite a lot of ruckus next door, more so than usual. Suddenly, I see through my garden window that a wall is being partially torn down. You see, sometime over the years, the neighbours had built a small adjacent sidebuilding adjoining the main house. It was right on the border between us, and when the gardens were being refenced, the wall was used as a divider to save on fencing. Said wall was now in the process of having its top part ripped off by a crane.
I was not informed of any of this, which, while not technically needed, would have been the nice thing to do. I go take a walk so I can take a look at what we're doing and see that they've torn down the entire sidebuilding, the remaining wall between our gardens is the only part that has been kept intact (and even then, not the top part).
Being a lawyer, and specifically, a construction/permit lawyer, I know two things:

• Shit like this is not allowed without a pre-approved permit from the city
  
• There is no way in hell they have said permit, as I would have seen the application for it (I regularly have to check the online (public, accessible by everyone) application to see what permits are being applied for my job, and when I do I tend to look over to my own area, just so I can keep up with what is being planned in my area)
  

This is it. The moment I have been waiting for, the situation has changed and the time has come to exact revenge.
A quick email sent to the municipal authorities lets me do my civic duty of reporting a potential crime, the fact that someone is building or demolishing shit without a permit. Since this is a simple report, no response happens since I'm not an official victim or anything yet.
Since no further construction happens for a few days and everything was removed, I assume that was that and they would only tear down the side structure since it was starting to fall apart due to age.
Neighbours have moved all their stuff that was in said building onto their lawn and haphazardly covered it with a tarp.
The next week, more construction materials are being delivered and construction starts. I send a new email to city services, with new pictures, saying that apparently, there is more planned, and that I hope they undertake the appropriate action. Instant response less than an hour later: They'd called Jack after the first time to inform him that what he was doing required a permit, and he had ensured them that he didnt know that (BS, he's in construction, of course he knows) and that he would stop construction and request a permit. They called him again after my email, reprimanded him for not following his earlier promise and he said again he would shut it down.
I happened to be working from home that day, and had to stop myself from waving to the construction crew as they left.
Later that day I get an angry phonecall from Jack, who accuses me of reporting him and that I would be sorry, he would come after me for damages for his delays. I respectfully inform him that even if I reported him (reports are in my name, but not published and anonymised in later files) I wouldnt have done anything wrong, because from the looks of it he didnt have a permit and should have known that before he started working illegally without one.
I end the call before I start to sound too happy with things.
Jack has at this point, no idea what I have initiated with this. He is Jack Sparrow and I have just rung the bell that awakens the kraken that will destroy him, he just doesn't know it yet.
The kraken
You see, there is a good reason why most people consult an expert and or a lawyer when they want to apply for a permit. The rules involved are so convoluted and needlessly complex that navigating them as a non professional is extremely hard and time-consuming, and a single mistake can torpedo your entire case, forcing you to do it all over. I have killed entire projects (and have seen clients projects killed) by pointing out that on page 127, section 35-1-A, something was left blank that should have been answered.
I did some digging and found out that the previous owners of the houses had actually consulted eachother about the sidebuilding, and agreed on making the wall (part of) the divider between their gardens. So much so, that they shared the costs of it. And the ownership. That wall that he destroyed part of? It was also my wall. Which of course, means I'm entitled to damages, but that is not the important part.
The important part is that he needs my permission, to do anything to that wall. So when he applied for a permit a few weeks later (added bonus, rowdy neighbours stuff is still out in the open, covered by just a tarp, since they expected this to be a quick smash and replace job that would take a few weeks at most) I went to city center and looked at the application. Noticed that they were planning to do some stuff to said wall that I own 50 %.
So I filed a complaint, following proper procedure, about the permit, namely that even if granted, it could never be executed, since Jack needed permission from me in regards to the wall, and he didnt have it (nor was I intending to grant it). This should kill his permit, since permits cannot be granted if you know in advance they cannot be realized. No sense granting a permit to build a certain kind of house when you know they're never actually going to build it.
Now, Jack was a bit of a smooth talker, and as a construction entrepreneur, had his connections, and permits are a political decision here just as much as a legal one. So despite a 100% correct legal objection that should have killed his permit, it went through. He actually called me about it to gloat a little.
No worry, one can appeal a permit in my country. The only requirement is that you pay a 100 euro fee, which I gladly paid. The appeal instance is a subnational instance, and does not care one bit about Jacks political ties or the half hearted bullshit that the city officials wrote to justify granting the permit in spite of the concerns I raised.
They terminate his permit without any hesitation on the aformentioned legal grounds.
Jack sees his permit blocked untill he fixes the issue, which he can't, because I'm not really inclined to agree with his plans for our wall, you see.
At this point, going through two lenghty procedures, it has been over 7 months. The neighbours have had an unfinished construction project in their yard the entire time, forced to store their stuff elsewhere, something that was always supposed to be 'a temporary thing for a few weeks while we build' turned into something that was taking months, with no end in sight.
But wait, theres more
The above was the administrative part of the matter, him getting the permit.
Now doing construction work without a permit is also a criminal offense. And of course, my report got passed around to the appropriate instances, so now Jack was also the subject of a criminal procedure for construction offense. Not only did he risk fines and jail time, he was a construction business and used his own construction business for the work he did on the property. So his company was also on the hook, and one of the sentences that can be given in these types of crimes is to be prohibited to do construction or construction related activity as a business, either permanently or temporarily. Not only was he personally on the line, his entire business was as well.
During this debacle, Jack tried to sell the property. This didnt really go too well because of a few reasons. One, the property was inflicted with an illegal situation: the demolished sidebuilding was torn down illegally, and untill said illegal status was resolved, it would stick to the property. Which tends to kill the property value quite a bit, since nobody wants to buy something that they'll have to spend time and money on to make legal again by either rebuilding the torn down building, or getting a regularisation permit for it. Made even worse by the fact that he applied for said permit and had it denied, so he couldn't even claim that said permit would be super easy to get.
Secondly, is Jack never intended to sell the property in its current state. What he, as I now know, has done in the past is buy cheap old houses like the one next to me. He puts some of his crew in it, who can't complain about the sub par accommodation. They thrash the place because they dont care and he lets them, then when the place is done, he tears it down and sells it to a developer or develops it himself.
However due to his construction crime and the accompanying status for the property, step two was not an option. He couldn't renovate it the way it needed to be (small renovations would not be enough), because covering the crime was always a requirement in any permit he would request for the building, and because of me, he couldnt cover it.
Couldn't sell it either, because the place was trashed, and any developer looking at it would dip out when they realized there was a construction issue and a vocal neighbour who would oppose anything big that they would try to do there, lost of easier properties to develop than that one.
In conclusion
Anyway, that is where we are today. Jack is staring down the barrel of a criminal court procedure that is about to happen where he is risking his business and livelyhood. His existing projects also gather special attention from city services now, since he is now outed to them as someone who cuts corners on permits and regulations.
He cannot really sell the property unless he cuts a massive loss, since in its current state it is absolutely trashed. He cannot develop it or sell to a developer because all development plans involve the adjoining wall, which he cannot use in big ways unless he gets my permission.
The rowdy neighbours are stuck living in a smaller house than what they had, in a place they trashed but that cannot really be renovated or fixed in the major way that it needs. They have quieted down a lot, possibly because Jack blames them for his current situation (which isn't wrong, I suppose).
I have awakened the kraken and set it off on Jack Sparrow, and it utterly ruined him. And the best part is that I had do to very little to do it. All I really did was nudge the abomination that is municipal bureaucracy and point it in his direction, and they did the rest.
I could tell you that he called me to complain and even beg about letting him use the wall the way he needs it to, so that he can get on with his business and fix the issues and use them to show his good faith in court in the criminal procedure, that he was losing money and customers over this and was in danger of losing his entire business, and that I then smugly replied with 'not my fucking problem'.
But he didnt, so for now we'll just have to imagine that he did.

I’m a semi-avid Warhammer 40k player and the game has been hit by a number of small, cumulating drama bits over the last few years, so I thought I’d write them out here in case anyone was interested in learning about them.
Disclaimer: I do have some strong opinions on the drama and I have done my best to keep things neutral in this post. Please do feel free to call me out if I let my thoughts about the Stupidface McSpaceymarines show too much.
Background information:
Warhammer 40k is a tabletop miniature game distributed by Games Workshop (GW). The poster children of 40k have long been Space Marines: the elite, genetically augmented human super-soldiers and it is around them that this story revolves. Warhammer 40k is currently in its 9th edition, with rules for each army distributed in its codex.
The factions in Warhammer can be broken down into 3 broad categories. Remember this for later. As listed on GW’s website, they are: the Imperium (all flavors of “good guy” humans, including the aforementioned Space Marines), Chaos (daemons and fallen humans), and Xenos (myriad alien races, including Egyptian robot zombies, communist fish weebs shogunate cow weebs , clown elves, and British soccer hooligan orks).
In 2017, GW’s general manager stepped down and new company leadership took over. This is where our story begins. For a while it was good: GW was making record profits, fans were fairly happy, and the hobby seemed in a good place. Then players started realizing that something didn’t smell quite right.
8th Edition and the coming of the Primaris:
8e was released in June 2017, with the new rulebook alongside a Space Marine codex and “Index” books with units for all other armies, so nobody had to wait to play their respective faction. The indices were bare-bones and contained few of the abilities, relics, and special rules that each faction would receive when their full codex was released.
8th edition was also heralded with an entirely new line of Space Marine models, the “Primaris.” These are the tacticool bigger brothers of the “oldmarines” and a massive refresh of the aging Space Marine model line. They are bigger, badder, and shootier. Primaris marines were a hit and sold extremely well and GW profits reach new heights.
Over the next year and a half, a new faction’s Codex would release every 3-6 weeks. In a game with 20+ factions, this meant - if you were lucky - you’d get full access to your army’s abilities/relics/units in 6 months. Most armies were covered by the time the edition had been out a year. Depending on whom you ask, this is either an unacceptably long time to wait or surprisingly quick compared to previous editions. At this point, fan morale was fairly high: we saw lots of quality new content, a more-responsive and friendly community face, and promises of hotly-demanded future releases (whooo Sisters!). GW released a steady stream of new Primaris models throughout this edition, flushing out the new line.
Capitalizing on the popularity of Primaris, GW took the previously-unheard-of step and released new, turned-up-to-11 Marine codices in 2019, as well as 6 extra Space Marine sub-faction supplements and a new Chaos Space Marine codex. The meta had been fairly healthy and consistently evolving, but these supplements resulted in massive imbalance, buffing a specific Space Marine chapter so much that it near-exclusively dominated tournaments until it was patched. In retrospect, this was a sign of things to come.
The long-awaited Sisters of Battle also came out in fall 2019 (whose preorder sold out within minutes) and an expansion called “Psychic Awakening” was released from Oct 2019-July 2020. It was neat lore-wise and contained a few new rules/units, but not otherwise noteworthy.
The Gathering Storm:
9th edition was released in July 2020, but was touted as an “8.5e” where your old books and rules would still be valid, with some modifications as to the game itself. This was met with general good will from the players, as the books they bought a month earlier wouldn’t be instantly outdated. As is tradition, it was released with a new, now third Space Marine codex and one for the Necrons (the aforementioned Egyptian zombie robots), as well as a box set containing new units for each army. Unfortunately, this is also where the crux of our drama kicks in.
The release box set contained incredibly powerful and divisive Primaris units, Eradicators, which could only be obtained from this $200 USD box. Eradicators are an anti-tank unit new to 9th edition whose mere existence single handedly pushed tanks/armoured units and the factions that relied on them out of the meta.
Additional criticism came because the design of the Eradicators came across as “stealing” a specialist xenos unit - Eldar Fire Dragons. For perspective, Fire Dragons and Eradicators cost about the same in-game and have the same role, but Eradicators output far more damage at a longer range and are significantly harder to kill. Fire Dragon models are also 30 years old and look it; the Eldar range is one of the oldest still sold and in desperate need of updating. Understandably, Eldar players were upset. The box also contained the extremely powerful Bladeguard, but they went largely ignored due to the fecal storm Eradicators kicked up.
GW then doubled down. Unlike in the previous editions, where the supplement books were saved until the vast majority of codices were released, GW chose to near-exclusively prioritize releasing the Marine supplements, resulting in months of only new Marine books. By now, the strategy was clear: the Primaris money printer was in full BRRR mode. At the time of this writing, seven months into 9th edition, the following rule books are available: 1 xenos faction, 1 chaos faction, 0 Imperium, and 5 Space Marine.
Oh...wait. Did I separate Space Marines from Imperium, despite saying above that they’re all one happy family? Apparently not so much. During all of this, GW’s website broke Space Marines out into their own, separate 4th listing that is categorized on top of all other Imperium, chaos, and xenos factions.
Players began to notice the trend in model releases more and more, as if the Eradicators were the watershed moment. Since 8e, Marines alone have received the vast plurality/majority of new model releases over the last 3+ years. Remember, they’re still just one faction of about 20 who are now receiving the support of the other 19 combined. While the new Primaris line was positively received initially, the constant drumbeat of new Space Marines with only token attention to other factions began to drive a wedge between players and blowing up grimdank with memes. Even factions that got large rework releases paled in comparison.
Other players questioned why so many new Marines were being released when armies were stuck with aged resin models that date back to the Clinton administration (and much older than the pre-Primaris Marines). For example, older armies were stuck with models like this. Worse, GW’s brand of resin (FineCast) is commonly referred to as “FailCast” in the community due to its poor quality and difficulty to work with. This feeling of neglect hit xenos players in particular, though some Imperial factions also had good reason to be upset at the quality of their old old models.
Rumbles in the Warp:
In retrospect, there were a number of warning signs from GW that issues were brewing. A Hobby Drama post could probably be written about any of these individual events, but here is a TL;DR of each:

• The app - GW recently released a long-awaited mobile app that has been plagued with rules errors, intense attempted monetization, and was missing key features like army builders. In GW’s defense, they have been improving it regularly and providing many features for free in the meantime.
  
• Hiding price hikes as “localization” - in response to Brexit and the weakening GBP, GW adopted a locally-based pricing model that came with hidden and significant price hikes in other countries. Fun story: it was cheaper for me to buy models off of their UK website, pay to have them shipped to a reshipping company, and pay for the reshipping and any import taxes to the US rather than to purchase them directly. A lot cheaper.
  
• The Primaris Lieutenant - a meme that emerged after GW released model after model for the same in-game unit (one that most armies would never need more than a couple of), each with slightly different poses. Criticism centered around the idea that the resources to constantly remake this same unit could have been better-allocated.
  
• Death of the Phoenix - a rare xenos vs xenos box set that starred 1 updated hero and 1 updated infantry unit each. Hurray! Except the box was also chock full of less-popular and very old models that there was little demand for. Many still sit unsold on store shelves.
  
• Hobby fatigue and the Bore-us Heresy - with so many rapid-fire Marine releases, some players complained of difficulty keeping pace with both money to buy them and time devoted to modeling. Worse, Marines have been pushed so hard for so long, they have come to dominate the meta such that Marine vs. Marine games are commonplace, which can become repetitive or dull.
  
• Forgotten weapon updates - Several Imperial/Chaos weapons were significantly buffed at the start of 9e, with GW promising to do the same for identical xenos gear...except, when the update came, they hadn’t. The changes appeared haphazard and were missing many weapons that players had reasonably expected to be included. (Sidenote: my personal theory is that they paid an intern to ctrl+f weapon names for updating, but said intern didn’t realize that the names can change based on the faction. For example, this is why the update to flamers was correctly mapped to the Eldar “Dragon’s breath flamer” but the “melta gun” update didn’t apply to the identical-in-all-but-name “fusion gun.” Oops.)
  

In Defense of Marines:
Players on the pro-Marine side frequently point out that a good cause for their preferential treatment exists: money. Undoubtedly, Marines are the most successful single product line, and can you blame GW for milking it? The equally-common counterargument is that it’s a chicken-and-egg issue: that Marines are only the top seller because they get the majority of the new kits, updates, and advertising.
Defenders of GW point to a number of other factors on their side: promises of future updates to other factions, that very real possibility Covid may be affecting production, and that older editions have been far more sluggish with content. They also point out that the Necron and Sisters of Battle factions each have received much-needed new model refreshes in the last few years, albeit nowhere near as expansive as their own. Marines were certainly in need of updating when the Primaris line was introduced and it went a long way in helping the supersoldiers fit their lore on the tabletop.
While some Marine players were initially concerned that the pre-Primaris armies that they dumped thousands of dollars and at least 3 hours into painting would be suddenly outdated or unusable, GW has continued to support them and point to this as a sign of goodwill.
Finale:
Unfortunately, there has been no real happy ending to this drama. For some players, the lack of resolution has caused them to hit a stage of burnout: a place of feeling that non-Marine factions deserve attention, but that the complaints are so commonplace that people are just whining now. On the other side of the spectrum, xenos players can feel a learned helplessness, as there’s not much they can but accept their fate and make snarky comments on WarhammerCompetitive. Some people try to hold optimism that the new and improved GW will pull through, burning themselves out on the Primaris line while others put their head down and play as they always have.
But the issue barrels forward as the Primaris money printer hums its “brrr” in the background.
TL;DR - Gaming company builds bridges of goodwill with fans, then torches them due to impressions of favoritism and greed.

Note: I am mostly summarizing the aggregate of explanations currently floating around about the 1/29/21 option expiry date. I don't claim any knowledge. This is not investment advice. Do your own research, don't invest what you can't afford to lose, and if something feels wrong it probably is.
TL;DR: This isn't about options (yet), it's about shares, and Institutional Investors are playing a dangerous game by convincing us (some of y'all have bought in without realizing it) that a magical short squeeze has some 3-day time limit, that Friday is somehow the end game, and are hoping that when investors don't see a $5,000 short squeeze by next week they will fold and take their gains at a "reasonable" double-digit stock price. Don't believe them. They can survive through mid-late February before the true short squeeze smashes upward. And I'll be ready. I like this stock and believe in it's long term potential, and I think it's undervalued.
THESIS: If institutional investors can (1) convince retail investors to sell stock at low prices and (2) convince their lenders to wait, then the 0.01% get richer.
JUSTIFICATION: There is so much public sentiment (passion, enthusiasm, excitement, anger, whatever) surrounding short (~1 day) price movements*, and Friday's expiring options (these are also end of month contracts), that it seems like big clever money may be trying to artificially create a sort of bear trap for shareholders.
Whatever happens in the next week or so (crest to $700? crash to $60?) almost means nothing in the long term, but could fool investors into giving these guys CHEAP ways out of their 140% float short interest positions. Remember, these are people who have been dumping tons of money for a long time, shorting the stock when it was in the single digits. They've been hoping for a GameStop bankruptcy, and manufacturing one as best they can.
IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME: Remember the VW infinite squeeze, where we saw weeks of crazy price movement before the actual peak. And that is a mild case, as most of the shares were held by an entity with legal, competitive, and strategic reasons and obligations forcing them to hold shares and artificially reducing the float, or available shares for trading. This reduced supply caused the short squeeze.
However, this time around we've got a huge short interest, much much larger by comparison than that from VW's 2008 peak, to the tune of 140% of shares available for trading (float). They've massively overreached, and are going to pay the price for that. But they haven't yet.
SO YOU'RE SAYING THERE'S A CHANCE: This time, however, if the big dogs can shake shareholders hard enough, weak links break and paper hands fold and a fantastic long term play starts to seem out of reach. The market manipulation wins.
DARE TO BELIEVE: Unfortunately for the shorts, GME has real long term prospects to revolutionize the gaming industry for consumers, and now has the attention and potential equity momentum (if they play it smart, which I think the new leadership will) to make this a reality.
From that link above:

In GME's case the rise in the stock price itself will likely result in fundamental improvements to the underlying economic metrics of the company.

I believe.
However, if the shorts can fight, sneak, manipulate, and otherwise adjust the share price down this week then they start to see light at the end of the tunnel. They make 2-3 week plans for doing the same thing. For them, prices don't have to bottom back out, they just have to convince enough people to sell that they buy thrmselves a few weeks before a short squeeze really takes them all under.
*Some of this price movement is shorts covering, but much is actual legitimate investment between retail investors and other institutional investors who have seen the light. Remember, TSLA didn't get to where it is because one company made some bad short positions. But if GME shorts can convince everyone that a 3-day squeeze is all they get until GME crashes to some "normal" level, then they win.
Everyone getting hyped about Friday is playing into their hands. Yeah maybe some will need to take gains after a Friday pop, but a smart long-term hold position on GME is what they're really afraid of. And I want to be a shareholder in GME's future, as many wanted to be with TSLA. And sure, maybe if everyone else thinks that way too, there may be an incidental short squeeze that wrecks the uber wealthy in mid-late February along the way.
Again, I am not claiming to be knowledgeable or insightful, just commenting my best guesses. Nobody knows the future. This is not investing advice.
🚀

Well guys, I lost 90k today on SPY calls which was basically all of my account. I started in 2017 with like 30k of my own money and over the course of 3 years, spent probably a couple hundred hours learning about stocks, options, doing "research" etc. Today, I am down 8k since i started in 2017.
Proof: https://imgur.com/8zoihg7
(shows -60k but I was down -30k yesterday already on the calls)
That was money I planned on using for a downpayment on a house, and for paying my taxes on gains from last year. So once February comes around, the 20k I have left is basically going to taxes on gains from last year which are now gone. I am effectively broke :-)
Im not that upset because I have a decent paying job.. but god damn, I was literally just contacting real estate agents last week because I was planning on buying a house. I could still buy one, but it will probably take me years to get back to 100k in savings.
I should have just stuck to selling puts like I was doing for the past couple months. The gains aren't huge, but selling 100k worth of puts every week is enough to make you a couple G's every month with not a ton of risk. I could have made my future mortgage payments just selling puts.
I am trying to look on the bright side. Having 100k made me spend somewhat frivolously. Like eating out twice a day, buying clothes i didn't need, etc. Now I have to go back to scrimping and scraping, which is good I think. I was getting a little ridiculous.
Also, I have been finishing up my degree online but have had no motivation since I already have a decent job and decent money saved. Im feeling the pressure now to hurry up and finish my degree so I can get a better job (100k+ a year).
I went all in on $390 1/22 SPY calls yesterday. I did the math; if we would have had a 1.5% day today, I would have made about 500k.. but it was pretty flat so at open, I was already down a shit ton. Figuring there was no chance left, I pulled out what was left, about 47k. I saw ford was going up crazy and figured that was pretty much my only chance to get back to where I was. Basically bought calls expiring tomorrow at the top, started going down, I pushed out and sold. So now I have 20k.
I'm not super depressed about it or anything because I know ill be fine, but I already miss the coziness of having 100k stored away. Knowing that if I lost my job or something, id be okay. But like I said, Im looking on the bright side.
My goal at the moment is to just save as much money as possible, pay my taxes in February, and then start over. Not even gonna lie, if I didn't need the 20k to pay taxes on last years gains, Id probably yolo it into something crazy. It's better to feel like this than nothing at all. Kinda fucked but whatever man, life is just boring.
EDIT 1: Honestly guys, I could go all in GME shares but even if it goes up 100% this year, I will only be at 40k.. which is already far fetched. Do any of you seriously believe GME is going up 500% this year? Maybe. Maybe you're right.. Maybe I need to go all in shares, defer paying my taxes for as long as possible, and hope for the best. God you guys give me hope.
EDIT 2:
ALRIGHT, so im going all in shares on something and just holding long. Half of you faggies are saying GME, half are saying BB. Which fucking one is it? I can't risk any options plays at the moment.
**EDIT 3: *Went all in GME this morning, already up 50% to 30k. There is hope!**

**EDIT 4: **I was able to make all of my money back because of GME! Went all in with my remaining 20k and up 400% in under a week! Account is back up over 100k because of GME, Elon, and not least you glorious autists. I sold last week at around 350 because I cant afford to lose all that money again. I felt like I won the game. Like god had thrown me the "Reset" button and it was time to get out before something bad happened.

*Then Robinhood pulled their shit. *

The hedge fund freaks got on the news and started crying The media started painting us out to be the bad guys The hedge funds DOUBLED DOWN and reopened their shorts at current levels
And I got pissed. FURIOUS. They blatantly rigged the game, right in plain view, and they think they are going to get away with it. And if we don't fight them, they will.

So, as much as I would have liked to accept gods reset button, to take my money off the table and go back to a lower risk strategy, I had to jump back in. So I'm back in on GME with a small position which I can afford to lose. And I don't care if I lose that money. At this point, it's about the message, its about solidarity with my fellow autists. It's personal, and Im seeing it through to the end. I will diamond hand these shares until the fucking end with you guys, even if it goes to 0. I've been on this sub for years now, I love this sub, I love you fuckers, and I LIKE THE STOCK.

LETS FUCKING GO.