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Current stock market fiasco.


The King Of Swing

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4 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

How is it possible to “borrow” more stock than exists, though? Surely any layperson can see that’s not… feasible. 

I *think* it's more about lending more stocks than exist rather than borrowing more than exist. The companies lending the stock do so for a fee - so they end up lending more than exists, on the basis that the price is going to plummet and the company will go out of business, so nobody will care. 

It's The Producers but with stock. 

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There's a theory going around on Reddit at the minute that the reason the Hedge Fund bankers are getting extremely defensive and stock apps are frantically reducing buyers, is because the Hedge Fund buyers have essentially shorted more stock than what exists, and figured it wouldn't matter because Gamestop would eventually just close down. The theory is that Wall Street Bets and Co own 100% of Gamestop as a company right now and nobody knows how to handle it.

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5 hours ago, Your Fight Site said:

How is it possible to “borrow” more stock than exists, though? Surely any layperson can see that’s not… feasible. 

It can happen because they can be "borrowed" more than once. Suppose you own 100 shares of $UKFF, turns out your broker will actually lend out your shares without you knowing (another way for them to make money), which may sound crazy but thats ok because they'll settle everything up later. I come along and short $UKFF, so I borrow 100 of your shares and then short them. Then Chest Rockwell comes along and buys 100 shares of $UKFF, turns out he's buying the shares that I shorted and Chest's broker decides to lend them out to Moo who is going to short the stock.

Now you own a total of 100 shares, but 100 are lent to me, and then 100 are lent to Moo. So there is interest in 200 shares but only 100 exist.

4 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

@neil - is it normal for a stock to be so heavily shorted or was it greed / hubris that got these guys caught with their pants down?

A level of greed and negligence I'd say. Typically you don't see anything close to that level of short interest, its a warning sign to anyone who is considering shorting a stock. So they either ignored it thinking that GameStop was going to sink anyway or they totally overlooked it.

4 hours ago, FelatioLips said:

There's a theory going around on Reddit at the minute that the reason the Hedge Fund bankers are getting extremely defensive and stock apps are frantically reducing buyers, is because the Hedge Fund buyers have essentially shorted more stock than what exists, and figured it wouldn't matter because Gamestop would eventually just close down. The theory is that Wall Street Bets and Co own 100% of Gamestop as a company right now and nobody knows how to handle it.

It's true that they shorted more than what exists, but retail don't own 100% of GameStop, see the post I made on the earlier page about the combination of institutional ownership and retail.

The real factor in all this is that wallstreetbets as a group decided to hold despite getting offers that any sane investor would happily sell at. A stock going up and up without you selling is only a financial gain on paper, you don't actually have that much money unless you sell. Most people would happily take their earnings with a stock that goes up 50%, certainly 100%, but these guys just kept holding.

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