I hate that this site is getting posted around, when it does not show the update time. These short interest numbers can be 2-4 weeks old depending on NYSE and NASDAQ.
High Short Interest Stocks
101–110 of 286 posts
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#102But the question is, how do you mobilize enough people to act on something that causes market movement? As I understand it, the new thing wasn't lots of short positions, it was that a bunch of people coordinated to make something dramatic happen. Isn't that the problem?
This was heavily, heavily, heavily shorted. WSBers trigger a small squeeze at which point blood was in the water and the sharks came to feast...
...along with the entire internet. This triggers triggers more margin calls, more gains, and more attention.
It's a vicious cycle and given the liquidity conditions in the market there was enough jet fuel for take off. Now add more media attention, more people finding out about WSB, and you have the mother of all short squeezes.
This only became truly coordinated once the media got involved and was exacerbated more by the brokerage firms shutdown buying.
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
And further, these were large sophisticated investors that should have known when to get out and take their losses (as Melvin eventually did). For us small time folks we can do a limit short so that our risk exposure is limited.
Unless the big guys are convinced that they are right and have the money to not worry about a margin call. In that case they should be shorting more. If GameStop is really worthless then they win when the company finally files bankruptcy.
but with this high a stock price, they could issue new shares can't they? They can survive by diluting existing shares at this price, and work out a new business model with plenty of runway.
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Streaming is a business like gyms. The more people use your product, the worse it is. Everytime some one watches something, there goes some $ for the rights, and some $ for the bandwidth. If everyone has lots more time to watch your product, and they do, that's bad for your bottom line. And you can't charge more, because there's tons of options. And internet ad prices were trending down (not sure if that's still true…
That's not really how streaming works. The streamers generally don't pay per stream, they pay a fixed cost for a fixed amount of time of unlimited streams. At the same time, if a user is streaming or not is negligible cost. They build the infrastructure assuming everyone will stream, because unlike a gym, most people drop the service if they don't use it.
what he's talking about is what happened with Netflix: once the media companies realized how much money Netflix was making they revoked their content (or upped the price) and created their own services.
I agree with OP, streaming is a terrible business and only sustainable if you create your own content. Which is exactly what every streaming service does nowadays
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#105Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only reason the Piggly Wiggly guy ended up broke is because they changed the settlement rules out from under him. It was extremely legally questionable.
I think we should clarify here that trying to corner the market isn't some kind of by-the-book playing, it's an immoral scheme and whatever happens to such people is well-deserved.
Immoral? Why is it that morality is only the responsibility of the grocer?
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The current candidates being floated by WSB are Nokia, AMC, Ericsson and Blackberry. Even though Virgin Galactic is second on this list, my impression of the WSB crowd is that they look for companies that are both high-short-interest and some nostalgic notion of being “worthy of saving”... Virgin would probably not fit their MO given the high-profile billionaire owner...
Why does the WSB ethic permit the existence of Richard Branson? Shouldn't a UK public school billionaire descendant from violent colonial oppressors earn a spot up against the wall?
No, Branson is a founder that is playing a positive sum game. He grows the pie and pushes things forward. That's also why they like Elon.
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#108Fair warning. Buying stocks with high short interest is, over the long run, a terrible investment strategy. Mountains of academic research has consistently found the most heavily shorted stocks to significantly underperform the market[1] (to the order of 10% per year).
Heavily shorted stocks tend to be the companies with the most negative cash flow shocks[2], low quality earnings statements[3], negative earnings revisions, and future bad news[4]. In other words, when a company is heavily shorted it's almost always for a good reason. (Like being a brick and mortar video game retailer, that's losing mountains of cash with no turnaround plan.) High short interest is a tell-tale warning of a bad investment.
This shouldn't be surprising. Research has consistently found that short-sellers are the most sophisticated and well-informed investors in the market[5]. There activity strongly predicts soon-to-be released negative public announcements[6]. Short sellers are exactly the type of trader, you do not want to be on the other side of.
[1]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-1082.00... [2]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03044... [3]https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11142-006-6396-x [4]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/fima.12144 [6]https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/confe... [5]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jfir.12121
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#109But the question is, how do you mobilize enough people to act on something that causes market movement? As I understand it, the new thing wasn't lots of short positions, it was that a bunch of people coordinated to make something dramatic happen. Isn't that the problem?
This was heavily, heavily, heavily shorted. WSBers trigger a small squeeze at which point blood was in the water and the sharks came to feast... ...along with the entire internet. This triggers triggers more margin calls, more gains, and more attention. It's a vicious cycle and given the liquidity conditions in the market there was enough jet fuel for take off. Now add more media attention, more people finding out ab…
> Now add more media attention, more people finding out about WSB
And to give an idea of just how big this part has blown up: Over the past 6 days, WSB went from 2 million subscribers to 5.5 million.
Re: High Short Interest Stocks
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The current candidates being floated by WSB are Nokia, AMC, Ericsson and Blackberry. Even though Virgin Galactic is second on this list, my impression of the WSB crowd is that they look for companies that are both high-short-interest and some nostalgic notion of being “worthy of saving”... Virgin would probably not fit their MO given the high-profile billionaire owner...
Nokia and Ericsson are not highly shorted. Nokia short ratio is less than 1%. I have no idea why WSB picked them. Also, both companies' market cap is greater than 20B so it's not easy to manipulate the stock price to the GME levels.
There is some thought that Bots are pumping NOK on WSB... who knows