Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one knows. That's not public information. It doesn't take into account that at 400 shorting GME became a much more appealing idea than even at 20/share. Everyone knew 400/share was unmaintainable.
> No one knows. That's not public information. % Short float is public information. And based on the discussions I've had online, it seems people are confused between %short float and %short outstanding. > Everyone knew 400/share was unmaintainable. Clearly not. My friend was buying in at that time, despite me arguing with him that he shouldn't. There's also plenty of retail-buys that occurred at $300 to $400: millio…
My understanding of this is that it's released on a bi-monthly basis. So the active count is not reported. There are people who try to track it based on the outstanding shorts by watching the stock market and predicting what the current daily short percentage is, but I don't think they have verifiable data until the publication comes out. https://nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=ShortIntPubSch
Any short before the surge was probably shorting the price below 20/share. Say there are 100% shorts at 20/share. Then it goes up to 50/share and now it's 80% at 20/share (because 20% of those closed out) and 20% at 50/share.
When it was at 400/share, no one knows if those were shorts at 20/share, 50/share, or 400/share or when they expired. If I was a savvy investor who was being squeezed, I'd have cleared all my shorts at 20/share at a loss and then shorted the stock again at 400/share keeping the percentage around 100% of the market. I have no way of showing this and unfortunately very few people do (to my knowledge). If I'm wrong please show me I'd love to learn more, I find this incredibly interesting.
That's what I mean is not public information, no one knows what the breakdown of the short value is.
>Clearly not. My friend was buying in at that time, despite me arguing with him that he shouldn't. There's also plenty of retail-buys that occurred at $300 to $400: millions and millions of shares bought.
They thought it would go up to 1000. Which it might have, but they thought it would surge up and they could sell off at 1000.
That doesn't mean the price is maintainable. Everyone was passing around the last Short chart and it wasn't a maintainable boost. You can't even see the jump on a 5 year timeline of the market.
EDIT: Sorry I keep saying everyone. Everyone who was on WSB during the mania. I am sure there were individuals who didn't fit this. But I assume your friend thought the price would hit 1000/share and then they'd sell there. Or they were sold on buying the dip. Either way, they had an exit strategy (I assume) and it wasn't 10 years from now it was in a few days or weeks. Which is why I said isn't maintainable.