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High Short Interest Stocks

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Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#111

Post by ls612 »

ceh123 wrote: post #87
konjin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting is that these are the official channels, there are plenty of dark pools where there are no rules but all sorts of exotic instruments are being traded in volumes that boggle the mind. I worked at one quite some years back.

Could you explain a little bit more about this? Or point me in a direction where I could find out more? Super curious. Thanks

A dark pool is just a private securities market. They don’t have to disclose much since the general public can’t participate but they can trade all sorts of exotic instruments without a lot of the “public focused” regulations.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#112

Post by gkop »

jedberg wrote: post #59
toast0 wrote: post #41

Earlier 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.

Parent is wrong indeed, but your reply also misses the point (sibling comment by ‘swang gets it right). For a streaming media provider, infrastructure costs are a rounding error compared to the fees to license the media for distribution (which can be negotiated any which way, so you can’t generalize the impact of service utilization by customers, although swang makes a good point about leverage).

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#114

Post by agar »

ahepp wrote: post #81
alasdair_ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there proof Melvin actually got out? All I saw was a “source” on CNBC. EDIT: This is the story: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/01/27/melvin-capital-sells-o... It's full of plausible deniability phrases like "from what I understand" and it's very much a game of telephone. They could easily say "when I meant we were out of the stock, I meant that we had covered some of our positions" or similar. I can't find a non-…

FT reported it as well. Not bulletproof, but I think they have a bit more reputation than CNBC. Perhaps I'm naïve, but I think to lie about such a thing would pretty clearly fall afoul of the law?

An official statement would run afoul of the law, yes. A concerted effort to whisper to many people in an effort to manipulate the market would be fairly easy for the SEC to uncover in an investigation.

A single false statement or two, said to a reporter as a confidential source, would be much more difficult to prosecute. The reporter might not willingly give up their source, and the company could deny everything, fire the person who "inaccurately represented our position", and claim the party acted of their own volition. Modest fine, at best.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#115

Post by argonaut »

alasdair_ wrote: post #70
epistasis wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

Is there proof Melvin actually got out? All I saw was a “source” on CNBC. EDIT: This is the story: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/01/27/melvin-capital-sells-o... It's full of plausible deniability phrases like "from what I understand" and it's very much a game of telephone. They could easily say "when I meant we were out of the stock, I meant that we had covered some of our positions" or similar. I can't find a non-…

I am inclined to believe Melvin got out, because market manipulation that the SEC will actually go after is lying about your trades (covering your short) when you haven't made those trades.

Most of what WSB is doing is market manipulation but from what I've read it isn't something the SEC will go after in court as fraud is not clearly involved.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#116

Post by cma »

55555 wrote: post #58

I know there are a lot of Wall st guys here. Can someone explain what's really going to happen here in regards to the short squeeze? Is it really so simple? How will the shorts be able to cover? Also, is this page correct in saying that GameStop is the only stock on all listed US markets that's shorted over 100%?

(Edit: removed mostly wrong info, but here's an article on some stuff that goes on with voting rights and shorts that could potentially be used to vote for a capital raise and break the short squeeze by issuing new shares: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116978080268188623 )

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#117

Post by GizmoSwan »

echelon wrote: post #2

If a position is shorted under 100%, does that give the shorts enough wiggle room to close their position?

In time they will print new shares to pay the executives 100s of millions each but printing those shares is not instantaneous and it is regulated.

If the business does not become profitable, they will keep diluting it to pay the executives and fund the operation till people no longer trade the stock.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#118

Post by GizmoSwan »

toast0 wrote: post #49
kortilla wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hertz was within a day of issuing more shares before the SEC told them to fuck off because it was bankrupt and the prospectus was literally “you will likely lose all of your money immediately”. GameStop has had enough time to do an additional offering. It can happen in a couple of days.

> Hertz was within a day of issuing more shares before the SEC told them to fuck off Your timing is off, Hertz was selling shares in the morning, and stopped when SEC called them. They stopped selling promptly, but not before "Hertz Global issued 13,912,368 shares under the ATM Program for net proceeds of approximately $29 million" https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/47129/000165... Gamestop already had a…

Exactly.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#119

Post by runawaybottle »

tinyhouse wrote: post #75
plaidfuji wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

They look for cheap calls, that’s about it. It’s standard buy low sell high stuff.

That’s why I don’t get why they are being made out to be some kind of evil geniuses/idiots.

It’s very standard stuff.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#120

Post by GizmoSwan »

toast0 wrote: post #52
jcims wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the shares were printed on stock certificates how would you get to 100.01% short interest?

It would take a bit more time, because stock certificates are a pain to handle. But I would let you borrow my stock certificates (for interest and with good collateral), you would sell them to someone; then that person might let you borrow them (for interest and with good collateral) and you could sell them to another someone (or the same someone, whatever). Certificated stock is slightly less fungible than shares of…

This is where a block chain will be useful to make sure that there is a fool proof locking mechanism.
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