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High Short Interest Stocks

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Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#31

Post by kortilla »

jcims wrote: post #9
sokoloff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing particularly different between a company having 99.99% short interest and 100.01% short interest.

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

When you sell your stock certificate, you hand it over to someone who can loan it out themselves.

As a thought exercise, consider that I can borrow your stock and sell it right back to you short. We can repeat this process a million times. 1 million shares short now based on 1 share.

This is not naked shorting because borrowed the stock from you each time with you willingly participating.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#32

Post by kortilla »

jeffbee wrote: post #18
thrill wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enough to matter. At sufficient price there will be a seller. The company can create stock and sell it if the current holders don't.

Companies cannot issue more shares than they are authorized to issue. They have to do Formal Corporate Things to issue new shares.

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.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#33

Post by supernova87a »

But 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?

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#34

Post by tom_mellior »

anigbrowl wrote: post #20
xwdv wrote: post #10

I’m surprised this sort of attack has never be carried out before. Is it just because no one ever thought there’d be a crazy army of retail investors that could be so coordinated and so irrational and large enough to matter?

'Rational' investors try to make money off each other. That operating in pursuit of a class interest is considered irrational suggests there might be some shortcomings in mainstream economic theory.

I'll buy the "operating in pursuit of the class interest" angle rather than the "make money off each other" angle when the bubble properly bursts and we see the media stories about the early moving millionaires bailing out the late movers who lost their life savings. I'm not betting on that. The people who architected this bubble had a fair share of self-interest.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#35

Post by tekromancr »

jeffbee wrote: post #25
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...

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?

you may be drastically overestimating the leftist ideals of the WSB set.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#36

Post by bpodgursky »

kortilla wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

“Papa Elon” isn’t exactly praising the working class. WSB has less of a problem with Billionaires than they do Wall Street.

Yeah, WSB hates bankers, has nothing against founder-owners.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#38

Post by anigbrowl »

tom_mellior wrote: post #34
anigbrowl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Rational' investors try to make money off each other. That operating in pursuit of a class interest is considered irrational suggests there might be some shortcomings in mainstream economic theory.

I'll buy the "operating in pursuit of the class interest" angle rather than the "make money off each other" angle when the bubble properly bursts and we see the media stories about the early moving millionaires bailing out the late movers who lost their life savings. I'm not betting on that. The people who architected this bubble had a fair share of self-interest.

I think it's a mix. Some people certainly wanted a profit and planned to get out early, others bought in with the appreciation that they might suffer a loss when the price falls back down, but like the idea of pushing a hedge fund into bankruptcy. I have had conversations with both sorts of buyers in recent days. BTW I am not holding any positions in these stocks myself.

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#39

Post by mschuster91 »

thrill wrote: post #8
echelon wrote: post #2

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

Not enough to matter. At sufficient price there will be a seller. The company can create stock and sell it if the current holders don't.

> At sufficient price there will be a seller.

When the price is, let's say, 10k or more, then the poor sod having a short position now has a really huge problem. And the WSB people are attempting to do force exactly this - basically, a distributed game of chicken at a world-wide scale with many billions of dollars at stake.

> The company can create stock and sell it if the current holders don't.

That process takes time to set up and exposes the company doing this to image and legal liability - if enough people shout "market manipulation" and file lawsuits, something may stick in the end. Gamestop, AMC etc. will avoid such a drastic step, I believe. Also, there's a side risk of stochastic terrorism in that case, aka one person gambling their life savings away and now going on a "revenge", which is not to be underestimated given how riled up the situation is.

(Disclosure: long AMC, NOK)

Re: High Short Interest Stocks

#40

Post by adenadel »

plaidfuji wrote: post #24
torben-friis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually saw that and wondered what are the chances that I wake up tomorrow with that stock high as hell as a redirection from gme buyers...

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...

I'm curious how Chamath Palihapitiya's involvement in Virgin Galactic might come into play here.
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