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The real reason Wall Street is terrified of the GME situation
| I have been following GME since mid-September and over that time I have banked myself a %1300 return in the process. However, the whole time I was a little puzzled with how severe the reactions from Wall Street have been, especially this week. "The company had more than 100% of its stock sold short! That's never happened before!", you say. I know, I know, but that's not actually not a new thing. A short squeeze, even one of this magnitude, should have squoze by now with GME up more than 10x in the span of weeks. Something is just not right. I think there is something much, much bigger going on here. Something big enough to blow up the entire financial system. Here is my hypothesis: I think the hedge funds, clearing houses, and DTC executed a coordinated effort to put Game Stop out of business by conspiring to create a gargantuan number of counterfeit shares of GME, possibly 100-200% or more of the shares originally issued by Game Stop. In the process, they may have accidentally created a bomb that could blow up the entire system as we know it and we're seeing their efforts to cover this up unfold now. What is that bomb? I believe retail investors may hold more than 100% of GME (not just 100% of the float, more than 100% of the actual company). This would be definitive proof of illegal activity at the highest levels of the financial system. For you to follow this argument, you need to go read the white paper "Counterfeiting Stock 2.0" so you understand how the hedge funds can create fake stock out of thin air and disguise it so it looks like real shares. They use these fake shares in short attacks to drive the price of a company down until they put them into bankruptcy. This practice seems to be widespread among hedge funds that go short. There is even a term for it, "strategic fails–to–deliver." Counterfeiting shares is extremely illegal (similar level to counterfeiting money) but it's very difficult to prove and even getting the court to approve subpoenas because of the way the financial industry has stacked the deck against investigations. This completely explains why so many levels of the financial system seem to be actively trying to get in the way of retail investors purchasing more GME. It's not just about a short squeeze, it's about their firms' very existence and their own personal freedom. We have the opportunity to put all these people in jail by proving that we own more than 100% of shares in existence. There are are 71 million shares of GME that have ever been issued by the company. Institutions have reported to the SEC via 13F filings that they own more than 102,000,000 shares (including the 13% of GME stock is owned by Ryan Cohen). Now, I don't know the delay/variance on these ownership numbers, but I think there is a pretty solid argument that close to 100% of GME is owned by these firms, if not more. Moreover, there are now more than 7 million people subscribed to wallstreetbets~~. I know lots of people here are sitting on a few hundred shares that they bought back when it was under $50. Some of us are even holding thousands. If the average number of shares owned by each subscriber is even close to 5-10, we have a very good shot at also owning a similarly enormous amount of GME.~~ Even if the average was just 10 shares per legit subscriber, that puts the minimum retail position at about 30-50% of the entire company. GME has been on the NYSE threshold list for almost a month. We don't have January data yet, but I just analyzed the data from the SEC's fails–to–deliver list for December (all 65,871 lines of it) and looked up the number of shares that were likely counterfeit. For comparison, I did the same for a couple random tickers. Most companies have close to no shares not show up. Of those that do, it's a relatively small number of shares. For example, two random companies: Lowes ($LOW, ~$125B market cap) had 13,960 shares fail to be delivered at its highest point that month, Boston Beer Company ($SAM, $11.5B market cap) had 295 shares fail to be delivered. How many shares of GME failed to deliver? 1,787,191. As the white papers points out, the true number of counterfeit shares can be 20x this number. How bad do you think that number will be when we get the numbers for January? I'm willing to bet its many times that. Look at how that compares to other companies' stock: Histogram showing number of shares that weren't delivered in December (x-axis) vs the number of companies that fall into that bin (y-axis). GME is an extreme outlier. I think this explains all the shenanigans going on the last few days. There is way too much counterfeit GME stock out there and DTC, the clearing houses, and the hedge funds are all in on it. That's why there has been such a coordinated effort to disrupt our ability to buy shares. No real shares can be found and it's about to cause the system to fall apart. TLDR; We probably own way more of GME than we think and that is freaking out Wall Street because it could prove they've been up to some extremely illegal shit and the whole system could implode as a result. Disclaimer: I'm just a starving engineering PhD student and I don't work in finance. I have no inside knowledge of how the financial system works and I may be wrong on some of this. This is not financial advice and you shouldn't trade based on it. I am book-smart but I still eat crayons like the rest of you. Obligatory rocket: 🚀 EDIT 0: Looks like I truly belong on this sub. On the first version of this post I didn't read the file description properly and summed a cumulative distribution. My numbers were wrong, but I have updated the plot and post with the correct numbers. EDIT 1: You should also note this is the distribution for NASDAQ tickers, not the entire NYSE. I doubt that the distribution trend is any different though. EDIT 2: Evidence that Fannie May and Freddie Mac were killed in 2008 via short attacks using counterfeit shares: report. Exactly what I think they were trying to do to GME. EDIT 3: A lot of people were hung up on the "3 shares per wsb subscriber thing". I know many accounts are bots, I was intentionally underestimating that number. I have adjusted to 10 shares per "legit subscriber" to reflect this without changing the total amount I think retail owns. EDIT 4: What I'm seeing on Twitter makes me think I'm being interpreted a little too hyperbolically when I say "Something big enough to blow up the entire financial system. " We're not going to go back to mud huts, people. This could just be really disruptive for a short amount of time and cause a number of firms to face liquidity problems, possibly bankrupting some of them. Life will go on and I'm confident regulators and government will step in and protect people if necessary. Hopefully they pay more attention to enforcing securities laws going forward to prevent this from happening again. EDIT 5: Backup link for white paper. EDIT 6: I am getting thousands of messages. I won't be able to respond to all of them. Here is an FAQ: - How do I learn investing?I am not an authority on this, but my personal opinion is to first learn how to read a company's financial documents and value businesses and only then start thinking about putting your money into specific stocks. Read "the intelligent investor" by Benjamin Graham for this. Then learn how to think about picking stocks. I like Peter Lynch's books for this.
- What is going to happen this week?I have no idea and I wouldn't dare to guess.
- Are you going to be killed?I don't know where people are getting this idea. I have no special knowledge or insider contacts, and I am in no way, shape, or form an expert on the market or the system behind it. Please treat my tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories as just that. There is nothing to gain from harming me and I have no doubts about my safety. These are just personal opinions and I don't have any schemes to "take down the shorts" or anything like that. I do not advocate for you to buy, hold, or sell. I'm just postulating on how we might have found ourselves in this place.
submitted by johnnydaggers to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] |
How a short/gamma squeeze on Tilray is causing the ENTIRE cannabis market to moon and how to avoid becoming a bag holder when this all comes crashing down
| Obligatory: SIR, THIS IS A CASINO. This isn't financial advice in any way shape or form. TLDR: This run is going to end with the cannabis stocks back down 50-80% or more from the levels they are at. $CRLBF is the real play here for the smart players that want USA exposure to the legislation. We just like the stocks now, not later. Ok, listen up normies. Yeah I'm talking to the newbies specifically because the OGs here already know everything I'm about to share, but your insufferable groupthink and movement mentality shit pissed me off enough to make a post. Don't post DD if you have no clue. Ask someone for help and take your ridicule until someone comes along to help you. I used to post weekly DD on Sunday here a couple of years ago before one of you literally contacted my wife IRL. Not even kidding. So I made a new account. This is my first contribution back and I'm going to try and ensure some of you don't blow your chance at massive gains here by explaining what is actually going on. CNBC and anybody telling you that this is just 'momentum' and 'sentiment' is lying to you. The hedge funds are playing these right along with us. Don't ask me for proof, this isn't Twitter. Reasons why they are playing with us: - When there is money to be made, hedge funds and HFT funds are there before you
- The floats are so small on these they can take sizable positions on both sides and stand to have massive gains, all the while handing you guys the bags.
That's all you need to know. So in response to all you posting "real DD" with why these companies are the best and you're going to hold to the moon and never sell: I'm over it -- I can tell instantly how uninformed you are when I read some poorly thought out DD about why CGC or TLRY or APHA is a long term play because they're talking about USA legislation. These are Canadian companies. Get your head back on straight. You're here for the trade and the bet, not for the fundamentals, and if that's it, then fine, ignore the rest of this post and pick an exit, and if not, read on so you don't hold more bags. This place has never been one to care for fundamentals, but let me talk some sense into you so you can post some gain porn and I can tell you to fuck off instead of you guys all yelling "MaNiPuLaTiOn ShOrT LaDdErS" Let's take a look at some of today's gainers: (changed tickers for automod avoidance) $USMJay - Penny stock, worth absolute nothing for a reason $SNDL - Up ridiculous amount, have a billion shares outstanding, just diluted them all the other day $TeeRTeeC - Terra Tech, they grow weed, from all indications, do it poorly $OhGeeEye - lol $HUGE - Probably the only one in the lot worth a YOLO on the chance they get an acquisition like GW Pharma did but they don't have the same product portfolio or prospects GW has. Now, if you're simply playing this to get in and get out, great for you. The people saying (and believing) "$SNDL $10 EOW! HOLD THE LINE" and stuff like this are just absolutely brand new normies and are clueless, do not listen to them. If you yolo'd on cheap calls in Dec/Jan, congrats, take your gains and don't be like the $GME bagholders. If you're investing in any of the names I just posted above, expect any money you put in to at some point in the next 12 months be worth approximately 20% of what it is worth now. Literally. They're far worse than the main bunch (CGC, CRON, ACB, TLRY, APHA) but the main bunch is nothing to write home about either. THIS IS WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING: Tilray had 40% short interest. It's not $GME level, but it's pretty high. When the stock crested $40 it really started taking off, why though? Notice this week's FD option chain: https://preview.redd.it/kyqeiwljeug61.png?width=917&format=png&auto=webp&s=0c1b48e12518515f09582289bd7f8a4f47a09629 Tilray has a 95M share float, those 42 calls represent roughly 1.5M shares held as a hedge just by themselves. Previous to this run up, that represents roughly 5% of the average daily volume of the stock, BY ITSELF. Those are shares that until Monday can be considered removed from the float because they're held as a hedge. They may get loaned out to be shorted, but that will only speed up the squeeze here. The important part: Today (2/10/21) the stock fell hard after open down to around 44 and found massive support all the way back to up 66. The most sold front week call? $40/$42 strikes. Premium when I screen shotted this? $22.20. Stocks going to pin above $60 for awhile likely, unless people are stupid enough to buy the OTM calls, in which case, it may squeeze itself higher. Smart hedge funds are going to pile into this, sell you the calls, shove the price up to keep selling you calls, then watch them all evaporate worthless in one of the future weeks in the chain, dump back the shares to help shove the price down, oh and did I mention? They shorted the top. https://preview.redd.it/ivy78woneug61.png?width=392&format=png&auto=webp&s=0604940c09126dc6d5b96a9cc5f17e4013ae5d9d It's just another plain old stock acting as a derivative of the option chain gamma squeeze. That's it, with a bit of short squeeze thrown in there and a WHOLE BUNCH of WSB fomo. The shorts are covering and pushing up the volume, likely re-shorting on the way up, and then you have WSB fomo'ing in to round out the total: a massive volume of 200 million shares today. You've got people that think this thing will skyrocket to 500+ (and it may) but the stakes get higher and higher each ladder up you take and the moves become more violent and more likely it comes all the way back down in short time the quicker it goes up. Might it get there? Sure. But be prepare to take profits when it does because... ITS CALLED MEAN REVERSION. THIS CANT GO ON FOREVER. Not to mention, the moves you are seeing are in completely overvalued companies, with horrible fundamentals, and poor prospects. Oh what's that? CGC got some CBD treats for Martha, seems fitting that something ill is going on in this industry considering she went to prison for insider trading. If the dog treats get you excited about the stock, Martha belongs here more than you do. 200M shares today means people who were long term bag holders cashed out and the shares have turned over the float two times in two days. That also means the shorts have turned over and are now short again. It means the HFT firms are feasting on all of you. It means Citadel is making a pile on the spreads. What to take away: An amount of shares equal to the entire float has changed hands, or in other words, fewer reason for people to bag hold. Fewer people that have to hedge. Fewer people that have to cover. Fewer people to help stabilize any of these upper price tiers, and keep the price stable by holding, and more reason it's going to collapse sooner (or later). But, this IS a casino after all... Let's see what happened with TLRY last time this happened (oh, you're new here? Yeah, this isn't the first time): https://preview.redd.it/p652mvgreug61.png?width=587&format=png&auto=webp&s=d95f2b0ccf946717859bffb28601dfd29e999e0b Looks eerily familiar to something else recently. Last time this occurred it traded between $100 and $300 in a single week timeframe. For those of you that are new: THIS IS NOT NORMAL. STOCKS DO NOT ALWAYS DO THIS. You are in the infancy of a new age of trading, but people still know, fundamentals matter a whole lot more than everyone is leading on, and these valuations are getting extremely overextended. Eventually, in the first squeeze Tilray bled off until the pandemic hit and it piled down to $2.43 a share. At $2.43/share, I would have bought it. Even at $10/12/14. At these levels? You're just ultimately out of touch but I look forward to the loss porn. So in short, again: Sir, this is a casino. Timeline of events, and how to not become a bagholder: - $APHA earnings are good, stocks pop a bit, and level off
- Legislators pull a pump and dump since they probably have calls and say planning on some laws regarding changing the schedule of cannabis (notice: we will likely NOT get outright legalization, just re-scheduling)
- $CGC earnings are actually awful, with the caveat they have profitability on the horizon
- $TLRY gets a UK deal
- $TLRY starts going insane - since $APHA is a reverse merger with a .81 value share to share, it starts pumping, people start buying the lower priced cannabis stuff and entire sector starts moving on "overall strength"
- There's no strength, there's a gamma squeeze backed by investor momentum, and a short squeeze on Tilray.
- This is going to come back down violently then plateau out like GME and pull a slow bleed the rest of the way back down, just like the second graph I posted. There is no fundamental or even POSSIBILITY of better fundamentals immediately on US legislation. The cost to enter the US market will most definitely cause capex and goodwill capital outflows, and set back their profitability since there are established MSO's in the USA already. The USA opening the market to these companies will only further degrade the actual balance sheets/income statements and slow down profits and you know what institutions and shareholders like? Yep. Profits.
- Finally, how to not become a bag holder: The market can stay irrational way, way, way longer than you expect. So this may go on for a bit, but refer back to 7. It's coming back down eventually, set expectations and pick your exit, or start to shave off your position as it goes up and let a portion of it run. Eventually, you have to sell to actually realize a gain, don't forget that. Once you do, close the chart, remove it from your watchlist, check back in on it in a month if you want to get back in when you have a clear head.
The Canadian operators are literally the last companies I'd play off a US legislation play, and one of the only ones worth owning in $APHA for the arbitrage play on the shares. But if Tilray comes crashing back down, $APHA will as well along with all of them, and you have to hope you lose a lot less on $APHA crashing than you'll make on the arbitrage between the share price. THIS IS ALL JUST "SENTIMENT" BASED YOLOING BY THIS SUB. It has probably driven uneducated retail into the trades also - who will also become bag holders. Let me put this in big letters for those of you that can only read big font and use crayons: NONE OF THESE COMPANIES HAVE REAL USA MARKET EXPOSURE, THEY ARE CANADIAN COMPANIES. THEY DO NOT HAVE MARKET POSITIONING AND ARE NOT POISED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US LEGALIZATION. IF ANYTHING: IT WILL HURT THEIR BOTTOM LINE AND SET BACK EARNINGS BECAUSE OF CAPEX AND CASH OUTFLOWS TO GET A POSITION IN THE MARKET AND SOME OF THEM WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS BECAUSE OF IT, WHILE OTHERS WILL FALL OUT OF PROFITIABILITY TO ENTER THE MARKET AND COMPETE WITH THE REAL PLAYERS. Who are the real players? (Cresco $CRLBF and Curaleaf $CURLF - do your own DD or wait for a post next week\***************)* Conclusion: Nobody should plan on holding these long term. Don't let someone else hand you bags like I did this morning at open on the pop unless you plan to hand your bags off and find the next play. You likely will not time the top. Pick a place you're ready to exit the trade, exit the trade or slowly shave your position, close the graphs and don't fomo back in. Just be done with the trade afterwards. You're likely not a cannabis multi millionaire and will not be one, unless you were loaded to the brim with low cost calls from last summefall or unless you literally yolo'd $10M into one of these a few weeks ago, and in that case, you belong here, congrats on your gains and fuck you. THIS IS A SECTOFOMO SQUEEZE. AND IT WILL END. THIS IS NOT SENTIMENT AND CNBC IS TROLLING US WITH IT LIKE WE HAVE THE POWER. And if you think WE are the ones driving the price up, the hedge funds are definitely watching and playing and they can bring these down at will at almost any time they want. You're holding a lit molotov, the only question is: will you throw it before it blows up? The rest of you? Plz fuck off with you 20 shares @ $2 on Sundial, fuck off with the "HOLD THE LINE SNDL $10 EOW", fuck off with your fomo, and fuck off with the "movement" and "lets push this to the sky" stuff and most importantly don't post DD if you have zero clue what is going on. You know what "lets push this to the sky" sounds like? Market manipulation. We're not in this together, I literally handed one of you a bag to hold this morning and even if they go up for another month, eventually, that bags gonna be heavy and I ain't coming back for it. I ain't tipping you either. These prices are insanely high for these companies. The multiples are out of control, and if you buy in at these levels, well, best of luck, I hope it works out for you. I'm fighting the fomo of extended gains, and will continue to put my money elsewhere. SIR, THIS IS A CASINO. Positions: I had the meme stocks like you literally all of them minus ACB and CGC. I took gains and bought 500 shares of Cresco prob increasing to 1,000 tomorrow, and kept the rest off the table to pay my wife's boyfriend's rent. Disclaimer: I have Tilray puts I'm prepared to average down on and diamond hand like a real boss because this is coming back down. Edit: You know what I forgot to add? Some of the biggest holders, the cannabis ETFs and funds, you know what they did today? They trimmed their positions. And they will continue to do so because of fiduciary responsibility and when you de-concentrate shares into the retail's hands, the moves will get more and more finnicky and more and more violent. Edit 2: Some normie tried calling me out like I never saw this trade coming or am a hedge shill, https://imgur.com/a/asAVkiC - I had thousands of shares, these are just the trades from this month, and I'm not advocating a buy, I sold mostly all of them this morning except for adding Cresco back in. You want the gain numbers? You do the math, I'm not your math tutor, I sold like 6 minutes after open for most of them. I have Tilray puts for next week and will be buying a few months out at various strikes as it continues to climb. Yeah, I think these are coming back down in price sooner rather than later, that isn't extraordinary information for a common sense person. Edit 3: I'm getting piles of messages from people who used to follow my DD back in 2018/2019. Yes, it's the real SoRefreshing, proof: https://imgur.com/a/Pn5LqCe Edit 4: Eh don't request me with "What should I do with XX" be a big adult grown up and decide your own risk tolerance and exits. I responded to the first 10 or so. Now I have 100. I can't. I disabled chat messages. Edit 5: jesus with the awards go buy TSLA calls this is WSB not fb/twtr disclaimer: have TSLA calls Edit 6: Oh look, they're pinning it around the $42 strike. Go figure. submitted by OhSoRefreshing to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] |
GME EndGame part 3: A new opponent enters the ring
| Wow - what a week. This is an extension of my DD series on GME. If you haven’t read them and have time, they will provide some background on my previous predictions, some of which have already come true. Previous Important Posts - EndGame Part 1 (DTC Infinity) covered the short positions, the float, and potential snowball impacts of increasing prices, and argued that part of the reason that shorts haven’t closed was that it was pretty much impossible for shorts to close
- EndGame Part 2 covered Cohen, fair market cap analysis, and potential investors, in which I talked about the amazing mid-to-long term potential for GME.
- After the Citron tweet, I shared this fan fiction on what looked like blatant market manipulation by shorts on the day of the tweet, and offered some education on strengthening your position. This one got buried and is worth reading.
What’s happened thus far Why did GME go up on Friday? The story here is more complex than paid media articles would like you to believe. GME has been driven up by 3 different forces: - Organic buying
- There is a mixture of growing positive sentiment in the investor world (not just WSB) about GME’s future
- There’s been a lot of good due diligence shared not just on WSB but even outside (for example, see gmedd.com)
- The Citron Backfire
- Shorts were on the ropes and kept looking for hail mary’s. They went to Citron and coordinated a dump to try to bring the price down.
- However, this backfired. Citron is so disliked in the industry that new wealth poured into GME in the face of Andrew Left’s pleas. Even when Benzinga brought Andrew Left on air, minutes after he left they bought shares live on their show.
- The next day, our very on u/Uberkikz11 was on Benzinga and more shares were bought.
- Larger investors piling in
- Gamma squeeze
- Once the organic buying started, we rolled into a gamma squeeze. Many people written about the gamma squeeze so I won’t repeat, see this post for an example.
- Ultra low liquidity - In EndGame part 1, I talked about how the actual actively traded shares are much lower than the reported float, and share availability has been reducing driven by lots of diamond hands, not just among smaller guys like us but the larger folks too.
- I believe there were some short covers on Friday, but Ortex was still estimating 71M shares short at the eod.
However, not many people have talked about why it went down Why did GME come down? Here’s where things got interesting for me, and something I think happened again today (Monday) when GME climbed up over 100% but then had a rapid reversal, closing 20% above yesterday but closing below open. So Friday looked like a slam dunk - gamma squeeze, no shorts available to short, puts were getting exceedingly expensive as a short tactic. What happened? This is my fan fiction, based on what I saw. I believe market-makers took a non-neutral stance and began actively shorting the stock after the second halt. Market-makers are responsible for maintaining liquidity and functioning in the stock market, but they also have abilities that others don’t - for example they are legally allowed to naked short for “liquidity purposes”. They also have the ability to halt trading. There were two halts in the day on Friday: First, when GME was up 69% (heh heh), and then a few minutes later when it kept climbing after the first halt was relaxed. Note that at the time of the first halt, the bid-ask spread was $10 on the underlying a huge signal that there just were not enough shares to buy. However, after the second halt, something strange happened. Whereas a few minutes prior, there were no sellers willing to sell their shares below $75, within 15 minutes after the halt there were sellers at 70, 65, 60, and 56. Where did these sellers come from? Incredible momentum reversal on Friday 1/22 to push the price not too far above the 60c strike price. My speculation? This was a coordinated naked short ladder attack. In this type of attack, short seller A sells to short seller B, who then turns around to short seller A at a lower price, etc. and with a very small amount of capital you can wreck the momentum of a stock and make people think that others are running for the exits. Notice how the stock dropped from a high of $75 on Friday to below 60 - the highest expiring SP for the 1/22 options, and stayed tight in range for the rest of the day. Now, for compliance reasons, MM are required to be neutral by EOD, so 20 minutes before close, MMs had to buy back all their short positions, which led to the strong close above 60. All this led me to believe that the real fair market price for GME was above $65. Without the market makers interference, GME would have closed higher. A repeat on Monday The short ladder attack repeated on Monday. GME opened strong above $90, and quickly climbed to a high above $155 before it was halted, immediately after the halt, a short ladder attack again drove the price down Dejavu - Incredible Momentum Reversal after trading halts. Both days, there were rapid and significant reversals in momentum. Now, I kept wondering - why would MM’s take the side of the shorts? What’s in it for them? One theory was that they were not adequately hedged, with the low liquidity of the stock meaning that the price was moving up too fast for them to acquire the shares they needed to. But then the news hit today: A new opponent enters the ring: https://preview.redd.it/8htb0scgpkd61.png?width=926&format=png&auto=webp&s=228a8a84e592ea4642a61c5e07e07ae344ac8f2c That’s right, the same Citadel listed by the NYSE as one of their designated market makers is now invested in Melvin’s hedge fund and has a financial interest in the direction of GME’s share price. Hey media - you want a manipulation story? You’re missing the big one. Now what? Shorts have pulled new dirty tactics each time they’ve been pushed to the edge. Paid media attacks, Citron’s fluff tweet + coordinated shorting, and now they’ve got the actual people who get all the order flow on their side. On the other hand, GME is still up over 20% and now trading at $88.00 after hours, which is well above the previous day’s high. https://preview.redd.it/rr5qet4ipkd61.png?width=724&format=png&auto=webp&s=96d28bf446a714906712503726f5903a681d5368 What this tells me is that GME’s true price is still being suppressed. They are using every tactic possible, even changing the bid-ask spread rules on options to specifically target retail’s buying of options. We’re now playing the game against the folks who write the rules of the game. Some shorts may have covered today - with prices below $60 at one point they had some great opportunities to. However, there is no way all of the shorts who need to exit covered today. The short position still lost 20% from yesterday. They’ve got more fingers in the dam, but it’s definitely cracking. Also, every call option purchased prior to 1/25 is ITM and profitable, while every put option purchased prior to 1/25 is OTM. And, for some reason, the SEC still doesn’t want to enforce the threshold securities list for GME, where it’s now been on for more than 30 days in a highly covered “short squeeze”. https://preview.redd.it/rbrf6khjpkd61.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e4f432ff02dbf475a03cc68c54a5a0f5f0de429 Margin impacts: Note that at this point, most brokers have increased margin on GME. This means that people that are long or short on margin will need to put up capital to hold their positions. This also means puts will get more expensive as people who sell puts will have to maintain 100% of the notional in their accounts to secure the put, so MMs will have fewer retail sellers of puts to absorb the demand. That means it’s not a bad idea to sell puts to acquire shares if you’re aiming for the long-term and not the squeeze, but keep in mind you’ll need the exact same capital as if you’d bought the shares, so it’s up to you on this. For shorts, a margin increase while the price is moving against you (even with retracements) is no good. My speculation - Cohen and the GME board have been strangely silent this entire run. It’s possible they can’t say anything at all during the pre-earnings quiet period, but I’m sure they can see what’s happening.
- MMs will continue to play dirty, but at the same time they will need to continue to need to buy GME shares to delta hedge 1/29 and later ITM options as we get closer to expiry.
Things to be careful about As you can see, this is no easy win. I've been in GME for a few months but I've seen almost every trick in the book. In addition to the suggestions I wrote about in this post, here’s some things to be careful about. - Be careful about swapping ITM calls for OTM calls: it can be tempting to trade-up your options for higher return, but be mindful of the delta impact. You may actually be driving the sale of shares by MMs when you don’t mean to. For example, if you sell a .5 delta call for 2 .2 delta calls, that’s net reduction of 10 shares that MMs have to hold long as leverage.
- Be careful about being short any calls this week: Not only do you limit your upside (which is dumb in the prospect of a squeeze), you could end up in a nightmare scenario. A call that ends OTM on Friday could end up ITM after hours if you didn’t sell it, and you may get assigned while the underlying continues to go up.
- There are a few other dirty tactics shorts can play. I’m not specifically going to share them here because I don’t want to give the ideas circulation, but
- Choose your own limit sells based on personal sell points. Don’t copy others and don’t try to be memey. Make your own decisions.
- Stop sharing your positions publicly. I know this is anti-wsb, and I think sharing them is great for this community, but in the case of GME it’s an attack vector for you.
- Be careful of holding weeklies until expiration. Remember the multiple trading halts? What if trading gets halted on Friday at 2pm and doesn’t resume for the rest of the day? All your 1/29 calls would expire worthless. Depending on your broker and your cash positions, maybe even your ITM ones. Roll (or sell, if you’re taking profits) your weeklies well before expiration.
- Be careful about buying on margin. Brokers are rapidly increasing margins. If you bought on margin with 2:1 leverage, and the stock went up 100%, you’d be in margin call even without a margin change. If the broker moves margin against you, you’ll get to margin call faster.
- Don’t bet more than you can afford to lose. I’ve been in GME long enough to know that just when you think going up is a sure thing (remember last Monday with the short sale restriction?), you can be surprised by a new trick. If you bet it all on weeklies all at once, you may not be able to recover from being wrong on the timing. Consider longer expiry or spreading your purchases out. I’ve held through multiple 30-40% drawdowns in the underlying; and held through a 50% drawdown today, so you need to be ready for the volatility.
- Watch out for stop loss hunts. It’s common practice for shorts to hunt for stop losses for cheap shares. If you’ve set a stop loss, be really sure about it.
This is not financial advice; do your own DD. I’m holding over $1M in shares and calls. 1/26 Update Hi everyone. Sorry for not posting or replying to comments. I was auto-banned from WSB when this post was auto-deleted by the auto-mod. Thanks to u/zjz to reversing the auto-deletion of the post though as it looked like it was helpful to the community. Hope you all made a ton of money today! Quick Notes: - At an after-hours price of $209 a share, every call option, for every expiry, for every strike price is in-the-money. This is the third time this has happened for GME recently. Amazing. What this means now is that market makers will need to buy a lot of shares to hedge for the calls expiring this week. Heed my above warnings.
- At this price, shorts will start to get liquidated. Combining the 400% weekly gain with the margin requirements increasing across the board, brokers will force close short positions. Starting maybe with the small guys, but it will cause a ripple effect. Things could move fast. Some funds may get additional bailouts this week to hold out.
- You need to decide your own exit. Only you know how much $ you're playing with, how much you're willing to lose, how important the $ is to you, etc. Minimize you're regret, don't maximize your profits. If you are thinking about taking profits this week, spread out your sells so you don't kick yourself over timing things poorly. Personally, I think we are in unprecedented territory and that there's no way all of the shorts have exited already, so we're not done. I could be wrong. See EndGame part 1.
- Close spreads. With every call ITM, you are at the risk of early-assignment. If you don't watch closely, you could be hit with sky-high hard-to-borrow fees and get killed on what you thought was a profitable trade.
- Watch for ripple effects. This is already happening. When funds get liquidated, they have to buy back all their other shorts (see AMC, BBBY) and sell their longs (look at BABA after-hours). Want to play GME without playing GME? Maybe throw a little $ at BBBY. You do you.
- In EndGame Part 2, I talked about potential investors, and how the higher price is gonna attract the bigger $. Today we saw Chamath, Winklevoss, and others. And then Elon tweeted and simultaneously stimulated the buying frenzy and scared the crap out of shorts. I'm just gonna copy what I said about this potentiality
- Elon: (Least likely, completely improbable, but cataclysmic event). Elon hates shorts. Elon, with TSLA, went through the pain that GME is going through. TSLA almost went bankrupt because shorts were pushing the price down so it was difficult to raise the cash they needed to survive. Sound familiar? Elon’s wealth swings more in a day than GME is worth in entirety. Elon could buy all the fucking float of GME with what he makes in 8 hours. One call from fellow entrepreneur and aspiring twitter-meme-god would absolutely wreck the game.
- If you are short gamestop, you are one meme purchase by the richest man in the world away from a fucking cataclysmic event. "Hey son, I heard you like games. So I bought you gamestop. All of it." 🚀
submitted by FatAspirations to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] |
To Ape Gang: Why Sentiment Has Turned Against You
| I want you to understand this. Truly. I like GameStop. I like $GME. I believe in the long term plan (or what I/we think is the plan, anyway). I bought a Pro Membership and have put in orders through the app I downloaded. I think they'll kill 4Q earnings in March. I THINK GAMESTOP IS A GOOD COMPANY. I think Cohen and his team bring something to the table that will truly turn around the company. I think CNBC and particularly Melissa Lee can go suck an egg with their dismissiveness of the bull case, which they barely even pretend to have considered. I think the stock was and has been manipulated as fuck. My personal belief, which I require nobody else to share, is that Ryan Cohen and gang also still have more buying to do, and their buying alone will drive the price up. But my belief is that they have no interest in buying at this price, or they'd have done so. I believe they're waiting for the price to fall back toward the fair market value. And I believe they may force the issue by issuing more shares. That's what I believe, and why I'm not holding positions right now. I probably will in the future, but my personal opinion is the time is not right. I wrote these posts: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l6n4lj/on_leverage_supply_demand_how_we_got_here_gme/ https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l6rsol/heres_the_letter_i_wrote_to_my_congressman/ (EDIT: lol I just realized both of those posts aren't visible since they were removed by the mods. They were pro-retail and pro-GME) I want to see people make money on this. Better yet, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE MONEY ON THIS. Further, what Robinhood did, as well as Webull, Interactive Brokers, E*Trade, EToro, and tons of other brokerages did, was fucked up. Everybody here agrees. But you guys are actually fucking insane. We dont have a problem with the stock. We have a problem with YOU. Many of the people who have joined WSB in the past two weeks are brand new to investing. And that's okay! But the new people (7 million new versus 1.5 million old) have done the following: - Spent weeks downvoting every single ticker besides GME, AMC, BB, and NOK
- Failed to realize there is no short squeeze on BB or NOK
- Failed to realize the NOK spam was purely from bots
- While you've realized there were bots that were bought, you missed (probably because you were spamming rocket emojis and gorillas) that the bots were spamming NOK.
- Continually asked what stock WE are going to MANIPULATE next
- Tried to educate the crowd on terminology you just googled ten minutes earlier.
- I saw one person disagreeing with a long-time and well-respected poster here by telling other Apes to ignore that post, and to instead read a copied and pasted two paragraph blurb from investopedia that explained the effect of a stock split on a short position.
- Made up securities laws and terminology that doesn't actually exist
- Short ladders? Every time a price falls from a peak it's a short ladder? EVERY TIME?
- You don't think that there's a natural reversion in the balance of supply & demand after a stock runs up thousands of percent in a matter of days?
- With zero understanding of market mechanics, explaining to others why price action is fake
- "Look how low volume is on this candle! It's not a real drop!"
- the dip is fake
- Called people who have been involved in this play since Summer 2020 "paperhand pussies" for taking profits when the price of the stock went up 1,500%
- Turned WallStreetBets into a political activism forum
- Denying Reality
- S3 partners is not lying to you. They and Ortex are consistently the best sources of difficult-to-obtain information on short interest. Just because they're reporting that short % of float is reduced FROM THE HIGHEST LEVEL THAT ANY STOCK HAS EVER HAD does not mean that they're lying to you.
- Spammed low-effort memes and easily-Googleable questions on the new submissions
- When your posts were taken down, you posted AGAIN
- Accused anybody with an opposing opinion of being a hedge fund shill/bot
- AGGRESSIVELY spamming to find buyers to help you get out of your huge negative position
- I want to gag every time I see somebody write "I'm not a financial advisor" following a post that makes that very clear
- Moving the goalposts
- "YOU ARE HERE on the VW short squeeze graph!"
- "We finished above $325! Gamma squeeze!" (Personal confession, I almost fell for this one and I'm glad I sold before the plummet).
- "Ok so there was no gamma squeeze Monday but Tuesday is the day!"
- "Ok we fell another 50% Tuesday but definitely Wednesday!"
- "Fuck it let's just harrass investor relations to help us!"
- Accused the mods of being paid off by hedge funds for doing what they've always done, which is remove shit-tier posts from the front page
- which you then posted again
- Completely ignored the rules of our subreddit
- Market Manipulation --
- No Pump & Dumps -- pressuring other people to buy low float stocks (such as GME) so that you can drive up buying demand and sell when you've decreased your losses is a scam.
- Political Bullshit -- If you think "it's not about the money" then get the fuck out because it is absolutely about the money.
- No Bullshitting -- There are so many of you advising others on their trades (followed by "This is not financial advice, am ape") while you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about aside from something you just read on Reddit 5 minutes ago, which was posted by somebody else who had no idea what the fuck they were talking about, which was based on a tweet they read 10 minutes before that from someone who DID know what they were talking about, but OP misinterpreted the meaning.
- Believe it or not, that's against the rules. Just say you dont know. Or say nothing. There's actually no need to spam.
- Gain & Loss Posts - nobody wants to see your Loss on one-third of a share of AMC. Come on.
- YOLO - Your investment in one-third of a share of AMC is not a YOLO. A YOLO is DFV leveraging up his entire $55,000 account with positions in a single ticker and letting it ride or die.
- Drowned out a lot of really good content on non-GME stuff
- And you've now begun brigading WSB from GME.
You have formed a cult. You've now decided, amongst yourselves, that anybody who is not in on your play and wants to discuss other things is just a paid hedge fund shill. Do you think that's a healthy mindset? If this is the investment that you truly want to make, and you feel you have an understanding of the risks, then fucking let it rip. I hope it works out. Seriously, I want you to make money. I like Gain porn a lot more than Loss porn. But stop bullshitting. Stop brigading. Stop spamming. You're driving us nuts. https://preview.redd.it/h7xqt1iw97g61.jpg?width=466&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc87b50bb806d2bedbb5aa0c3fa1ff56d19660b2 submitted by OlyBomaye to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] |
Data-Driven DD: I analyzed 265,000 rows of SEC Short Fails-to-Deliver data so you don't have to! (Extremely important data for Counterfeit Stock theories)
| The GME SEC Data and Hedge Fund Shitfuckery: A Deep Dive As I'm sure many of you who have been following the "Counterfeit Shares" theory about the various short attacks on $GME have seen, the SEC publishes lagged data on the cumulative number of Fails to Deliver for every company. If you aren't caught up with the latest info on the counterfeit share theory, take a second and read u/johnnydaggers's [post]( https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l97ykd/the_real_reason_wall_street_is_terrified_of_the/) laying out the issue with hedge funds counterfeiting shares and how it relates to GME. Much of the analysis in Johnny's post comes from an article ["Counterfeiting Stock 2.0"]( http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html) which is definitely worth a read if you have the time and patience to do a deep dive into the evil shit carried out by hedge funds. TLDR of Johnny's post: Hedge funds create a bunch of stock out of thin air and short it, selling the counterfeit shares on the open market and driving the price of a company down. They then fail to come up with the shares they sold in time, so the "counterfeit" shares are never backed up by real shares. This could be happening on a massive scale with GME, and Hedge Funds could have far greater exposure to GME than previously thought. The Data: I noticed that while u/johnnydaggers and later u/Peteskies used data from the SEC releases in their posts, the data they actually showed was only a small piece, and lacked very important context. So, with that in mind, I took the SEC Fails-to-Deliver data [releases]( https://www.sec.gov/data/foiadocsfailsdatahtm) for both halves of November and December and the first half of January and took a look at what was going on using some pivot tables. I thought given the sheer amount of data (1.5 million cells) it would be tough to load in Excel but it actually ended up being pretty easy. (probably helped that my day job is just alternately making pivot tables and slamming my head into the wall, I've gotten pretty good at both) IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS RELEASE EXTENDS TO JANUARY 14TH, 2021. THESE ARE NOT CURRENT CUMULATIVE OUTSTANDING FAIL-TO-DELIVER LEVELS Fails-to-Deliver Distributions: First, take a look at this handy histogram(ish) of companies with outstanding Fails-to-Deliver and their outstanding "counterfeit share" (cumulative Fails-to-Deliver) numbers: https://preview.redd.it/6dmfpfql47f61.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf38fea8f5de2e45b36b48853f4d7afaca8f6c28 As you can see, GME is way outside of the pack when it comes to Fail to Delivers, and has significantly more "counterfeit shares" (FTDs) than almost any other company. The exact number comes in at a cool 621,483 shares. The x-axis scale isn't even linear, and you can see significant jumps in the last quarter. If you think that's some crazy shit, wait until you see the distribution of Fail-to-Delivers per company by the dollar value of counterfeit shares ((Closing Price)*(# of Outstanding Fails-to-Deliver)): https://preview.redd.it/024mdiv147f61.png?width=1616&format=png&auto=webp&s=270fc53a5455994545a864e8b8e9c304b0e57b5c GameStop has the SECOND HIGHEST Fails-to-Deliver net dollar value of all 5,147 stocks with current fail-to-delivers (as of 1/14/21). NINETEEN MILLION DOLLARS of stock floating around that was simply created out of thin air. Here the x-axis isn't even linear either — if it were to scale, GME would be several meters to my right. Wild. Cumulative Fails-to-Deliver of GME over Time: Moving on to more interesting (and potentially more troubling) data, I took a look at the Fails-to-Deliver values over time for GME. I decided to go back to the beginning of November, then look at every number the SEC had released since on FTDs for GME. This is crucial context for the numbers that have been thrown around by u/johnnydaggers and u/Peteskies. https://preview.redd.it/myt4zxy347f61.png?width=1328&format=png&auto=webp&s=603b5d5f0a623dc0dc9ef0df1f3da05e7361340f Now, this one is a lot less clear-cut than those histograms I just wrote about. As you can see, there have been huge fluctuations in the amount of "counterfeit stock" (Fails-to-Deliver) on the market. There is a definite pattern of Hedge Funds running up Fails-to-Deliver during GME surges and then covering once the price slumps a bit. I've talked with one of my sources involved with hedge fund operations, and he said this is pretty standard procedure — when you sell a naked short and the price spikes, you talk it out with your broker and get a few more days to cover. So really, this pattern is more or less normal. It's the stupidly large amounts Fails-to-Deliver that are getting churned that is the irregular part. Here's a good spot to bring up my main concern with the kind of analyses that u/johnnydaggers and u/Peteskies were putting out. You can see that there were 1.8 million Fails-to-Deliver on GME on December 2nd, but that number was basically completely covered by the 16th. Based on that data it seems at first glance that, for the most part, these reported Fails-to-Deliver are Hedge Funds/Brokers trying to avoid covering while high and simply waiting for the next dip. This data alone IS NOT SUFFICIENT to prove that there is an enormous, market-moving quantity of Fails-to-Deliver floating around the market. Of course, right after this data cuts out, GME shoots to the moon (300+), and I would expect a lot of naked short vendors were caught with their pants down. Maybe they all covered on the recent dips, maybe loads of Fails-to-Deliver are still out there. A table with that GME info from the graph above for any lurking nerds: https://preview.redd.it/0pj2hh0647f61.png?width=1090&format=png&auto=webp&s=dcf2d64f6777218dece7735075b779fb51e28cca Some Questionable Inferences and My Retarded Conclusions: So, what's the takeaway here, other than don't trust everything you read on WallStreetBets? I think there are a few lessons. First, even though Fails-to-Deliver numbers were bouncing all over the place, including being completely covered on 12/16, I think it's important to keep in mind that GME having this volume of Fails-to-Deliver, both in shares and in dollars, is extremely irregular compared to everything else. Could just be the fact that GME is an insane stock with insane volatility,* or could be indicative of something more. \Yet, this data is from back before GME became mainstream — GME in December was not an "unprecedented situation" like we have now. Thinking back to then, the high Fails-to-Deliver numbers are even more significant.* A Possibility of Hedge Fund Armageddon: I want to take a second to talk about one of the diagrams from the good folks who wrote ["Counterfeiting Stock 2.0"]( http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html), detailing both the "surface level" indicators of Disclosed Shorts and Fails-to-Deliver, and the below-the-surface hidden pathways that they believed pumped counterfeit shares into our financial system. Here it is: https://preview.redd.it/v3io9bj847f61.jpg?width=1086&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21d67bbec3d7d4e3b2012b3d51cdaf462ae3318d As you can see, the Counterfeiting 2.0 authors believed that Fails-to-Deliver were just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface (and out of the sight of the SEC), they believed there was a massive volume of shares that had been "laundered," through foreign exchanged, offshore funds, or even gaps in the Continuous Net Clearing system at the DTCC. These stocks, theoretically, go from Fails-to-Deliver to simple counterfeit shares, or even straight to counterfeits. The arguments in the Counterfeiting 2.0 paper go way over my head as a simple retard, but I get the gut feeling at least some of them are accurate. If, hypothetically, (please read this part in your best Ben Shapiro voice), the arguments in Counterfeiting 2.0 are true, then it is highly likely that the huge Fails-to-Deliver churn on the surface is just the tip of a massive illegal counterfeit short position. GME BULLS, listen up. If this counterfeit short position does exist, then it was probably entered back when GME was being driven towards bankruptcy, at a share price somewhere in the $15/20 range, and possibly expanded when GME was being driven down below $5. There are actually interesting data to suggest that this is a plausible scenario. First, the fact that, as DeepFuckingValue noted a year ago, the market cap of GME was driven below the net value of its assets. Obviously, this happens from time to time, but it's indicative of an extremely artificially depressed valuation. Secondly, the central use of illegal naked shorting is in driving companies to bankruptcy, and it did seem like GME was on its way out. Looking at GME as a scummy hedge fund manager, it would have made a very attractive target for a naked-short dilution attack. These illegal short positions, if they were not covered by cautious (lol) Hedgies at the beginning of the GME runup, would have increased 50-100x in dollar value as the share price of GME rose. That's 5,000-10,000% for those who can't do basic math. Now I don't know if this scenario would be enough to crash the market, but it would certainly be enough to make a lot of extremely powerful people (currently engaged in a criminal enterprise) desperate and very, very angry. This hardly needs saying, but rich bastards have killed for far less than a billion dollars. Here, there could be tens of billions on the line. So, that's the mega-bull case. We, the tards of WSB, expose billions in financial crime. The SEC rappels into Citadel and arrests everyone, Robinhood goes bankrupt, and all our wives and their boyfriends get filthy rich. However, there is also a very significant BEAR case here. If the regular, everyday investors who wrote Counterfeiting 2.0 were in fact retards like us, then there's a significant chance that they simply got it wrong. Maybe there is no sea of hidden counterfeit short positions, and maybe this whole Fails-to-Deliver thing is just rich assholes using extra trading days to cheaply sell shorts. What then? In that case, I would bet my left nut that all of the outstanding Fails-to-Deliver have been covered in the recent slump, and this whole exciting report is largely irrelevant to the future performance of GME. I'm not going to make the case that either the bulls or the bears are right (even though my gut is with the bulls) because I simply don't have the information or mental capacity to make that call. Look at the data yourself, and draw your own conclusions. Retail is facing an enemy with more capital, more information, more experience, and fewer morals. Whichever way it goes, it's going to be an ugly fight. Positions: 12 shares (Bought 50 at $20, sold 50 at $250, bought back in 12 at $300). I plan to hold until either $4,000 a share or things go to shit. I am not a financial advisor, and I do not advise any readers to make financial decisions based on my opinions or the information presented in this report. TLDR: the cumulative Fails-to-Deliver volume on GME is massive compared to the rest of the market. However, is also extremely volatile, and small compared to the float. It is possible that high Fails-to-Deliver volume is a result of massive illegal share counterfeiting by shorts. Edit: shout out to zjz for finally approving the post, may you live long and stay retarded! submitted by 556YEETO to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] |
The next BTC crash could be something to behold
Also
on my blog with better formatting, cute footnotes and inlined images.
Note that not much here is new material, mostly rehashing existing points.
Disclaimer
This article started out as research for my betting against Bitcoin on the stock market. This isn't financial advice. As a matter of fact, I encourage all readers you to not buy or short crypto, through any market or derivative. Use your money for productive uses.
Here's a TL;DR:
- The current parabolic price increase in Bitcoin is a bubble that has started popping.
- A stablecoin called Tether is either one of the largest frauds or money laundering operation in history, and is providing most of the liquidity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
- A BTC bubble pop, incoming regulation on stablecoins or the current NYAG investigation into tether will expose tether's insolvency to the crypto market. This is bigger than it sounds.
- (Speculative, but one can hope) Current prices to mine BTC could end up higher than BTC market price, exposing BTC to a 51% attack.
A Recap: Bitcoin is useless and should go away
Bitcoin serves no purpose. Let's just rehash that by quickly debunking the major claimed uses over time as seen here
- Proof of concept: No argument here, but now that the market cap of cryptocurrencies is closing in on a $700B, this seems moot.
- Cheap Payment Network: Nonsense, since BTC transactions are currently >$10 and this worsens the more people use it.
- Anonymous Darknet Currency: I'd have said "no argument here", but apparently it's surprisingly easy to trace BTC nowadays. However, crypto ecosystem as a whole seems to do a decent job at laundering money as we'll see later.
- Reserve Currency for Crypto: Since a reserve currency should be useful as a means of exchange, and I wrote several thousand words on how BTC is not that, my position is pretty clear. Also, the fact that a cryptocurrency indexed to the US dollar has trounced BTC as the main means of exchange in the crypto ecosystem speaks for itself.
- Programmable Shared Database: You know what's programmable, shared and a database? The database we use at work. Just learn to implement access control lists on your SQL server.
- Uncorrelated Financial Asset: Given BTC crashed just like the rest of the market when COVID showed up, this doesn't hold up
The stupidest version of the "uncorrelated asset" argument I hear is "Bitcoin is a great hedge for inflation!"
You know what's a good "hedge for inflation"? Literally anything. The definition of inflation is "the price of money". If the price of money goes down (inflation) then everything else has a positive return by comparison.
People who say "bitcoin is a good hedge for inflation" shouldn't be trusted to manage their own money, let alone give financial advice to anyone.
- Censorship Resistant e-Gold: This is a roundabout way of saying "BTC is a store of value"! Which, again, can only be said by people who've never read the definition of "store of value" in a textbook.
I already went into detail into this, but BTC is a terrible store of value because it's volatile. Assets that can lose 20% of value overnight don't "store value". BTC is a "vehicle for speculation".
The only way price is sustained for BTC is that you can find some other idiot to sell it to. Just as a reminder, 50% of Gold is used for things that aren't speculation, like Jewelry, so you'll never have to worry finding a seller there.
Here are some real uses for bitcoin:
- Gambling is fun. You buy BTC, the price might go up! Or down! This is exciting.
- Hackers, money launderers and other criminals certainly find cryptocurrencies useful.
Reminder: BTC is an ecological scourge
The current cost to mine a BTC is around $8000 in electricity. This electricity mostly comes from subsidized coal in China.
And given the current amount of BTC generated each day, we're using about equivalent to the electricity from all of Belgium, largely in coal, to keep this going.
I don't mind wasting time on intellectual curiosities, but destroying our planet for glorified gambling is not something I'm happy about. I want cryptocurrencies to go away entirely on this basis, philosophically.
Current BTC prices are a bubble
Before we go into tether, reminder that at the time of writing, the plot of BTC price against the S&P500 looks like this
BTC price has increased by ~800% since March. Still, no one uses it for anything useful since the last bubble in 2017, or the other one before that in 2013. This is another bubble however you put it.
BTC is not "new technology"
10 years the internet became popular, Google and Amazon already existed. We're 8 years after the popular emergence of deep learning and it has already revolutionized machine translation, computer vision and natural language processing in general.
You could argue that deep learning and the internet existed before their emergence, but so did cryptocurrencies. Look up b-money and hashcash for instance.
Bitcoin has existed since 2008 and emerged in popularity around the same time as deep learning did, yet we're still to find actual uses for it except speculation and criminal uses. It's a solution waiting for a problem.
Institutional investors are also idiots
The narrative this time is that "institutional investors" are buying into BTC. This doesn't mean it's not a bubble.
Many of the institutions were buying through Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. Rather, many of them were chasing the premium over net asset value that hovered around 20%. Basically, lock money in GBTC for 6 months, cash out and collect the premium as profit. Of course, this little Ponzi couldn't last forever and the premium seems to be evaporating now.
Similarly, totally-not-a-bitcoin-ETF-wearing-a-software-company-skinsuit Microstrategy (MSTR) trades at a massive premium over fundamentals.
There will always be traders chasing bonuses from numbers going up, regardless what is making the number going up. The same "institutional investors" were buying obviously terrible CDOs in the run-up to 2008.
Tether is lunacy
Tether is a cryptocurrency whose exchange rate is supposed to be pegged to the US Dollar. Initially this was done by having 1-to-1 US Dollar reserves for each tether issued. Then they got scammed by their money launderer, losing some $800M, which made them insolvent.
Anyway, now tether maintains their reserves are whatever they want them to be and they haven't gotten audited since 2017.
You know, normal stuff.
There's a problem to backing your USD-pegged security with something that isn't US Dollars. Namely, if the price of the thing you're backing your US Dollars against goes down, you're now insolvent. If you were backing $10B in tether with $10B of bitcoin, then the bitcoin drops by half, you're insolvent by $5B.
And then this spotlessly clean company they somehow added $20B to their balance sheet in the second half of 2020
Reminder: one side of that balance sheet is currently floating around the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Cryptocurrency traders own it as an asset and sell it to others. The other half of the balance sheet is whatever tether wants.
There are only two possibilities that explain tether's growth:
It could also be a happy mix of both.
One particularly interesting date is 30/8/2020, where tether added $3B to its balance sheet overnight. This is interesting because it predates the subsequent movement in bitcoin price and large movements in other cryptocurrencies.
The story from tether and tether's bank's CEO is that this money largely comes from foreign nationals through an OTC desk which implies the transaction goes as following:
- A foreign national sends money in a foreign currency to an OTC desk. This is exactly as clean as you'd think -- often raw cash transactions in the millions.
- That OTC desk converts the money to USD and sends it to tether's correspondent US bank. The OTC desk gives tether to the foreign national.
- Wait tether has a correspondent US bank?
Oh, I forgot to mention, no bank wants tether as a customer because they obviously break KYC/AML compliance. So tether first bought invested in a bank called Noble which then lost its relationship with Wells-Fargo when they realized tether were lying to them about AML. Poor tether lost its legal access to USD.
Tether has been banking in the Bahamas with a bank called Deltec since. First they had a money launderer called Crypto Capital Corp to send funds to customers, who stole the $800M from them and subsequently went to jail.
But worry not! Tether found a way to get banked in USD afterwards. Curious coincidence, an executive at Deltec was randomly blogging about buying small US community banks in 2018. You know, that thing money launderers do.
So tether's story is that in 2020, they took in roughly twenty billion USD of shady foreign money into the small community US bank their deltec bankers bought. These transactions are necessarily breaking KYC/AML. The foreign parties to those transactions wouldn't take such a rickety route to convert billions into cryptocurrencies if they weren't laughed out of the room in serious banks.
But of course, Deltec will say it did KYC on tether. Really solid KYC, clearly, since they're the last bank on earth taking tether's business. Tether says they do KYC on their customers (the large OTC desks). And I'm sure the OTC desks would be shocked, shocked if the cash money they get in Russia and China turns out to be dirty. So everyone can pass the buck of responsibility down the road and claim "We do KYC on our customers".
Sure you do, tether. If you did such great KYC, you wouldn't have such problems finding banking relationships. I mean when even HSBC is not doing business with you you're apparently more obviously moving criminal money than fucking drug cartels.
And, according to tether's people, this money is what's backing tether's reserves. Money that will get frozen the instant a prosecutor even looks at it.
Reminder: the above is the charitable, positive case for tether.
The less charitable case is that they took crayons and added zeros to their balance sheet, and that there's a couple billions waiting to burn a hole in the crypto ecosystem.
Anyway, the $25B garbage fire that is tether will make a great book/netflix series at some point and their hilariously stupid CTO going on podcasts while flinching on questions about how BTC ended up on their balance sheet will be a fun part of it.
But I'm not here to write a book, I'm here to make money by shorting all of this. For my purposes, even in the positive case tether is a ticking time bomb waiting to burn a hole in the crypto ecosystem, because...
KYC and AML are coming for cryptocurrencies
If you listen to "crypto news", all incoming crypto regulation is just great, because that means crypto is becoming legit. However, companies investing in crypto are very angry about them.
This is because crypto transactions break the FinCEN travel rule, where KYC information should "travel" along transactions, to prevent money laundering obfuscation schemes.
Of course, according to the crypto industry this is "stifling innovation". A more reasonable take is that by being leaving the crypto industry outside normal financial regulations, we're enabling a "race to the bottom". As we saw with shadow banks in the 2000-2007 era this leads to "creative banking". I don't want my bankers to be creative, I want them to be solvent.
Tether's effect on the crypto ecosystem
When tether implodes, it's taking most of the crypto industry along for a fun ride. Tether can implode in one of a few ways:
- A BTC price crash triggers it. If
- Regulators decide they've had enough of AML avoidance and regulate them.
- The NYAG investigation, which is waiting for an update in a few weeks, finds something and shuts them out.
Let's assume tether falls to $0 for simplicity. The analysis is the same directionally if tether significantly "breaks the buck".
This doesn't happen instantly, but it happens quickly. The peg breaks, and most people holding tether will try to sell it for other crypto (BTC, ETH, etc.). This puts downward pressure on the price of tether, incentivizing even more people to "pass the buck". Automated inter-exchange arbitrage bots might try to exploit emerging gaps in bid-ask spreads, only to end up with worthless tether instead, as their operators rush to pull the plug.
Then, we have a small village of cryptocurrency enthusiasts being out some $24B. With the trading bots turned off and the trading lubricant (a dollar pegged asset) gone, the bid-ask spreads blow up. You get a predictable flight to safety -- that is, to real money. This puts downward pressure on BTC.
While all of this is happening, there are all sorts of fun second-order effects happen. A lot of DeFi derivative products are priced in cryptocurrencies, so having normally stable prices shuffle around (eg. USDC price moving above $1 in a flight to safety) triggers a tsunami of margin calls. Some exchanges might insolvent (they're the ones redeeming tether for USD after all).
If BTC price drops below $8000, fun things happen
Currently, the price to mine a BTC is roughly $8000. Most of the mining comes from huge mining farms using subsidized coal in China, and mining costs more the more hardware there is to mine it.
Since the price of BTC hasn't substantially dropped below cost to mine we're in for a fun experiment if the price drops below this threshold. Most of these farms should turn off so that the price to mine comes back to breakeven in a case of prisoner's dilemma.
But if too much hardware turns off, this leaves mining hardware idle and the door becomes wide open to a 51% attack. It's not clear at what price below breakeven cost to mine a 51% attack becomes a serious threat, but once this threshold is crossed, we're in the "irreparable harm to BTC" risk zone.
And for a person like me, who just wants to see crypto disappear forever this is very exciting.
Maybe those mining farms could be replaced with nice forests soaking up all the carbon they emitted for posterity. One can hope.
How do I bet against all of this?
Microstrategy (MSTR) is, at this point, a bitcoin ETF wearing the skinsuit of a dying software company.
Michael Saylor, MSTR's CEO, is quite the character. I wrote a lot about his lack understanding of what a currency is, but it's on another level to look at the early stages of a bubble pop and decide this is a good time to buy $10M more of the stuff, as seen here
However, this bubble is tame by Michael's standards. Look at the historical stock of his company
What's happening on the left is that Saylor pumped the numbers with accounting fraud then the SEC took issue with the fake numbers. The stock dropped 90% practically overnight. Their accountants, PWC, paid $51M in fines. Saylor and friends paid fines, partly with company stock.
You could also short GBTC, but when Mr. Saylor provides you with an options market instead, why not use it? Shorting on crypto exchanges that might become insolvent in the very event you want to happen with this bet is a bad idea, on the other hand.
Mike can't cash out
The bitcoin market is illiquid and leveraged when it comes to real money coming in and leaving the ecosystem. Buys in the $10M-$100M seemingly move the price of BTC by upwards of $1000 in the last weeks. This means hundreds of millions of real money means tens of billions in movement in BTC market capitalization.
Now imagine what cashing $1.1B of BTC into real money would mean for the price. And this is purely in market terms, before the PR damage from bitcoin's demigod abandoning ship would have second-order effects.
Saylor has painted himself into a corner. Even if he wanted to cash out, he can't.
MSTR fundamentals: Why it should be valued below $10
In early 2020, MSTR was a slowly dying business. The EBITDA has been rapidly evaporating in the last 5 years
At that point, MSTR a stock price of $115 meaning a market cap of $1.1B. This included some $560M of cash they were sitting on. I presume the remaining $550M was an implicit sales premium for the inevitable private equity firm investors expected was going to relieve them of this stock and make the business profitable again.
Of course, they didn't sell.
Instead, they took the $560m they were sitting on and bought $400m of BTC at prices $11k and $13k in late summer 2020. Then, in early December, they took on $600m of debt to buy BTC with at $23k. They also bought $10m more in January at a price of $30.5k.
At this point, we can mostly value MSTR like a trust.
- Price the underlying software business as being worth $600M, as the market did before the bitcoin nonsense. If BTC went to $0, this is what we'd value it at, and the MSTR stock should be around $65.
- But wait! MSTR took on $650M in debt in December. Their actual value with a BTC priced at $0 should be much, much lower than $65 depending on how you value the debt. You could make an argument it should be in the single digits.
- They hold 70,784 BTC. At current prices ($32,000) this is worth roughly $2.2B. With the current market cap of MSTR ($577 stock price), this means MSTR is currently priced at an eye watering $3B premium over fundamental value.
GBTC's 20% premium-to-NAV is a joke compared to the MSTR premium.
submitted by VodkaHaze to Buttcoin [link] [comments]
My Options Overview / Guide (V2)
Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.
I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer. Here's what I tell options beginners: I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7 Helpful websites: Don't trade until you understand: - You can lose your entire contract value when buying.
- You can lose a lot of money when selling "naked", theoretically unlimited.
- How option expiration works.
- Theta (decay) and how it works. This is imperative since it's attrition when buying and a payout when selling. https://www.optionseducation.org/advancedconcepts/theta
- DTE: Days till expiration/expiry
- Options positions with respect to price:
- ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
- ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
- NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
- OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
- Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
- Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
- Understand all the greeks at a high level, as you get better understand them well. The greeks: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options-introduction/option-greeks/
- IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
- Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
- FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
- What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
- Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.
Basics / Mechanics - Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
- You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
- Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.
General Tips and Ideas: - Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
- Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
- Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
- Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
- A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
- I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
- Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
- Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
- Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
- “Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
- Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
- Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
- Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
- If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
- Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
- Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
- NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
- At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
- Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
- When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
- Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
- If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
- I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
- Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
- As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
- Understand Liquidity and volume.
- Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
- Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
- Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
- Time in market vs timing the market:
- It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
- IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
- I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
- Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
- As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
- Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
- My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
- Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
- For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
- I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
- If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
- Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
- For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
- The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.
Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation - If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
- Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
- If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
- Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
- Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
- A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
- Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
- If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
- Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
- On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
- Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
- This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
- Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
- On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
- I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
- I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out on by not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
- Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
- If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
- If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.
Trade Planning & Position Management Tips - As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
- Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
- Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
- Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
- This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
- I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
- Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
- If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
- Covered Calls:
- If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
- Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
- If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.
-Advanced Beginner- Spreads - Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
- Spreads usually require margin trading.
- Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
- Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
- For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
- Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
- Vertical Credit spreads:
- Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
- A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
- A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
- https://www.schwab.com/resource-centeinsights/content/reducing-risk-with-credit-spread-options-strategy-0
- I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
- Short Straddle:
Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation - Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
- Short attacks:
- Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
- Short Ladder attacks:
- If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
- Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
- Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306
-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)- You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another. Options Strategy Finder This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below.
https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx Short Strangle / Straddle - Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
- A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
- A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
- Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
- Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
- https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-strangle.aspx
- https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-straddle.aspx
Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies - These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
- These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
- Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
- An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
- An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
- The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
- Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
- https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-condor.aspx
- https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-butterfly.aspx
Long Condor (Debit Call Condor) - The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
- Limited risk / limited reward.
- https://www.theoptionsguide.com/condor.aspx
Short Condor (Credit Call Condor) - Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
- Limited risk / limited reward.
- Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
- https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-condor.aspx
Reverse Iron Condor LEAPs - LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)
PMCC / PMCP - PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
- I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
- Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
- TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.
Advanced Orders - Guide to several order types: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events/webinars/order-types-from-basic-to-advanced-07162019
- One Triggers Other (OTO):
- Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
- Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
- What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.
Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you.
I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.
submitted by CompulsionOSU to thetagang [link] [comments]
How to break Wall Street. And what to understand about GME and the markets.
Hey apes,
tl;dr Please read this whole post. This is how we can win and why Wall Street is so scared of us. I've still got these diamond hands and I like GameStop even more. Why? Because our favorite company has received the biggest injection of consumer capital a brand has likely ever received. Our favorite company is literally the storefront battle line where the little guy is taking on Wall Street, won but got cheated out of victory, and has codified memes like "diamond hands" into a modern version of David vs Goliath. And we still just want to go to the moon.
The rest of this post is going to explore 2 certainties: 1) we can go to the moon with GME, and would have already except for blatant market manipulation and fraud, so we have to recognize that this is a war and we have to innovate to get to the moon, and 2) it's actually really easy to go to the moon and we figured out the legal cheat code to get there. Why do we know we can go to the moon with GME? Because Wall Street cheated to crash our rocket ship. But the important thing to recognize is that they crashed our rocket ship to the GME moon by shutting off consumer demand then colluding to flood supply and use short ladder attacks to impose a downward stock trend. But media pundits (who are paid by Wall Street interests) are saying "fundamentals" and presenting talk of "Reddit guys are the bad market influence video game players because they don't know what they're doing, like we do, the experts." No. Supply and demand. That's how the market functions at its most basic parts. We had them in a squeeze and they turned off demand because they have advance data that showed them how fucked they were if they didn't turn off our ability to buy more GME.
How do we know that supply and demand drives stock price? Let's assess recent trends that don't concern GME. Here are two examples off the top of my head:
- Signal Advance. One tweet from Elon Musk about using the Signal App drove people into a company not related to the Signal App. A small cap company that trades on the OTC (remember that for later - it's important for winning a war against short sellers while playing within the legality of market rules). A sudden demand for just 2 million shares of Signal Advance spiked the share price 5,643%... yes, demand of a small cap stock pushed a price up 5,643%. Demand. The thing Wall Street shut off when we were buying GME. Here's an article about Signal Advance. I think this moment is incredible information for us and it's worth a read to solidify the idea that supply and demand drives price.
https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/finance/musk-signal-advance/ 2) Dogecoin. Again, Elon is providing us incredible information here. The exposure of and resulting demand for Dogecoin, even though the market cap is huuuuuuge and the cryptocurrency was actually intended as a joke, is driving the price through the roof. The last time I checked my dogecoins they went from fractions of a cent per coin to about 8 cents per coin. That is a huge gain based solely on consumer demand and psychological willingness to join into a meme attached to the perception of potentially life changing financial gains.
So what does this tell us about GME? The squeeze isn't squoze, apes... here's some high level confirmation of this fact in an interview that
u/rekoms12 alerted me to that is actually an attempt to say the squeeze already happened. This video is an interview with Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head guy at S3, the agency that has been blasting reports that short interests in GME covered, uses a statistical model that doesn't account for naked shorting as a possibility (he actually gives the game away by explaining how short selling is supposed to work considered with data of a GME short interest above 100%), and is paid by hedge funds for market data. Keep all of those things in mind.
Here's the link:
https://youtu.be/22r48IVx7c8 As
u/Rekoms12 observed, Ihor contradicts himself in the interview at a critical juncture. He says the upward movement of GME was retail demand, not a short squeeze. Supply and demand... But then he says that the squeeze happened at around $300, and then the price corrected. So was it a squeeze or not? And what's very telling to me is that Ihor and the interviewer don't talk about Robinhood and other brokerages artificially turning off consumer demand at the same time hedge funds turned up supply, the point when the price starts to dip.
What else do we know that's critical to understanding that the squeeze isn't squeeze? We're getting gaslit with a mass media narrative that says GME is a bad investment. Because fundamentals... but let's dissect that:
- again, GameStop is literally the face and rallying point where we occupied and fucked with Wall Street in a real and serious way. So seriously that they cheated markets in broad view of the world. That is an injection of consumer capital and potential loyalty spending that has unfathomable value. The fact that none of the GME hit pieces mention the demand side market manipulation as the catalyst for a price drop or offer honest consideration of GameStop's new WORLD profile as the face of small consumers resisting rich assholes fucking us and our wives as a value add to the fundamentals definitely shows that they're lying.
- I've read reports that the real short report scheduled for February 9th will now be delayed until Feb 25th. Hmm. What that tells me is that they haven't settled their short positions at all. The greedy fucks actually, most likely, increased their short positions while they were cheating us. So why the delay? Simple. Their only out from the short squeeze is to turn market sentiment against GME, against us, and wait us out. It's a delay tactic. They think they can win a game of patience with us where they have an options deadline they're trapped in. They need us to let them out of the trap. But I'm no Portnoy because I have diamond hands.
- here's how bullshitty these pricks are actually being when they say their superior understanding of "fundamentals" justify them not letting us do what we want. This article is from Bloomberg. It is literally called "Is the Key to Beating the Market Written in the Stars?", stars by saying "Henry Weingarten invests his clients’ money by charting the movement of heavenly bodies," and includes line like:
By grounding astrology in the less mystical-sounding business cycle, Williams inspired a new generation of financial astrologers. The most decorated is Arch Crawford, 77. Mark Hulbert, a ranker of financial newsletters, has rated Crawford the country’s top stock market timer a number of times. One of his biggest wins came in 2008, when he essentially called the crash. Crawford, a veteran of Merrill Lynch & Co., nails his CNBC soundbites and comes off as only mildly eccentric when discussing his craft. “I have the moon on the midheaven in Capricorn, which means I gain the attention of people without trying,” he tells me. “I have been written up in all the best places.” And the article gets deeper:
US MARKETS ARE ‘EASY’ IF YOU REMEMBER THAT TRUMP’S 2018 HOROSCOPE IS STELLAR Here's the article; PLEASE READ IT to understand the truth of HOW FUCKING MANY (even places like Merril-Lynch!!!) HEDGE FUNDS INVEST AND JUDGE COMPANY FUNDAMENTALS BASED ON ASTROLOGY!!! And they're chastising retail traders ABOUT FUNDAMENTALS!!! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-27/is-the-key-to-beating-the-market-written-in-the-stars Would you trust an astrologer to tell you what to do with your hedge fund and call it sound fundamentals. Please take the time to google how widespread "
financial astrology" is on Wall Street. It really tells us how full of shit they are about GME fundamentals... I wish this was a joke. It's not. And, again, my hands are fucking diamond.
How do we win? It's the Age of Aquarius, baby. I learned that on MarketWatch, though this isn't an official MarketWatch article, like the official Bloomberg article above:
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/age-of-aquarius-final-activation-on-december-21st-at-622-pm-utc-2020-12-14 And how does that help? It helps because of something we learned, the real thing Wall Street is so terrified of us figuring out because it breaks their short selling game:
pump and dumps are illegal, but our diamond hands pump and pump strategy isn't regulated, and it's legal (and fyi, I trust diamond hands with my money way more than Tina, my wife's boyfriend's tarot card reademarket astrologer). How do we know pump and hold is legal? Two things:
- Here's the definition of Pump and Dump from Investopedia:
Pump-and-dump is a scheme that attempts to boost the price of a stock through recommendations based on false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements. The perpetrators of this scheme already have an established position in the company's stock and sell their positions after the hype has led to a higher share price. This practice is illegal based on securities law and can lead to heavy fines. But what if you just say "I just like the stock. Want to like it with me and hold onto it with me because you have diamond fucking hands, you beautiful ape baby." Or what if you say, "I'm into this stock for the memes instead of the Wall Street star chart fundamentals." Or just "I don't care what you say about it. I like it and I want it and I'm keeping it." And what if you have that market perspective about a stock and identify some legitimate underlying potential in a stock like
u/deepfuckingvalue saw in our favorite stock, GME, that now has a ride or die consumer base motivated by decades of getting fucked over because we finally figured out how to say, "Apes angry. Apes together strong. Game stop."
2) And to reconfirm that our Pump and Hold Diamond Hands (PHD-H) ape market strategy is legal, I got this Wall Street Journal article on Robinhood titled "GameStop frenzy is tough call for regulators focused on transparency"; here's the link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gamestop-frenzy-is-tough-call-for-regulators-focused-on-transparency-11612693802 The key takeaway for me in this article is when a very important Wall Street astrologer says:
“You can sell garbage to the public as long as you say to the public, ‘This is garbage and you’d be an idiot to buy it, but would you like to buy it?’” The Wall Street astrologer who said that is Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. An SEC chairman told us that... WE FIGURED OUT THE CHEAT CODE APES. THE WAR WE'RE IN IS LITERALLY MARKET ASTROLOGY vs DIAMOND HANDS. AND WE HAVE THE ADVANTAGE BECAUSE WE CAN DO DIAMOND HANDED MEME PUMPS LEGALLY WHICH DISADVANTAGES HEDGE FUNDS IN SHORT POSITIONS. AND WE HAVE THEM TRAPPED IN SHORT POSITIONS!!!
They literally told us how to beat them at the market game.
How do we beat and humiliate Wall Street? Let's fuk these fuckers who have humiliated and shamed us for not being educated like them over their GME manipulation while they're investing billions of dollars (maybe trillions) based on star charts.
As MarketWatch told us, it's the Age of Aquarius. And we're currently under Aquarius Zodiac sign. Something else I found out while researching for this post is that the Aquarius Zodiac is ruled by Saturn and Uranus. So let's ride a rocket together. Let's say/protest market cheating as a community and tell Wall Street: "it's Aquarius (which you know better than us because you're about fundies, not tendies), so we decided to ride a diamond hands rocket past Saturn and straight to Uranus."
Here's the small cap stock we can do this with:
Aquarius AI INC As SEC chairman Harvey Pitt told us to do, I'm pretty sure this stock is complete garbage. I bought some because I'm an idiot. I literally bought this stock because I want to tell Wall Street "I rode an Aquarius rocket to Uranus, I fucked, then I rode the rocket back to earth.
That's the main reason I like the stock. Why else, though:
- Aquarius AI has AI in their name. This is definitely a stupid reason to like and buy this stock, but I made a few grand on Dogecoin stalking Papa Elon's Twitter, and he's so into AI that I think he's a robot. So this is for Elon.
- Aquarius AI is involved in E-Sports Betting. Here's an article about it:
https://www.aquariusai.ca/aquarius-ai-announces-transition-into-esports-betting-management-changes-private-placement-financing-and-proposed-shares-for-debt-transaction-2/ So this is definitely stupid because Wall Street told me liking GME with diamond hands is a dumb ape strategy (which it says in their star charts), but DraftKings made huge Super Bowl money, E-Sports is getting bigger and bigger, and Aquarius AI being involved in E-Sports Betting means it fits with my love (and future consumer spending habits) that are fixated on GameStop. Also, I'm on Reddit and play video games and Wall Street mocked me for that. In fact, I didn't even know I could bet on E-Sports!!! Fuck buying my wife's boyfriend more stamina crackers. I'm betting on Starcraft. So this is for elite video game players and GameStop.
3) Aquarius AI trades on the OTC. Why is that important? Because it's very uncommon for an OTC stock to get shorted, so it's largely outside the schemes Wall Street conspired with to cheat us out of GME tendies.
4) The CEO of Aquarius AI has crazy eyes. That's probably a stupider reason to invest than Trump's horoscope like that hedge fund manager in the Bloomberg article, right?
5) Aquarius AI trades for $0.07 right now, there are only 22.3M outstanding shares, and the market cap is only $1.5M. That's way easier to rocket with a PHD-H community investment strategy than Signal did after Elon's tweet. WAY EASIER!!! And this is also a totally stupid reason to invest in this garbage stock, but that makes it easier to ride an Aquarius rocket to Uranus, then back to Earth. And that sounds fun.
6) Also, I have diamond hands. I want to see how much I lose after the Aquarius AI peak so we can extrapolate real market research about the impact of turning of demand side for GME to halt price momentum. That's such a stupid idea it isn't even regulated because no one smart enough to regulate the markets has ever been stupid enough to want to do that. So... is it stupid to invest in a garbage stock to get less stupid? Definitely. You'd be stupid to invest. Are you stupid? I am.
7) Also, I just like the stock.
Apes, let's rocket the fuck out of Aquarius AI INC and mock these hedge fund cheaters. It's legal. And it's a legitimate protest. And I want us to be able to look back at this moment and say, "Diamond hands, Wall Street. You fucked us on GME. But we rode an Aquarius AI Rocket straight to Uranus, then we rode it back home, you astrology fundamental fucks."
Who's with me? I'm in. I'm staying in. Diamond Hands. It won't take many of us.
p.s. I know some of you apes will go full paper hands and jump off the Aquarius AI rocket at Mars, or wherever. But whatever. I'madvocating you be stupid enough to not profit from this Pump and Hold strategy about this garbage stock I like that I'm not selling. But if you're less stupid than that, I implore you to be so stupid that you reinvest you're Aquarius AI rocket tendies back in GME, for totally stupid reasons, like you just want to.
submitted by JessasaurusJames to DiamondHandsSociety [link] [comments]
GME Explained - When a Meme Stock meets a Short Squeeze (High Effort Post)
I have a new account and I don't know if this will post but this is my summary about the whole GME situation. Removing all the hype and all the myths, this is what actually went down.
I think there is so much spin on the whole situation and I want to present my view of what happened.
First of all, I'm going to explain what
wallstreetbets was all about prior to GME.
Wallstreetbets is a subreddit that was originally meant for "investors" who liked to take big financial risks with the stock market. These risks were sometimes taken for fun and sometimes taken in the hopes of getting lucky and getting a massive return on investment in as short a time period as possible. The user base prior to the massive influx was actually made up of somewhat experienced investors who understood the market and the risks they were taking. Yes, they called themselves and each other autistic and retarded. But that was actually really far from the truth. The reason they called each other retards is because when you're posting information about stocks you always have to explain, for legal reasons, that you're not a financial advisor. If you are a financial advisor it's actually illegal to post that information. But the community has a certain self satirizing sense of humour. As a result, some users would say that their advice shouldn't be trusted because they are not qualified to be financial advisors because they are retarded and eat crayons or whatever else they could come up with to be funny. It was also a way to ironically justify some of the gambles they were taking because they knew they were being reckless with their portfolios. If someone was making a decision with an investment where they had a 90% chance of losing all their money and a 10% chance of doubling their value, they would justify going through with it by saying they were autistic or they were so dumb they accidentally hit the buy button. They had a similar sense of humour and used to call the moderators and each other gay. This was not due to homophobia but because the joke was that if you were constantly making decisions which would result in massive financial losses you could only possibly doing it because you like to get fucked.
Sometimes they would help each other out by posting research they had done on stocks that they thought were undervalued or had a potential to increase in value over a short period of time for numerous different reasons.
Wallstreetbets was never meant to be any kind of movement. It was just a subreddit for people who enjoyed taking chances and more often than not lost copious amounts of money.
They even had flairs for posting losses and gains. More often than not, losses. It was more about posting massive losses for shock value or posting gains to brag. They called the losses "loss porn". It was just a way of sharing what they were doing and just getting attention and feeling better about the losses.
So where does Game Stop (GME) come in to the picture?
Sometimes users of the subreddit would post due diligence that was actually really well thought out. Some users had done some research on Game Stop and realized that the shares were undervalued. They weren't expecting what happened at all, at least not initially. The original thinking was that GME was undervalued because, unlike similar companies which had declined such as Blockbuster, the company still has the potential to turn around and increase their revenue as they had capitol and infrastructure and could very easily turn around their business model. They could move away from physical copies of games and physical merchandise and move into esports and online sales. The fact this could happen had been overlooked and as a result there was a chance to get a large return by investing before any such changes were announced and selling after the stock shot up or by holding long as the company gradually improved its earnings.
Quite a few users bought in to GME long before there was a massive uptick in the value of the stock.
Here's where the hedge funds come in to play. Quite a few investors and hedge funds had shorted GME the same way they had shorted Blockbuster. Shorting is slang for short selling. Which is a process where investors borrow shares from a brokerage and sell them immediately hoping they can buy back the shares at a lower price.
To simplify it, let's say you borrowed a share for $10. You now owe the broker $10. But you also sell the share for $10 so your debt is covered. Later, when the value has dropped you buy the share back for $2. So the share you borrowed is now worth less but you only owe the brokerage $2 as you didn't borrow cash but the value of the share. So you only owe the brokerage $2. So you pay the brokerage back $2 and you pocket the $8 that the share decreased in value from the time you borrowed it until the time you sold it back to the brokerage. There is a time limit on the borrowed share as well. The brokerage expects it to be sold back within a reasonable amount of time depending on the agreement.
So short selling is basically a bet that a shares value will decline and you profit by the amount the shares value declines.
Because everyone thought GME would decline in value over time lots of investors and hedge funds thought it was a safe bet to short GME because everyone thought the company would go out of business like Blockbuster not taking in to account the subtle differences between the two companies and that there were hidden ways GME could turn around and become a more profitable company again.
And now I'm going to skip ahead to explain what happened next.
There were some news about changes to the company and some of those changes indicated that the company would turn around. The news increased the value of the shares somewhat. This wasn't initially as big of a deal. However the shares continued to gain value long enough that shorting the stock was no longer a profitable move and was resulting in major losses.
Going back to the example before, if you borrowed a share for $10 and sold it and it was now worth $20 your only option would be to close your position once your time window is up. Closing your position means buying back the share for its current value and returning it to the brokerage. So you would be forced to take a loss of $10. Unlike with shares there is an unlimited potential for losses when you short sell. The more the stock grows in value the more money you lose.
Since the company was turning around many short sellers were forced to close their positions.
What are fundamentals? Fundamentals basically means what the actual value of a stock should be based on a businesses performance and ability to generate revenue. This definition will matter in a moment.
The value of a shorted stock suddenly increasing can result in what's known as a short squeeze. A short squeeze is when the value of a stock suddenly increases and the shorts are forced to close their positions as soon as possible to minimize their losses. The more the stock goes up, the more a short seller loses.
But with stocks the supply and demand can also play a role in their value. This is why the value of Gamestop shares suddenly skyrocketed at first.
To close their positions the short sellers all had to buy back stock at the same time and return it to the brokers. This created an artificially increased demand. It's a temporary increase which is basically a bubble caused by the shorts closing their positions.
Because GME was basically the most heavily shorted stock ever the value increased drastically.
Contrary to popular opinion, this is actually where Reddit played the biggest role in what happened next.
Some of the users of Wallstreetbets were now posting about their massive gains and the public caught wind of what was happening. Everyone saw the stock going up and saw an opportunity to buy in. This is a newer phenomenon. It's colloquially referred to as a meme stock. The public attention increased the demand. Everyone wanted in on the gains. So at the same time that the shorts started closing their positions everyone started buying in. This created more demand and the stock bubbled.
In case you don't know what a bubble is, it just means that the value of the stock is increasing due to heavy demand and interest and not due to the fact that the business is increasing as much in value. When a bubble happens there will always be an eventual correction. Either gradual or sudden depending on the specifics. The correction will return the value of the stock back down to a reasonable amount based on the businesses actual performance and not based on the hype.
So now there was a perfect storm of the shorts closing their positions and many investors buying in hoping to sell the stock once it peaked before its value dropped back down once the buying frenzy stopped.
So, essentially, the GME phenomenon was a meme stock meeting a short squeeze.
The sad part about this whole thing is how many people who didn't know enough about how the market works just thought it was an opportunity to make massive amounts of money in a short period of time. They didn't know what risk they were taking or when the window of opportunity would close.
The hype really didn't help. Lots of different interests were hyping the stock online. This is where the real market manipulation occurred. People who had bought in to the stock knew that the more people bought in the more their shares would increase in value. In addition the short sellers knew that the less people bought in the less they would lose.
This created strong polarization about the situation both online and in the media. And it became impossible for someone who didn't have at least an intermediate understanding of the stock market to discern the hype and misinformation from the reality.
What happened was that there was a lot of buying from retail investors fuelled by online misinformation or lack of knowledge and all the shorts trying to close their positions to minimize losses which created a bubble. The savvy retail investors sold their stock at or near the peak of the bubble and made a killing with return rates of about 1,700% while everyone else lost money.
The lesson learned here is not to believe online hype and information from online sources or even the media if there is a strong conflict of interest.
Anything else you may have heard about the situation is being spun and is fictitious.
There was no rally to try to take out the hedge funds. That was an incidental side effect of what happened. Although that narrative definitely encouraged more people to buy and hold, making the bubble bigger and also creating the demand needed for those selling to be able to cut their losses or earn their gains by selling the stock.
There was no big conspiracy by hedge funds to try to destroy Game Stop although that narrative definitely encouraged those with nostalgia for the business to buy in.
The biggest problem with this is how online narrative turned into a form of market manipulation and how both sides, retail and hedge funds, were manipulating online discussion and even the media to try to maximize their gains or reduce their losses.
There was no silver squeeze either. That was paid advertising by the hedge funds to get people to buy silver to try to shift the buying away from GME and into silver to reduce their losses while realizing short term gains in silver.
There's only one story here. A short squeeze met a meme stock. Any other narrative is either disinformation, confusion or wishful thinking.
The end.
I know I'm going to be hated for this post and I expect to be downvoted into oblivion. But I don't care. I just want people to see what actually happened so that we don't all make the same mistakes and lose money.
Disclosure: I am not a financial advisor and I did briefly own some GME shares to try to take advantage of the volatility and lost about $20.
I hope this clears up a lot of the confusion for anyone trying to understand the GME phenomenon.
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hedge one's bets definition video
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