Why would anybody care about a business that is near defunct, due to online gaming or downloads?
What would they see, aside from short selling, that I’m missing?
The short sellers are getting massacred.
Many people consider short sellers to be the eternal villains of stock investors everywhere.
Speaking personally, I was a Day Trader for 10 years, and action like this is completely fascinating.
As a trader, I would create defensive short positions with Put and Call Options, but I never traded short for profit.
The lengths to which these meme stock holders have gone to screw the short sellers is amazing. Someone is making a ton of money on this.
>What would they see, aside from short selling, that I’m missing?
Trying to crush establishment investors trying to short the stock. Gamma squeeze.
This is why folks shouldnt confuse the stock market for the actual economy.
There is nothing inherently wrong with short selling, it is naked short selling that is illegal and immoral. One must either own or borrow (at high interest rates) the shares one intends to short sell. And the sale must be settled and shares must be delivered in three trading days.
Several corrupt institutional investors (but I repeat myself), have taken to targeting companies close to bankruptcy for massive naked short selling, betting that the company will go bankrupt and trading halted before the short sale trades have to be settled and the investors will walk away with the proceeds of the sales.
In the previous go round with GameStop, some retail investors realized that the volume of short sales far exceed the number of shares issued and began buying small lots of GameStop stock, causing the price to go up and keeping GameStop solvent past the settlement date.
Very few of the institutional investors who conducted the naked shorts were held accountable or settled their trades, because the shares they fraudulently sold did not exist.
Those firms SHOULD have been financially annihilated, and their principals serving multiple, consecutive, terms in federal prison for each naked short sale of a share of GameStop, but, as is usually the case, the institutional investors had placed significant “beneficial” trades for their favorite politicians, and none of the politicians wanted the laws enforced.
The institutional investors were not incorrect in thinking GameStop was close to bankruptcy the last time, and they are not incorrect at this point either.
However, their greed has once again driven them to grossly unlawful behavior which has made it possible for other investors to decide to lawfully purchase shares of GameStop and make significant profits off the institutional investors making the illegal naked short sales who will once again find it impossible to obtain sufficient shares of GameStop to cover their naked short sales.