Wednesday saw GME go mainstream after being largely contained in Reddit, financial news, and specific social media streams. The latter half of the week was all about the "retail traders who took on Wall Street". Chief among them is DFV himself:


Let's take a moment to appreciate the (self?) portrait.

Let's be clear: many, many months ago, people like DFV and Michael Burry looked at short interest and decided they either liked the stock or they could engineer a squeeze. The movement slowly picked up steam on WSB and eventually nearly the entire front page was GME. While WSB had (now increasingly has) its share of newbie traders, everyone was pretty well aware of what was going on. This was a way to make money like any other - buying TSLA, shorting NKLA, getting in on IPOs like PLTR. This was not an attempt to yeet the rich.


I won't claim I have either the understanding or the evidence of some of the allegations that have been levied against the institutions, but it would be profoundly naive to assume massive investment firms would idly watch their money and reputation disappear. There are ways to clear things up though:


So what did and maybe did happen?

• We know that Robinhood and other brokers stalled trading in various ways, including banning GME purchases and "complex positions". They went on record claiming that they needed to protect themselves, then concern trolled in defense of The Dumb Retail Trader who is in over his head.
• The ladder attack. It's been widely alleged that the most exposed institutional investors engineered the Thursday share price drop from the high 400s to the low 100s in order to exit their short positions with minimal loss.
• Market maker/institutional investor/broker collusion. Some have pointed fingers at the financial relationships between Citadel, Robinhood, and Melvin, indicating that coordination would run afoul of regulations. Of course, we saw in 2008 that this collusion has existed before, institutional investors don't mind taking extraordinary risk to make profit, and no one ever goes to prison for this.

The media and politicians love simple, binary conflicts. And so a simple raid of Melvin's short positions turned into "Breaking: Class Warfare". WSB didn't reject the notion as it rallied more investors to the diamond hands cause. Hedge funds and brokerages were also okay with it so they could paint the retail traders in a political light, rather than someone who was beating them at their own game (this one time).



Memelord Elon has been the target of WSB's affection for years. He also has a vested interest in destroying all shorts.


Due to his part in the saga, MJB was either throwing chaff or honestly wants more regulation.


AOC's take was fairly self-aware.


The agendamemeing was accompanied by people straight up having a good time. I put a few more in the last section of this post.

		What was that movie we saw where the first half was Mad Max/Resident Evil an the second half was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?		KO
Chris	Doomsday?
		Yes that's it! Was it as good as I remember?
	Uhhh entertaining.
		So many bad movies to revisit. Overlord. RE series.
	We need our own movie streaming service.
		Lurking WSB right now.
	Yo you should yolo 69k into gme shares and fuck the shorts.
		Lol		KO
Chris	"We can stay r******* for longer than they can stay solvent." - WSB
		Wife asked me why I didn't buy GME.
	Tell her you didn't see enough [rocket emojis].
		Brother: "I repeat, do not yolo this."
	Hahaha this is "I don't trade options" brother?
	This is *the* yolo stonk.
		Ha ha ha

(Monday)


WSBers equally dunked on Melvin and donated to various causes.

		When I'm 'fuck you' rich I'm gonna put a zipline from Sutro Tower to Transamerica.		Rob
Chris	Your zipline will travel through time?
		I only use branded building names if the company is out of business.

Look, I'm too old to be a YOLOer. Monday I talked about the GME share price "surging to $90". Things have changed a bit since then, but that didn't change the fact that I had already committed to the wheel. Having decided over the weekend that I would dip my toe into GME, that left my normal NVDA wheel funds sell puts on TSM, SPCE, INTC, and AMD. Getting into the meme-satellite stocks (AMC, BB, NOK) meant weekly covered calls in the 20% range.

But I got to watch my $9500 buy-in surge(?) to be worth considerably more while a call-holder took everything above $115.

Putting this here so I don't forget:

• Pre-Market Session: 7 a.m. until 9:30 a.m. ET, Monday through Friday
• Regular Trading Session: 9:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday
• After-Market Session: 4:00 p.m. until 8 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday
• Extended Hours Overnight Session: 8 p.m. until 7 a.m. ET Sunday through Thursday

As expected, Pliny the Younger sold out immediately. Most of the dudes I know were in F5 gang, only Kevin and Ryan got their orders filled.


Some of the chats really capture the feeling of this week.

Monday

Chris	[Adds Zac too the Stonks chat]
		This where all the sweet tips are?		Zac
		Are we rich yet?
	I just invest in whatever wsb mentions.
	Kevin is the TSLA guy.
	Ryan Buys a little bit of everything.
	Santos compains that he only has Google but won't open a trading account.
		This is where all the sweet tips are but we are too afraid to act. But we have a ton of "what if" stories.		Kevin
		What if we bought 700K worth of GME when Chris first brought it up in the chat at $21?

A little later Monday...

		Don't think. Buy anything that is going up because we could have done that with GME, Tesla, and a bunch of others mentioned here.		Kevin
		I'm gonna put in $2000, follow that advice, and see how much I make.		Sants
		Ok just bought $300 worth of Blackberry.		Ryan
		Yeah I did a bunch on BB when Chris talked about it.		Kevin
		Dang, I should have done that.		Ryan
		Still didn't execute until it already gained like 50%.		Kevin
		Yeah quit thinking and buy.		Ryan
		What did you buy at?
		$18.50ish		Kevin
		So you missed the jump?		Sants
		(So far)
Chris	Sell calls.
	Premiums are awesome.
	On BB.
	GME too but that could tank by Friday.
		Hey good thing I bought BB at what seems like its peak!		Ryan
		$19.06
	Buy low.
		Oh, oops. I'll remember that next time.

Wednesday

		Hey, don't look now Santos. It ain't good for your health.		Ryan
		I'm slightly concerned the wind is being taken out of the sails.		Kevin
		But I guess no need to panic until tomorrow.
Chris	Hold the line!
		HODOR
	Lol
		Isn't the correct stonks term "HODL"?		Zac
	Haha that might just be crypto.

Thursday

		BioNTech is up, but PFE is down.		Ryan
		Interesting.
		Same vaccine.
Chris	Two important phrases:
	"It's priced in."
	"Buy the hype, sell the news."
	PFE being first to market was that spike. [Image]
	That said, if they blow away earnings on the second, they could see some gains.
		Yes, I bought the hype, but too late... at the top of the spike.		Ryan
	That's when it was news :D
		Well hype is news too, unless you somehow are the creator of the hype.
Chris	Hype creation: this guy gets it.
		Ryan is the hype man for this crew.		Zac
		Today is ex div for PFE?		Ryan
		And earnings next week?
	Yeah.
	I'm holding for the 5% dividend.
		Yeah, me too.
		Lol
Chris	And hoping that nobody expected massive profits from selling a vaccine to the whole world.
	Compound interest, baby.
		Buying a Pliny the Elder with that.		Ryan

Friday

Chris	0dte GME puts are a couple grand.
		0dte?		Ryan
	Zero days til expiration.
	Put up $34,000, if GME doesn't drop you make $3,000 in four hours.
		Yeah I don't have those balls.
	I fell like the RH thing kept the GME momentum going.
	I would make that bet.
		Yeah, so do it.
Chris	I bought boomer CSPs to make a few hundred on Monday.
		So tell me more about 0dte.		Ryan
		Lots of shorts due to expire today.
	Options expire at various times.
	Sometimes every Friday. For major symbols like SPY it's daily.
	There are ones that expire at COB today and because volume on GME is so high, options prices are very high.
		Should I YOLO GME with my TSLA gains?		Kevin
		Kidding.
		Kinda.

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