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.
Phase 1: foundations
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.
Phase 2: The evil empire strikes back
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.
Polarization
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).
Agendas
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.
Memes/jokes/satire
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)
Mission accomplished(?)
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.
Kilroy kapital
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.
Extended hours
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
Failure
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.
More chats and memes
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.
On Friday, Gamestop had rocketed to the 70s and closed the week more modestly. I decided to fomo in; if the millennial traders were going to yeet the rich, I had better join them in case I end up against the wall some day.
Archegos, Lordstown, and contextualizing everything in film terms.
Related - external
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Episode #413: Antti Ilmanen, AQR Investing Amid Low Expected Returns: Making the Most When Markets Offer the Least Guest: Antti Ilmanenis a Principal and Global Co-head of the Portfolio Solutions Group at AQR Capital Management. In this role, he manages the team responsible for advising institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds and develops []