Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low, and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours.
Before I get into Monday's action, a couple of things:
I wanted to first give a shout out to piddlesthethug for capturing this screenshot, which shows that moment in time I referenced in my third Gamestop post, where some poor soul got sniped while sweeping the 29 January 115 calls. I added it into the post with an edit, but my guess is most who read the post a while back would have missed it. I guess my mental math in the moment was off as you can see from the image that the cost was actually just shy of $500k rather than $440k as I wrote in the post. Brutal.
People have also asked me where I stand on this trade. I was lucky to get in early, trade some momentum, and retain a sizeable core holding (relative to my play account). As I've mentioned some comments, my core holding, which I will hold until this saga plays itself out, would buy me a new car, all cash. Though after today I'd have to downgrade from a lower end Lexus to a Corolla lol.
Alright, so, today's action.
I have to admit that I was just glancing at the chart between writing emails, working on excel spreadsheets, conference calls, and meetings. Whenever I could, I was listening to CNBC in the background, and taking a closer look whenever I heard anything that might move sentiment, or theoretically telegraph an attack as had happened so many times last week.
In my opinion the price action played out almost by-the-numbers according to a squeeze campaign strategy as I laid out in my previous post. I want to be clear, however, that while it was consistent with what I laid out (liquidity drying up, trying to skirmish at lower and lower price points), you could reasonably interpret it other ways. As I mentioned in at least one comment, seeing things play out in a manner consistent with your expectations is by no means positive confirmation that your thesis is correct. It just happens to be consistent with the evidence you have so far. Always keep that in mind.
I tried responding to a few comments and questions in realtime as I got notifications on my phone. Just as a heads up, I won't always be able to do so, and it seems like there were a number of knowledgeable people commenting in realtime anyway. As I've said in comments on my previous posts, I am definitely not the smartest person in the room, so don't just take my word for it just because I'm the original poster. Please challenge anything I say if you feel I'm mistaken, and don't dismiss out of hand people who may have a different viewpoint.
One thing I thought I noticed in early morning market hours action was that there was no sell order depth above the ticker price, which I interpret as a good sign. Downward pushes into fairly good volume got sucked back up largely in a low-volume vacuum. The most extreme example of this was the first push right at market open. Tons of volume to push the price down, then a tiny fraction of volume as price got sucked back up. This means very little continued panicking and bailing due to the aggressive push, resulting in gaps to the upside on the follow-on buying. There were messages and comments from people concerned that low price would let the short side cover, but, as I explained, low price doesn't help the short side unless they can buy at that low price in meaningful volume. That sort of action where price gaps up as soon as buying (whether by shorts or longs) is driving price tells you that there isn't much meaningful volume to be had at the lower prices. From a higher level view, volume through the day dropped as price dropped, and that seems to have remained consistently true throughout the day.
There was some very strange after-market volume. No idea what that may have been, other than maybe hedge unwinding as T+2 contract settlement outcomes were determined. It seemed, at least to me, to be too much volume in too dense a time window to be retailers bailing out of their accounts en mass. It would make no sense to do so into the vacuum of after hours anyway rather than the firmer price support of market hours.
I got messages that I was both a short side hedge fund shill and a long side pump and dump fraudster trying to somehow take peoples' money. My sentiment analysis KPIs thus indicate I'm likely striking a healthy balance (lol).

The Game (Theory)

Ok, but seriously, is this situation a pump and dump?
Possibly.
I say possibly because, as I stated in a comment, a failed squeeze campaign is effectively identical to a pump and dump in that the only thing that happens is capital is transferred mostly from people who got in later to people who got in earlier. Even worse, in aggregate a good amount of capital may end up being transferred from the campaigners to the short side. Not that it was necessarily intended to be that way from the start--it's just what ends up happening if the campaign fails.
Ok, so failure aside, what are the dynamics of the trade? What kind of game is this?
In simplified terms, I'd describe a squeeze campaign where the short side doubles down as a modified dollar auction where the winning side also takes the losing side's bid money. In other words, at an aggregate level, it's winner take all, go hard or go home, with all the excitement of market action in the middle. Note that I said in aggregate and with market action in the middle, as that basically means even the winning side will have individuals who lose possibly everything if they get washed out before the end. As I mentioned in some comments where I urged people to consider taking profits if they needed the money, this is going to be a white-knuckle trade to the very end.

Power

For most of our lives, most of the time, the saying that 'information is power' and the closely related 'knowledge is power' are abstract, philosophical truisms that people say to try to sound cool and edgy. More tangible and relevant to our daily lives might be 'money is power', or, for the least fortunate, the threat and reality of physical force.
Today, for many in the GME trade, that previously abstract philosophical truism gained intense and urgent relevance. What is current SI? Can you trust numbers from S3? What about Ortex? Are there counterfeit shares in play? What is the significance of Failures to Deliver? Can the short side cover their position off the exchange? etc. etc.
Being in this situation, if nothing else, has lifted the veil for many people. The right information, in the right circumstances, is incredibly powerful. It outlines in stark contrast the power dynamics of information asymmetry.
If you want to exercise more agency in your future as a trader and investor, you have to make a habit of cultivating your critical thinking skills and ensuring you have diverse and often divergent sources of information. Do not let yourself be trapped in an information bubble where you can be easily manipulated. Most of all, try to avoid developing a siege mentality at all costs. If nothing else, in my opinion, it's critical for your long-term financial success.
I don't know the answer to those questions definitively, and my purpose in creating this account and posting is absolutely not to get people to listen and necessarily believe everything I write. In fact, it would make me happier if I see people use some of the tools, techniques, and concepts I've tried to introduce to challenge some of my thinking. Catching my mistakes helps me. Doing it in the open for all to read helps everyone.

Faith, Conviction, Calculated Risk

Many people trade and invest according to wildly divergent strategies.
Some people, including those that most Wall Street types consider to be 'responsible' investors, invest on blind faith. You put your capital is someone else's hands (hopefully a qualified fiduciary), and trust that they will do a good job. The only judgment you exercise really is in choosing the person(s) in which to place your faith. This is not entirely unlike what many WSBettors are doing with respect to DFV. I do this with my retirement accounts, though lately I've been considering transferring about half my retirement capital to a self-directed IRA.
Others trade on conviction. They have, for whatever reason, a very strong belief in an investment thesis that they are willing to put to the test by putting capital at risk, and are willing to lean into the thesis through unfavorable price action so long as no disconfirming evidence comes to light. I consider value investors to fall into this category.
Others are momentum traders and 'technical analysts', who are trying to read the market data to look for asymmetrical calculated risk opportunity. These opportunities need not necessarily be tied to any particular underlying fundamental investment thesis. All that matters is whether you win on a sufficiently frequent basis and carefully manage your downside risk.
I think it's healthy to try to gain an understanding of all three approaches. I personally also find it necessary to be careful if you find yourself switching between those approaches mid-trade. I.e., if you started in the GME trade on faith, it may be deeply disturbing if you find yourself in the no-man's land between faith and conviction, where you have learned enough to understand more of the risks in the trade, but not enough to understand the underlying investment thesis of how it could play out. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make that transition--just try to maintain self awareness if you choose to do so to avoid making any rash decisions.

Swimming In The Deep

So, the consistent #1 question I always get: what happens next? My consistent answer, which I know frustrates everyone, is I don't know, and no one else does either.
One person in the comments made an astute observation that perhaps the truth, which some may find disturbing, is that our fate really lies in the hands of the whales on the long side rather than retail being in the driver's seat. This may very well be true. I would give it better than even odds at this point. In fact, even if retail collectively represents more shares in this trade, retail is not a well-organized, monolithic entity, and therefore would have more difficulty playing a decisive role at critical times.
Another question I got, which was a very good one to be asking, is what evidence do we have that there really are whales on the long side? For me, there have been critical actions over the past few days that I would have found to be highly unlikely to be achievable by retail investors, such as the sustained HFT duel into the close on Friday. That was very consistent, relatively well controlled, and sustained push on volume of 6-7mio shares traded in the $250 - $330/share price range. Oversimplified math would peg that at just shy of $2bn in capital flow. That is not retail--particularly with so many retail brokerages restricting trading at that time. The 17mio shares sold into the aftermarket action consistent with a squeeze (and Ortex reported reduction in short interest) is also definitely not retail. Others have pointed out massive action in the options today. Tons of block purchases in the millions of dollars and high 6 figures. Not retail.
All of that being said, does that really change very much? Even if you consider yourself to be part of a movement, and have genuine feelings of solidarity with your retail fellows (I do, which is why I'm writing these posts and holding that core position), in the end you are trading as an individual. This is a point that I have made repeatedly. In the end, you need to know yourself, know your trade, and have a plan. Your plan may conceivably be to follow someone else (I know many are following DFV to whatever the end may be), but in the end even that is still your plan as an individual.
If my thesis is correct we will continue to see lower trade volumes, and price grinding down to a floor of harder support, possibly even at the retail line of support (~$148/$150) I outlined in a prior post. There may also be some price dislocation tomorrow depending on options contract T+2 settlement impact. I don't know enough about what to expect there. If the squeeze is to happen, unless RH lifting restrictions or people transferring their accounts causes a surge of retail momentum, it will happen after that type of price movement continues for a while (maybe days, maybe longer), until sufficient liquid float has been locked up.
Right now options action is heavily weighted to puts, so any market maker hedging activity will put more pressure on price.
If the squeeze fails to happen there won't be a siren, ringing of a bell, or anything like that. It might happen gradually and non-obviously until suddenly, as only the market seems to be able to do, it becomes obvious that whoever's still there has been left holding the bag. Hopefully this isn't the case, but if it is I'll be right there with what at that point may only buy me a razor scooter rather than a car lol.
If it succeeds, it should be fairly obvious. Just don't forget to ring the register!
Either way, this is market history in the making. As I said in a previous comment, when you ride the rocket, it's definitely not going to be smooth--but it might just be awesome.
Apologies for the lengthy post again. Good luck in the market!

I know you guys are probably sick of hearing GME related stuff but I really wanted to post this here to get some additional thoughts/feedback from experienced investors.
Long post ahead, but I encourage you to read the whole thing.
TLDR: Data points strongly point to Hedge Funds using tricks to appear as if they covered their shorts when they haven't truly covered. Full version below.
There’s an insightful piece on https://tradesmithdaily.com/investing-strategies/the-drop-in-gamestop-short-interest-could-be-real-or-deceptive-market-manipulation/ that identifies there are two ways for both short interest and price to fall quickly.
First way is retail investors not holding the line and panic selling thereby driving the price down further, releasing into the market more of the float and enabling shorts to covebuy back shares at progressively lower levels.
**
Quoting from Tradesmithdaily:
Plummeting short interest along with a plummeting GME share price, in other words, could indicate that the Reddit army is headed for the hills, and the longs were selling early, giving the shorts a means to cover, as the longs got out… Important to note that if the long holders of GME shares did not break ranks and sell en masse, it would have been impossible for the share price to fall and hedge fund short interest to fall at the same time. because, without a critical mass of long-side holders selling into the market, the hedge funds covering their shorts would have nobody to buy from as they covered (bought back) their short positions.
**
However the other scenario where this can occur is the hedge fund short interest in GME didn’t really dissipate but instead they played a trick to make it seem like it did, demoralizing the retail side and further “breaking the squeeze.”
**
To now quote verbatim from Tradesmithdaily:
The way the hedge funds could have done this — made it appear as if they covered their shorts, even when they really didn’t — involves trickery in the options market.
The tactics involved are not a secret. In fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) knows all about such tactics, and published a “risk alert” memo on the topic in August 2013.
The SEC memo is titled “Strengthening Practices for Preventing and Detecting Illegal Options Trading Used to Reset Reg SHO Close-out Obligations.” You can read it here via the SEC website.
The memo contains a dozen pages of highly technical language, but here’s a quick rundown:

If short sellers are facing a squeeze because shares are hard to buy, or scrutiny for holding an illegal short position, they can create an appearance of having closed their short position through the use of deceptive options trades.
A hedge fund that is short a stock can write call options on a stock — meaning they are now “short” the call options, having sold the call options to someone else (typically a market maker) — and simultaneously buy shares against the call options.
The shares bought against the call options could be “synthetic” longs — meaning they are not part of the original share float of the stock — as sold to the hedge fund by the market maker that takes the other side of the options trade.
This works because, if a market maker buys options from an options writer, the market maker has legal privileges to do a version of “naked shorting” as part of their hedging function. This is necessary, under the current rules and the current system, for market makers to protect themselves when facilitating options trades.
As a result of the above transaction, the hedge fund that sold short calls was able to buy synthetic long shares against the calls. (A synthetic share is one that has a long on one side and a short on the other but wasn’t part of the original float.) The synthetic long shares are the other side of the naked shorts, legally initiated by the market maker, so the market maker can hedge.
The hedge fund that bought the shares can now report that they have “bought back” their short position via buying long shares — except they actually haven’t! The synthetic shares they bought are canceled out against the short call positions they initiated, a necessity of the maneuver by way of the market maker’s hedging of the call position they bought from the hedge fund.

It gets very complicated, very fast.
But the gist is that hedge funds can use tricks to make it look like they’ve covered their shorts — even if they haven’t truly covered, and can’t, for lack of available float — by way of exploiting loopholes that exist due to an interplay of reporting rule delays, market maker naked shorting exceptions, and legal practices of synthetic share creation (new longs and shorts made from thin air) relating to market-making.
Below is a section of the SEC memo (from page 8) that gets to the heart of it:
“Trader A may enter a buy-write transaction, consisting of selling deep-in-the-money calls and buying shares of stock against the call sale. By doing so, Trader A appears to have purchased shares to meet the broker-dealer’s close-out obligation for the fail to deliver that resulted from the reverse conversion. In practice, however, the circumstances suggest that Trader A has no intention of delivering shares, and is instead re-establishing or extending a fail position.”
**
In short (no pun intended) these tricks “help hedge funds maintain short positions that, legally speaking, they weren’t supposed to have because the shares were never properly located”, which triggers alarm bells when we consider the extraordinarily high amount of FTIDs/Failed to Deliver Shares (https://wherearetheshares.com/) and Michael Burry’s (now deleted tweet viewable here https://web.archive.org/web/20210130030954/https://twitter.com/michaeljburry?lang=en) about how when he called back shares he lent out, brokers took weeks to actually find them with the implication they could not be located.
These factors lend credence to the idea that shorts weren’t really covered but were given the impression of being covered with trickery using options, in order to “cover” short positions that they shouldn’t have had to begin with because shares were never properly located.
Separately but potentially related, S3 released updated short numbers last Sunday reducing from their projection of short interest from 122% to 113% (a day later on Friday) to 55% on Sunday (while markets were closed therefore in my estimation using the same data set that calculated 113%), which many found to be suspicious. Later it was found that this new number was calculated using the same data set that yielded 122% short interest percentage, but with the significant difference of adding synthetic long shares into the short float equation which is against standard practice.
For a more detailed breakdown a user here pasted a good analysis of how those numbers were reached https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/laoaru/read_this_they_are_screwed_numbers_dont_lie/
**
Excerpt:
The real short % according to S3's data is 122%. However, their 55% figure is technically not a lie, but extremely misleading. I will explain everything.
Here is what they did:Sources (S3 head):https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355990194575564801?s=19 https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1356004816414269448 https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355969693841051650
S3 head is redefining share float to include shares that don't exist in order to be able to say shorted % of float is lower.
it reduces the traditional SI % Float, Instead of Shares Shorted/Float our calc is Shares Shorted/ (Float + Shares Shorted)
So, by this definition, if a stock is shorted 400% of existing shares (total banana count borrowed and resold 4x) and total shares is 100, short % is calculated like this:400 shorts / (100 shares + 400 longs whose shares are borrowed) = 0.8That is, the normal way we define short % would say it's 400% shorted. S3's way says 80%.
Knowing this formula, we can work back to what S3 would have said the short % of float was using the normal definition of short % of float:55% short of float means for all existing shares + shorts (or, ont he other side of the trade "longs whose shares were borrowed away to short") is 55/45 as much as existing shares. Meaning, portion of shares short by the normal definition (% of existing bananas borrowed) is 55/45 = 1.22
That is, S3's data is telling them that after friday trading, GME is still 122% short.
**
Many have pointed out this could be manipulation on S3’s part. It’s interesting to note that as late as the Jan 29th, Ihor from S3 stated most GME shorts have not covered and net shares shorted hadn't moved much at all (https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355246955874701314). Initially on the 28th he claimed short interest float to be $122 (https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1354847896173240322). The next day he claimed short interest to be 113% (https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355249817048522755) of float. 2 days later on Sunday, S3 released a report on the calculated short interest to be 55% (oddly their original announcement tweet appears deleted, but found this https://twitter.com/S3Partners/status/1356392101806800897), which was confusing to many as this was a big discrepancy in short percentage in a short time. It turned out this percentage was calculated by including synthetic longs into the equation which is a practice that is not standard, thereby yielding a lower short interest percentage of 55% which the media then bandied around before and during market open on Monday. Whether this involved collusion to harm the retail investor I cannot conclusively say as I don’t have the evidence to conclusively make that claim, but definitely something to consider along with all other data points.
With the possibility of Synthetic Long Shares being used in a fraudulent way, if you care about how this could play out if we force the issue, I would recommend you to follow instructions from this comment https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lcpwh0/how_gme_can_still_be_a_great_play/gm2tsnw/ and call or email Gamestop Investor Relations and ask them to call an emergency share holder meeting to save the company from bankruptcy, as calling this vote means calling shares back to owners eliminating all synthetic stock, and hence taking leverage away from short selling funds participating in fraudulent activity
If you'd like to read more into the subject here are more solid posts that are related to this subject that I recommend you check out:
https://old.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lalucf/i_suspect_the_hedgies_are_illegally_covering/
https://old.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l97ykd/the_real_reason_wall_street_is_terrified_of_the/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lanf94/gme_is_a_time_bomb_and_its_highlighting_a_severe/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lag1d3/why_gme_short_interest_appears_to_have_fallen/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l9rk78/sec_doj_60_minutes_public_data_suggests_massive/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l9z88h/evidence_of_massive_naked_short_selling_fraud_in/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lbydkz/s3_partners_s3_si_of_float_metric_is_total/

I can tell you right now with complete confidence that the only thing brokers who halted trading are guilty of was bad PR and nothing else. I was pissed when trading was halted, but now I’m just upset that I’m hearing people trash some trading apps which did absolutely nothing wrong and has done so much good in the past years. People are piling on, politicians from left right and center are wrapping their own agenda around it, and somehow we finally saw AOC and Ben Shapiro agree on something. People are thinking “they” control it from the top and they stopped it because they were scared of us. I can assure you none of that is true, it is conspiratorial thinking and it is all nonsense and unfounded.
Wanna know why? Read on, education ahead, and it’s good for you.
When people in aggregate from exchange A buy 1 million dollar worth of a stock, if there’s not enough people selling that stock on exchange A, that stock needs to come from exchange B. That means that 1 million needs to be transferred from exchange A to B. Money transfer is very complicated (as you’ve probably seen with wire transfers) and take 2 business days to clear even for the big guys. Now, what would happen if before money clears, exchange A collapses and goes bust? Exchange B is fucked. It still promised and have to give its users by law who sold those shares a 1 million dollars. Enter: Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation(DTCC)
DTCC is probably the biggest bank in the world and you’ve never heard of it. It acts as the man in the middle insurance company of sorts, it’s a self regulating private entity on wallstreet who’s existence is required by law. It exists to absorb all the risk of ripple effects of an exchange going bust and impacting other exchange. They basically want to take the risk of “what if that market we’re trading with doesn’t pay us?” completely off a brokers book. Also note, DTCC is not just for stock brokers, it’s for banks, institutional investors, hedge funds, mutual funds, all of them.
In my example, DTCC fronts exchange A the cash by guaranteeing the 1 mil for exchange B. All good so far right? Well there’s a small catch, DTCC needs to still protect itself from going insolvent, since it’s basically the backbone of the market, their chances of going insolvent cannot be even 0.000001%.
So they have this formula that calculates an upfront collateral for a particular stock. This collateral needs to be given cash to DTCC on the time of the trade. It’s not speculative, it’s just math and it takes a lot f factors in like the broker’s finances(how much cash they got on reserve, etc.) and also factors in the stock being traded. Usually it comes down to 1-4% of the security. Say that 1 mil I mentioned earlier was all SPY stock, since it’s safe and all the upfront fee is 1%. So when the 1 mil buy happens, exchange A immediately gives $10,000 to DTCC, and starts a wire of 1 million to fund B. Once the transaction clears, DTCC gives the $10,000 back.
All that was happening with GameStop, but then the morning the guys got block, DTCC raised their collateral requirement for the meme stocks to 100%. Why? Well, because it’s volatile as fuck and they did not like the odds of keeping it lower. We all know that this is a bubble and given that so many retail investors are buying this stock on margin at $300+ which is for sure crashing to $20, most likely in an instant, there’s a solid chance some exchanges might go broke over it, so they can’t insure it.
Now what does this mean for exchange A? That means for every 1 million dollars of GameStop, exchange A needs to wire 1 mil to to exchange B AND immediately send another million cash to DTCC. Well now we got a sticky situation, at the current market cap, we’re talking hundreds of billions (that’s not a typo) that these firms need to cough up to DTCC for 2 business days! They simply don’t have the money so they halted it. That’s it. Then the next day they secured some loans, and managed to re offer the stocks at a limited quantity that their loans enabled them to.
One small clarification, I simplified my explanation by combining clearing firms and brokerages as one entity. In reality they’re usually separate(sometimes they’re not, for example the popular trading app I can’t name does their own clearing), the connection goes broker -> clearing firm -> DTC. Clearing firms are actually the companies that are trying to secure loans to support more, and it’s the clearing firms who don’t have enough money to pay DTC, so they just tell brokers “sorry, no GME, can’t clear it”
“Dude fuck DTCC, they’re evil, they’re the ones controlling from the top they should’ve left us be”
Well last time they were too slow to raise the collateral was 2008. Lehman which was a clearing firm collapsed. Finally DTCC did what it was supposed to do! They paid out $500bn to clear all of Lehman’s outstanding transactions. But that’s not all, since DTCC was slow to raise their rates for certain securities at the time, they were legit at the risk of going insolvent if more banks and hedge funds collapsed. Enter Bailout, a loan to help everyone sort their shit out, clear out their transactions and not collapse. Had enough banks and hedge funds collapsed to push DTCC into insolvency, the entire United States paper market(stocks, bonds, etc.) would’ve collapsed(total market breakdown). Little known fact: DTCC technically owns almost all paper assets in the US, including yours and mine in a trust. Technically we are just beneficiaries of those stocks. Also, government has every right to take those away from you due to “national emergency”. Fun fact eh?
“DTCC is helping out their wallstreet buddies”
No, they’re protecting the system, they raise collateral for all ultra volatile securities. They’d do it if hedge funds were profiting too.
“But why some markets did allow buying?”
Well their clearing firms did, and some did their own clearing and they had enough cash to allow trading. And if you noticed, it was a ripple effect. TD was a clearing firm that was first to stop doing GME, then a bunch of brokers ran to other clearing firms, and now a clearing firm is servicing their existing brokers and all the refugees from TD, and naturally they got overloaded with GME. So they fell, and now two sets of refugees went and crash another, and eventually almost all brokers stopped offering GME and friends.
“Why sell only then?”
Selling doesn’t require DTCC collateral, cuz a stock is going out not money. The stock is just a digital signature in DTCC’s database, it ain’t going anywhere, it’s not gonna go insolvent. Money on the other hand is more complicated and not just a digital signature on a database, it’s no guarantee you’ll get it from a buyer until it’s in your vaults, so you need a collateral until you get it
“Why was so and so broker selling GME without my permission”
Alright dude this one on you for getting a margin account, you agreed to it and all brokers do it. You know how those boomers always tell you don’t get a margin account? This is why
“Why do we need DTCC anyways?”
They prevent cascading failures that doomers wish for on their birthdays. If a broker goes bust, suddenly that $2bn that broker was supposed to send to some other broker goes poof, and now that other broker is in the negative and goes bust, and so do all their debts to other companies
“Does DTCC raising the collateral requirement mean we were at risk of collapsing the financial system?”
Yea probably, but that’s why they raised the rates
“Why can’t markets just trade inside themselves and avoid sending money and DTCC”
They still need a transaction with DTCC because you all have your own bank accounts on a brokerage and DTCC being the owner of all stock needs to know which account which stock belongs to
“Wtf why does it take 2 business days to transfer money? Can’t they Zelle or some shit?”
It’s how things work at that large of a scale, they record transactions all day, end of the day they add it all up and move the money. One day to take the money from broker the clearing house, one day to move the money from clearing house to the receiving broker. It’s the same system as ACH transfers, which stands for automated clearing house
“Why is DTCC private and so centralized, break it apart!”
[blockchain shills have entered the chat]

[update: here's another way to start to understand this situation if what's written below is too dense Anthony Denier, CEO of Webull on the Robinhood/GameStop situation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RS4JIEVyXM]
This explanation is from Silent Cal @KralcTrebor
https://twitter.com/KralcTrebostatus/1354952686165225478
Ok - here's my best explanation of why @RobinhoodApp restricted trading in the short-squeeze stocks.
Spoiler: the story isn't the Ken Griffen called Janet Yellen who instructed DTCC to raise margin on Robinhood to force them to shut down the speculative buying.
Here goes ...
Robinhood (RH) is a broker. They don't execute stock orders themselves. They sign up customers, route their orders to executing brokers, and keep track of who owns what. RH is also its own clearing broker, so they directly settle and custody their clients' securities.
Yes, RH is paid by Citadel to handle executing some of its order flow. This isn't as nefarious as it sounds - Citadel Equity Securities is paying to execute retail orders because they aren't pernicious (like having 500x the size behind them).
RH customers buy and sell stocks. Those trades don't settle (settle = closing, the exchange of cash for security) until T+2, two days later. Depending on the net of buys/sells, RH is on the hook to pay or recieve that net cash. That's credit risk.
NSCC is the entity that takes that credit risk. It matches up the net buyers and sellers, post-trade, and handles the exchange of cash for security. To mitigate the credit risk that one of the clearing brokers fails, they demand the brokers post a clearing deposit with them.
The NSCC is required to do this by SEC rule, tracing to Dodd-Frank.
Here's the details: https://sec.gov/rules/sro/nscc-an/2018/34-82631.pdf
Everyone posts, and if a broker fails, then NSCC takes any losses out of that broker's deposit, then some from NSCC, then from everyone else (the other brokers).
This is a post-crisis idea encoded in Dodd-Frank that making everyone post collateral reduces the credit risk and systemic risk and such.
So how does the NSCC clearing deposit get calculated?
It's basically Deposit = min( 99% 2d VaR + Gap Risk Measure, Deposit Floor Calc) + Mark-to-Market ... math and jargon!
Let's use an example. Say Fidelity has clients who bought 2bn of stock and sold 1.5bn of stocks. First, net down buy/sell between customers in the same stock.
Say that leaves 1bn buy and 0.5bn sell. Run some math to answer "that won't move more than X with 99% odds in the next 2 days." Let's say that's 3% of the net, so 3% * (1bn-0.5bn) = 0.15bn = 15m. That the 99% 2d VaR.
Next, we ask "is any one stock net more than 30% of the net buy/sell" ... and if it is, then we take 10% of that amount and add it as the Gap Risk Measure. So if Fidelity customers bought 200m IBM, then add 20m to that 15m. That's Gap Risk Measure.
Deposit Floor Calc is some thing that looks at the 1bn buy and the 0.5bn sell and does a small calc and adds them, so that if the first calc (99% 2d VaR + Gap Risk Measure) is small, then this floor will keep the overall from being tiny.
Then, last, you add Mark-to-Market. Basically if your customers bought IBM at 140/shr and it goes to 110/shr before it settles for cash at 140/shr, the NSCC has 30/shr of credit exposure to the clearing broker and that amount gets added to the required collateral posted to NSCC.
There are some other items, but that's the basic idea - full details are here: https://dtcc.com/-/media/Files/Downloads/legal/policy-and-compliance/NSCC_Disclosure_Framework.pdf
The NSCC sets the framework, but it is spelled out in Dodd-Frank that they have to do so by law.
These deposits are held in the Clearing Fund at the NSCC.
Financials are here: https://dtcc.com/legal/financial-statements
They had 10.5bn in the Clearing Fund as of Sep 30, 2020.
This is the regime post-Dodd-Frank. NSCC updated it's rules in 2018 to improve the VaR calc and to add the Gap Risk Measure.
How did this impact Robinhood?
Well, let's say Robinhood had $20bn of client assets starting 2021. Those customers used to trade $1bn/d say. What is the context for Clearing Deposit? Say 2 days it's a little unbalanced and it's 1.2bn buy and 0.8bn sell. Ok, that's probably around 12m, maybe 20m deposit.
If they take in $600m of new deposits and say $400m wants to buy GME. Plus of their $20bn existing, say there is $400m of GME buys over the past 2d. Then the picture could look like 2.0bn buys and 1.0bn sells, which might normally be 30m deposit. But volatility went up. A bit.
Now 99% 2d VaR is much higher. It should be 20x higher for their net portfolio, but the formula will smooth it out some. Maybe it's ~4x bigger. So just on VaR, they have to post 120m now. That they should have.
The Gap Risk Measure is what kills them.
If GME is over 30% of their net unsettled portfolio, then they are required to post 10% of all the GME buys. So if that's 800m, they have to post another 80m. And there is no limit to it. As long as their clients are up P&L, the mark-to-market covers it.
But if RH takes in 500m of new money and 300m buys GME, then at minimum they are looking at posting 30m+ from just that exposure at NSCC. They cannot use client money - RH has to use their own resources to post. And if GME stock drops, RH has to post the loss pre-settlement.
This would also explain why RH drew its credit lines and said vague things about clearing requirements.
Robinhood Is Said to Draw on Bank Credit Lines Amid Tumult https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-28/robinhood-is-said-to-draw-on-credit-lines-from-banks-amid-tumult (alternative URL: https://archive.is/sLhsm)
The policy goal here is to avoid the central plumbing entities from taking credit risk. In reality, such regulations raise costs and create barriers to entry. It raises profits for entities like DTCC (which owns NSCC and is itself owned by Wall St)
RH offered to open up stock market investing more broadly. They succeeded, clearly. But the regulations didn't change - there are still pro-Wall St, pro-incumbent rules and capital requirements. It's one of the most highly regulated industries in our nation.
So @aoc is right to ask how it can be that Robinhood stopped its clients from buying certain securities. And what she'll find is that the reason is that Dodd-Frank requires brokers like RH to post collateral to cover their clients' trading risk pre-settlement.
And it isn't the Fed or SEC who sets the rules. It's the Wall St owned central clearing entity itself, DTCC, that makes its own rules. So when the retail masses decided to squeeze the short-sellers, in the middle of crushing them, it was govt regulations which tripped them up.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This entire post represents my personal views and opinions, and should not be taken as financial advice (or advice of any kind whatsoever). I encourage you to do your own research, take anything I write with a grain of salt, and hold me accountable for any mistakes you may catch. Also, full disclosure, I hold a net long position in GME, but my cost basis is very low, and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours.
Note: If you have insightful/challenging comments, please consider putting them on the main post as soon as it get approve (assuming it gets approved) on investing*.*
Before I get into Monday's action, a couple of things:
I wanted to first give a shout out to piddlesthethug for capturing this screenshot, which shows that moment in time I referenced in my third Gamestop post, where some poor soul got sniped while sweeping the 29 January 115 calls. I added it into the post with an edit, but my guess is most who read the post a while back would have missed it. I guess my mental math in the moment was off as you can see from the image that the cost was actually just shy of $500k rather than $440k as I wrote in the post. Brutal.
People have also asked me where I stand on this trade. I was lucky to get in early, trade some momentum, and retain a sizeable core holding (relative to my play account). As I've mentioned some comments, my core holding, which I will hold until this saga plays itself out, would buy me a new car, all cash. Though after today I'd have to downgrade from a lower end Lexus to a Corolla lol.
Alright, so, today's action.
I have to admit that I was just glancing at the chart between writing emails, working on excel spreadsheets, conference calls, and meetings. Whenever I could, I was listening to CNBC in the background, and taking a closer look whenever I heard anything that might move sentiment, or theoretically telegraph an attack as had happened so many times last week.
In my opinion the price action played out almost by-the-numbers according to a squeeze campaign strategy as I laid out in my previous post. I want to be clear, however, that while it was consistent with what I laid out (liquidity drying up, trying to skirmish at lower and lower price points), you could reasonably interpret it other ways. As I mentioned in at least one comment, seeing things play out in a manner consistent with your expectations is by no means positive confirmation that your thesis is correct. It just happens to be consistent with the evidence you have so far. Always keep that in mind.
I tried responding to a few comments and questions in realtime as I got notifications on my phone. Just as a heads up, I won't always be able to do so, and it seems like there were a number of knowledgeable people commenting in realtime anyway. As I've said in comments on my previous posts, I am definitely not the smartest person in the room, so don't just take my word for it just because I'm the original poster. Please challenge anything I say if you feel I'm mistaken, and don't dismiss out of hand people who may have a different viewpoint.
One thing I thought I noticed in early morning market hours action was that there was no sell order depth above the ticker price, which I interpret as a good sign. Downward pushes into fairly good volume got sucked back up largely in a low-volume vacuum. The most extreme example of this was the first push right at market open. Tons of volume to push the price down, then a tiny fraction of volume as price got sucked back up. This means very little continued panicking and bailing due to the aggressive push, resulting in gaps to the upside on the follow-on buying. There were messages and comments from people concerned that low price would let the short side cover, but, as I explained, low price doesn't help the short side unless they can buy at that low price in meaningful volume. That sort of action where price gaps up as soon as buying (whether by shorts or longs) is driving price tells you that there isn't much meaningful volume to be had at the lower prices. From a higher level view, volume through the day dropped as price dropped, and that seems to have remained consistently true throughout the day.
There was some very strange after-market volume. No idea what that may have been, other than maybe hedge unwinding as T+2 contract settlement outcomes were determined. It seemed, at least to me, to be too much volume in too dense a time window to be retailers bailing out of their accounts en mass. It would make no sense to do so into the vacuum of after hours anyway rather than the firmer price support of market hours.
I got messages that I was both a short side hedge fund shill and a long side pump and dump fraudster trying to somehow take peoples' money. My sentiment analysis KPIs thus indicate I'm likely striking a healthy balance (lol).

The Game (Theory)

Ok, but seriously, is this situation a pump and dump?
Possibly.
I say possibly because, as I stated in a comment, a failed squeeze campaign is effectively identical to a pump and dump in that the only thing that happens is capital is transferred mostly from people who got in later to people who got in earlier. Even worse, in aggregate a good amount of capital may end up being transferred from the campaigners to the short side. Not that it was necessarily intended to be that way from the start--it's just what ends up happening if the campaign fails.
Ok, so failure aside, what are the dynamics of the trade? What kind of game is this?
In simplified terms, I'd describe a squeeze campaign where the short side doubles down as a modified dollar auction where the winning side also takes the losing side's bid money. In other words, at an aggregate level, it's winner take all, go hard or go home, with all the excitement of market action in the middle. Note that I said in aggregate and with market action in the middle, as that basically means even the winning side will have individuals who lose possibly everything if they get washed out before the end. As I mentioned in some comments where I urged people to consider taking profits if they needed the money, this is going to be a white-knuckle trade to the very end.

Power

For most of our lives, most of the time, the saying that 'information is power' and the closely related 'knowledge is power' are abstract, philosophical truisms that people say to try to sound cool and edgy. More tangible and relevant to our daily lives might be 'money is power', or, for the least fortunate, the threat and reality of physical force.
Today, for many in the GME trade, that previously abstract philosophical truism gained intense and urgent relevance. What is current SI? Can you trust numbers from S3? What about Ortex? Are there counterfeit shares in play? What is the significance of Failures to Deliver? Can the short side cover their position off the exchange? etc. etc.
Being in this situation, if nothing else, has lifted the veil for many people. The right information, in the right circumstances, is incredibly powerful. It outlines in stark contrast the power dynamics of information asymmetry.
If you want to exercise more agency in your future as a trader and investor, you have to make a habit of cultivating your critical thinking skills and ensuring you have diverse and often divergent sources of information. Do not let yourself be trapped in an information bubble where you can be easily manipulated. Most of all, try to avoid developing a siege mentality at all costs. If nothing else, in my opinion, it's critical for your long-term financial success.
I don't know the answer to those questions definitively, and my purpose in creating this account and posting is absolutely not to get people to listen and necessarily believe everything I write. In fact, it would make me happier if I see people use some of the tools, techniques, and concepts I've tried to introduce to challenge some of my thinking. Catching my mistakes helps me. Doing it in the open for all to read helps everyone.

Faith, Conviction, Calculated Risk

Many people trade and invest according to wildly divergent strategies.
Some people, including those that most Wall Street types consider to be 'responsible' investors, invest on blind faith. You put your capital is someone else's hands (hopefully a qualified fiduciary), and trust that they will do a good job. The only judgment you exercise really is in choosing the person(s) in which to place your faith. This is not entirely unlike what many WSBettors are doing with respect to DFV. I do this with my retirement accounts, though lately I've been considering transferring about half my retirement capital to a self-directed IRA.
Others trade on conviction. They have, for whatever reason, a very strong belief in an investment thesis that they are willing to put to the test by putting capital at risk, and are willing to lean into the thesis through unfavorable price action so long as no disconfirming evidence comes to light. I consider value investors to fall into this category.
Others are momentum traders and 'technical analysts', who are trying to read the market data to look for asymmetrical calculated risk opportunity. These opportunities need not necessarily be tied to any particular underlying fundamental investment thesis. All that matters is whether you win on a sufficiently frequent basis and carefully manage your downside risk.
I think it's healthy to try to gain an understanding of all three approaches. I personally also find it necessary to be careful if you find yourself switching between those approaches mid-trade. I.e., if you started in the GME trade on faith, it may be deeply disturbing if you find yourself in the no-man's land between faith and conviction, where you have learned enough to understand more of the risks in the trade, but not enough to understand the underlying investment thesis of how it could play out. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make that transition--just try to maintain self awareness if you choose to do so to avoid making any rash decisions.

Swimming In The Deep

So, the consistent #1 question I always get: what happens next? My consistent answer, which I know frustrates everyone, is I don't know, and no one else does either.
One person in the comments made an astute observation that perhaps the truth, which some may find disturbing, is that our fate really lies in the hands of the whales on the long side rather than retail being in the driver's seat. This may very well be true. I would give it better than even odds at this point. In fact, even if retail collectively represents more shares in this trade, retail is not a well-organized, monolithic entity, and therefore would have more difficulty playing a decisive role at critical times.
Another question I got, which was a very good one to be asking, is what evidence do we have that there really are whales on the long side? For me, there have been critical actions over the past few days that I would have found to be highly unlikely to be achievable by retail investors, such as the sustained HFT duel into the close on Friday. That was very consistent, relatively well controlled, and sustained push on volume of 6-7mio shares traded in the $250 - $330/share price range. Oversimplified math would peg that at just shy of $2bn in capital flow. That is not retail--particularly with so many retail brokerages restricting trading at that time. The 17mio shares sold into the aftermarket action consistent with a squeeze (and Ortex reported reduction in short interest) is also definitely not retail. Others have pointed out massive action in the options today. Tons of block purchases in the millions of dollars and high 6 figures. Not retail.
All of that being said, does that really change very much? Even if you consider yourself to be part of a movement, and have genuine feelings of solidarity with your retail fellows (I do, which is why I'm writing these posts and holding that core position), in the end you are trading as an individual. This is a point that I have made repeatedly. In the end, you need to know yourself, know your trade, and have a plan. Your plan may conceivably be to follow someone else (I know many are following DFV to whatever the end may be), but in the end even that is still your plan as an individual.
If my thesis is correct we will continue to see lower trade volumes, and price grinding down to a floor of harder support, possibly even at the retail line of support (~$148/$150) I outlined in a prior post. There may also be some price dislocation tomorrow depending on options contract T+2 settlement impact. I don't know enough about what to expect there. If the squeeze is to happen, unless RH lifting restrictions or people transferring their accounts causes a surge of retail momentum, it will happen after that type of price movement continues for a while (maybe days, maybe longer), until sufficient liquid float has been locked up.
Right now options action is heavily weighted to puts, so any market maker hedging activity will put more pressure on price.
If the squeeze fails to happen there won't be a siren, ringing of a bell, or anything like that. It might happen gradually and non-obviously until suddenly, as only the market seems to be able to do, it becomes obvious that whoever's still there has been left holding the bag. Hopefully this isn't the case, but if it is I'll be right there with what at that point may only buy me a razor scooter rather than a car lol.
If it succeeds, it should be fairly obvious. Just don't forget to ring the register!
Either way, this is market history in the making. As I said in a previous comment, when you ride the rocket, it's definitely not going to be smooth--but it might just be awesome.
Apologies for the lengthy post again. Good luck in the market!

Hi all,
I thought I would share my profits for Matched Betting Extra Place Horse Racing for Jan 21. January 2021 has turned into my best month of Matched Betting since I started way back in Summer 2018. This months profits are roughly £4,707. A life changing figure for many and a great figure seeing this is achievable on top of a full time job. Matched Betting is the only decent side hustle I have actually found, compared to doing hundreds of boring online surveys...yuck! (Unless you are a good business person / have 5 lodgers / lots of family money etc.) To see some of my other Matched Betting profits you visit my site: https://cashontheside.co.uk/
I will be investing some of my profits this month in ETF/Shares and putting into house improvements like a new drive way. In addition with Cheltenham horse festival coming up in March, I will be increasing my bank to cover liabilities.
The bulk of my profits came from Extra Place racing, large underlayed winners and BOG (best offer garuntee). Variance was certainly on my side this month and I must have had at least 10 large winners which won upwards of £1600 pounds per bet. As I underlay my bets I made more profit than If I had fully layed of the bets. About 5% of these profits came from low risk casino. After you have completed all welcome offers...in Matched Betting. Ep's become a gold mine...and I truly recommend them to anyone.
Some more of my bets this month illustrating underlayed bets and ep:
https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/winnings4.jpg
https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/winnings.jpg
https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/another-winner.jpg

Images of one of my bets illustrative of Best offer guarantee: https://cashonthesidecouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/136707133_10159536662702922_8507610622687908137_o-1.jpg?w=544
For those who are starting out on their Match Betting journey in 2021 these sort of figures are achievable to you once you have experience….unfortunately this will not come overnight! I do put a lot of time into it..between 2-5 hours a day, 7 days a week sometimes. For the average person you could earn at least £500 a month.
To learn more about Match Betting please visit my article Boost Your Income with Matched Betting. Alternatively you can start an Odds Monkey free trial where they will teach you step by step and give you the calculators you need: odds monkey trial https://www.oddsmonkey.com/affiliates/affiliate.php?id=64754(affiliate) or www.oddsmonkey.com. (non affiliate)
To those with a little more experience who want to learn about Matched Betting Extra Places you can visit my guide here Extra Place Match Betting tips here or I have copied and pasted it all below.
For those with Matched Betting Experience - my guide and tips to Extra Places:
What is Extra Place Matched Betting?
Extra Places can be a very lucrative technique to learn. Extra Places are available for us to do pretty much every day, increasing the appeal. Extra Place Offers are available to all customers. This means that even if you get gubbed with a bookmaker, in most cases, you can still make money with them by Matched Betting on their Extra Place Offers.
Extra Places are considered an advanced reload offer, as they not risk-free. However once you have gained some experience on more basic horse racing offers, you can start to take advantage of the lucrative profits available. It may sound complicated but as soon as it ‘clicks’, it becomes simple. Essentially we are taking advantage of the bookies and exchanges paying out if the horse you have backed comes a certain ‘place’ in a race e.g. 4th.
Extra Places combined with additional offers such as BOG (Best Offer Guarantee) can mean additional profits. For example, you back a horse at odds of 15 and then the starting odds move up to 23. If that horse wins you win an extra x8 on your bet. You can see some real life scenarios I found of Extra Place combined with BOG below. Depending on the size of the underlay, profits below would range up to £3,000+

What is a ‘place’ in horse racing?

Quite simply a ‘place’ is the position the horse finishes a race in. For example if a horse wins a race it comes 1st, if a horse comes 2nd its 2nd. In some races with a large number of horses some bookies will pay out if a horse finishes the race in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th position. Horse Racing festivals such as Cheltenham or Ascot are particularly well known for this.

What is an ‘Extra Place’ in horse racing?

Now we’ve understood what a place is in horse racing you may have probably already guessed what an ‘extra place’ is going to be! An ‘extra place’ is where the bookies add one (or more) additional places to their standard place classification on a particular race. For example they may offer to ‘pay 7 places on a race’ instead of the standard 3 places. The ‘extra place’ in this instance cover 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th.
What are my Extra Place top tips?

Some of my biggest profits have come from big underlayed winners and BOG. I typically underlay most of my bets by about 20% sometimes more. If you are starting out I would underlay on the place only by about 10% to play it safe until you learn more.
Don’t bet on more places than a bookmaker is offering. E.g. If the bookmaker is offering 4 places don’t bet on more than that.
Whilst your learning, take horses on implied odds of at least 12 or more on a match of 80%+.
Look to keep qualifying losses down. E.g. for £100 profit, £5 ql.
Please note, the best odds are typically found between 10 minutes up and to race time. You have to be quick on your ‘toes’…learn to walk before you run etc. Start out on easy horse racing officers before doing extra places.
You will need a bank of at least £1000+ for your exchanges, ideally more. The more you have the more of the field you can cover. You can do EP with several hundred in your exchange but you won’t be able to make bigger profits.
Be consistent, don’t take risks, don’t chase your losses and learn from matched betting extra place forums.
Keep the Odds Monkey up throughout the day...and check for good matches.
Use Bookies Boosts to increase your odds and matches.
Do not give in to your fear of missing out on offers…Tomorrow is another day.
Have at least a dual monitoscreen setup. It is important to be able to see exchange, books and calcs.

How do I find Extra Places offers?
I use the the Odds Monkey Extra Place Matcher to find the best opportunities for profit. The Matcher is explained in the below video.
https://youtu.be/oOKAdiSJidg
I am also a regular visitor of the active Odds Monkey community forums. You can sign up for an Odds Monkey free trial today here today https://www.oddsmonkey.com/affiliates/affiliate.php?id=64754 www.oddsmonkey.com (non affiliate). Odds Monkey provide you with the all guides, calculators etc. I have been a member for over 2.4 years now.
Feel free to get in touch or ask below if any questions.

I've been meaning to update this guide for a while and add in some elements about Matched Betting that people should be aware of before getting started. Here they are as follows:
(1) You can start with as little as £20 but ideally and for the sake of attaining more profit in a faster time, My Personal Reccomendation would be to start with £100-£200.
(2) If you are careless, you can make mistakes. Like with any task, you must give it the level of precision it demands, a mistake when entering figures will cost you real money. When you read the guide below you will see that the process is very simple, but that means you must take extra care not to become complacent.
(3) If you have a history with Gambling, do not come near Matched Betting. Matched Betting is not Gambling, but the fact you will be using betting websites to facilitate a profit is too much of a temptation- It's not worth it.
(4) Matched betting won't effect your credit rating, however it's common sense that it doesn't look good to have numerous transations to betting sites on your bank statement. Open a seperate virtual bank account for all your Matched betting activity (It only takes 5 minutes, details below)
With that being said, Matched Betting really is a solid way to secure £400-£500 in a very short time, it's the reason I was able to pay my first couple of month's rent when I moved to the UK and to this day still remains a handy way to pay the bills every month. Anyway, Below is the Guide:

Starting Out:
I was sceptical as hell about Match betting because a friend showed me the Facebook groups and it just looked like a giant gambling pyramid scheme. It turns out there is a decent chunk of change to be made from it, you just need to follow the guides and never ever actually gamble with your money.
Never ever Gamble? Yes That's right, you are going to be using Gambling sites to complete the various offers, but the whole idea behind match betting is that every time you "make a bet", you match that same bet on the exchange. So for example, if I bet £10 for Real Madrid to Win on the Bookie Site at odds of 2.5, I then also make a Matched bet on the Exchange (This is a separate site such as Smarkets or Betfair) where I bet for Real Madrid not to win at odds of 2.5 (or as close as I can get to those odds). In this way I am covered in all outcomes, and it allows me to fulfill the requirements of the bookies offer (For example Bet £10 and get £30 in Free bets)
What's the difference between the Bookie Site and the Exchange? On the Exchange Site you are basically being the Bookie and just like a Bookie, you have liability. If I bet £10 and my bet wins at odds of 2.5 then I win £25, so the bookies liability for this bet is £15, the extra money that they would have to give me if I win. There are calculators on the Match betting sites which you can use to calculate what Liability you need to enter on the exchange each time you make your matched bet. There is also software to help you find what games have the closest odds on both the bookies and the exchange, which is very important.
What do I do when I get my free bets? It's the same process again, You find a game that has very close odds on both the bookies and the exchange (You can do this by eye or by using odds matching software. A good site with this software is called OddsMonkey). Only this time when you use the calculator to work out your liability, you will set it to "Free bets SNR" so it knows you are not using real money. It will tell you how much Liability to use in the exchange and off you go.
How does this make me money? The fact that you have a free bet to use is what makes you money, For example a £30 free bet at odds of 5.5 in the bookies will win you £135 (30x 4.5, because the original free bet stake of £30 is not returned to you). Now let's say that the closest odds I can find in the Exchange for the same game are 6.0, I will need a liability of £112.50 to match my free bet in the bookies ( I use the calculator on oddsmonkey to work this out)
£135- 112.50 = £22.50 in Profit.
Alternatively if my bet on the exchange wins, I will lose the free bet of £30 (but it's not actually a loss to me because It's not real money) and I will win £22.50 on the exchange. Either way, I make a Profit of £22.50
What about providing card details? You can use a separate, virtual bank account for all your match betting, In this way your main banking information is not shared with any of the sites you sign up to and all of your match betting transactions never go near your main bank account. A good one to use is Revolut or Monzo, both apps are super easy to use and it only takes 5 minutes to open an account. It's also totally free to open.
Revolut: Referral (£15 referral scheme) Non Ref
Monzo non ref: https://monzo.com

Where can I learn to do it? There are some sites that you have to pay a monthly subscription to but I found one called Team Profit that is free and has a full guide of all the different offers you can complete.
I worked my way down through the list of offers, nice and handy, and having completed 20 offers at 15 minutes per offer, I came out at £470 for 5 hours total of work.
If you are new to this site and are opening a free account I would really appreciate if you use my Referral (£10)
Here is the non referral link to the page with all the offers: https://www.teamprofit.com/welcome-offers-list
TLDR: You do not need to "gamble" to match bet, in fact by definition, the bet you make is "matched" on the exchange, so it is not a gamble in any sense.
I hope this guide helps and hopefully might even get a few people out of a fix this month with bills, rent etc.
Thanks for Reading.

As you read this series of extracts, try to visualize the proverbial series of contemporary evolution... something is amiss...

Large bones in stone graves in Williamson County and White County, Tennessee. Discovered in the early 1800s, the average stature of these giants was 7 feet tall.
Giant skeletons found in the mid-1800s in New York state near Rutland and Rodman.
In 1833, soldiers digging at Lompock Rancho, California, discovered a male skeleton 12 feet tall. The skeleton was surrounded by caved shells, stone axes, other artifacts. The skeleton had double rows of upper and lower teeth. Unfortunately, this body was secretly buried because the local Indians became upset about the remains.
A giant skull and vertebrae found in Wisconsin and Kansas City.
A giant found off the California Coast on Santa Rosa Island in the 1800s was distinguished by its double rows of teeth.
A 9-foot, 8-inch skeleton was excavated from a mount near Brewersville, Indiana, in 1879.
Skeletons of "enormous dimensions" were found in mounds near Zanesville, Ohio, and Warren, Minnesota, in the 1880s.
In Clearwater Minnesota, the skeletons of seven giants were found in mounds. These had receding foreheads and complete double dentition.
At LeCrescent, Minnesota, mounds were found to contain giant bones. Five miles north near Dresbach, the bones of people over 8 feet tall were found.
In 1888 seven skeletons ranging from seven to 8 feet tall were discovered.
Near Toledo, Ohio, 20 skeletons were discovered with jaws and teeth "twice as large as those of present day people." The account also noted that odd hieroglyphics were found with the bodies.
Miners in Lovelock Cave, California, discovered a very tall, red-haired mummy In 1911
This mummy eventually went to a fraternal lodge where it was used for "initiation purposes."
In 1931, skeletons from 8 1-2 to 10 feet long were found in the Humbolt lake bed in California.
In 1932, Ellis Wright found human tracks in the gypsum rock at White Sands, New Mexico. His discovery was later backed up by Fred Arthur, Supervisor of the Lincoln National Park and others who reported that each footprint was 22 inches long and from 8 to 10 inches wide. They were certain the prints were human in origin due to the outline of the perfect prints coupled with a readily apparent instep.
During World War II, author Ivan T. Sanderson tells of how his crew was bulldozing through sedimentary rock when it stumbled upon what appeared to be a graveyard. In it were crania that measured from 22 to 24 inches from base to crown nearly three times as large as an adult human skull. Had the creatures to whom these skulls belonged been properly proportioned, they undoubtedly would have been at least 12 feet tall or taller.
In 1947 a local newspaper reported the discovery of nine-foot-tall skeletons by amateur archeologists working in Death Valley.
The archeologists involved also claimed to have found what appeared to be the bones of tigers and dinosaurs with the human remains.
The Catalina Islands, off California, are the home of dwarf mammoth bones that were once roasted in ancient fire pits. These were roasted and eaten by human-like creatures who were giants with double rows of teeth.
One of the latest accounts of a race of giants that occupied Europe comes from the middle ages and involves a surprising figure: Saint Christopher. While modern stories of St. Christopher simply make him out as an ordinary man, or perhaps a somewhat homely man, those who actually saw him had a different story. According to his peers, he was a giant, belonging to a tribe of dog-headed, cannibalistic giants. Jacques de Voragine in The Golden Legend wrote of St. Christopher:"He was of gigantic stature, had a terrifying mien, was twelve coudees tall.”
A coudee is an antique measurement equal to or larger than the English linear measurement of a foot. According to this ancient account, St. Christopher stood from 12 to 18 feet tall (a fact that has become hidden in or even erased from church history).
While Western icons don't picture St. Christopher as contemporary accounts described him, those of the Eastern churches do. Often the suggestion is seen in historic accounts that St. Christopher was the product of a tryst between a human being and an Anubis (a demon-like creature based on the Greek Anoubis, which came from the Egyptians jackal-headed god who was believed to lead the dead to judgment)

John Haywood, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, McCowat-Mercer, Jackson, TN, 1958

Cyrus Gordon, Before Columbus, Crown Publishers, NY, 1971

David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities of North America, Adventures Unlimited Press, Stelle, IL, 1992, p.509. 4.Cyrus Godron, Before Columbus, Crown Publishers, NY, 1971. 5.David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities of North America-M, Adventures Unlimited Press, Stelle, IL, 1992, p.509. 6.Indianapolis, News News, November 10, 1975. 7.Cyrus Godron, Before Columbus, Crown Publishers, NY, 1971.

David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities of North America, Adventures Unlimited Press, Stelle, IL, 1992, p.468.

Ibid.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 29, 1888.

Chicago Record, October 24, 1895.

Humboldt Star, May 13, 1928.

David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities of North America, Adventures Unlimited Press, Stelle, IL, 1992, p 494.

Ibid., p.496.

Ibid., p.497.

David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities and Ancient M, Mysteries of South America, Adventures Unlimited Press, Stelle. IL, 1985, p.199.

The Hot Citizen, Expedition Reports Nine-Foot Skeletons," August 5, 1947.

Ibid.

David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities North America, Adventures Unlimited Press, Stelle, IL, 1992, p.526.

Malcolm South, Mythical and Fabulous Creatures, Peter Berick Books, NY, NY, 1987, p.303.

Ibid.

Ibid.

In other words, according to the contemporary accounts of his day, St. Christopher was the product of a spiritual being who mated with a human woman. And once again the result of this union was a creature that matches the descriptions of the Nephilim. GENESIS 6:4

There were GIANTS in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the SONS OF GOD (Fallen Angels) came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

1.One of the many races of giants.

...AND THEY BUILT STONEHENGE There is ample reasons to believe that the monoliths in Salisbury, England, were not built by either the Druids or normal human beings. When one consider the megaliths proportions, tonnage, and lack of resources in terms of both nature and human; and the lack of technology, the possibility that I am suggesting is not so far-fetched as it may seem. 1. Not a lot is known about the people who would become known as the Celts. It is known that they migrated across Asia Minor, through northern Europe and into what have become the Celtic countries of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Most accounts of them include references to the giants that were often found among them. The ancient Greek historian Pausanias called them "the world's tallest people."

"Modern historians now believe that, in fact, the giants among the Celts were a ruling class that held control over the indigenous population that formed the majority of the Celtic tribes.
As these 60-some tribes that comprised the Cimbri or Cimmerian peoples traveled across Europe, migrating and taking over areas and later being driven Eastward by other cultures, the name of the people changed. While they were in Asia Minor, they were known as the Gomarian Sacae; this was shortened and modified to become Celtae (meaning "potent and valiant men" similar to the "mighty men" on the Genesis 6 passage). The Greeks called them Galatai a corruption of Celtae; the Romans further changed this name to become Gauls.
Although the Romans 'would eventually devise methods of defeating these giant warriors, attacking long legs that couldn't be guarded by the massive shields these creatures carried, the blue-eyed, blond giants inspired terror among those facing them in battle for the first time.

The travels of the giants through the German region also most likely inspired the Teutonic legends of the Aryan race of superhumans (with the early name of "Cimmerian" having an obvious resemblance that is probably more than happenstance to Aryan). The Nazi ideal "superman" was a blue-eyed, blond giant; this is the exact historic description of the Celtae. DeLoach has also made a good argument that the giants ruling the Celtae may very well have been descendants of the Anakim, the giants the Israelites found in the Promised Land. His argument is based on the Roman poet Virgil's account of the Gauls which describes them:
“Golden is their hair and golden their garb. They are resplendent in their striped cloaks,and their milk-white necks are circled with gold.”
5.These distinctive gold necklaces have also been discovered in numerous archeological finds, bolstering Virgil's observations.

This tight gold band around the necks of theCeltae is what ties them to the biblical accounts of the Nephilim. Remembering that the Anakim were one of the tribes that were listed as being giants in the Bible, the clue that links the Celtae to the Nephilim is the Hebrew word which is translated as "Anakim" in English: The actual word is Anaqiy, meaning "a descendent of Anak."
Now the word translated as "Anak" in the English version of the Bible is Anaq and was employed as another term for"Canaanite."
As noted earlier, this suggests that the culture that ruled much of the Promised Land when the Israelites invaded it was comprised of two classes with the Anakim acting as a ruling elite within a larger human population.

But there's more. Hebrew names are often based on common words, giving the names special meanings that relate it back to characteristics of the individual or thing being named. The word, Anaq, which was employed to name the Anak, used in other contexts means "a necklace so tight as to appear to be strangling." Use of this word suggests that the most noticeable feature of the descendants of Anak was a tight chain about the neck.
That same feature was the distinguishing characteristic that Virgil chose to remark on when describing the Gauls.
This leads to an important possibility. The Anakim, or giants that adopted their practices, were pushed out of Canaan by the Israelites, going northward and eventually traveling westward over Europe and, with the passage of several millennia, finally settled in the Celtic nations.
Their Religious Practices

If the Anakim and the giants among the Celtae were one and the same people, then it's possible to gain an insight into the religious practices of the Nephilim. While the Bible doesn't reveal much about the religious practices of the Anakim, it does hint at human and infant sacrifices and similar horrors. God ordered the Israelites to kill all the men,women and children in many of the cities taken during the invasion of the land by the Jews.

10.However, more Is known historically from non-Biblical sources about the religion that the Celtae practiced. Ancient historians had a variety of horrors to tell about the Celtae giants, including the fact that they were homosexuals (another crime which dictated the death penalty under Mosaic law). Athenaeus states that the giants were accustomed to sleeping with not one but two boys. The historian Diodorus also suggested that homosexuality was rampant among the giants when he wrote:
“Although their wives are comely, they have very little to do with them, but rage with lust in outlandish fashion for the embraces of males. And the most astonishing thing of all is that they feel no concern for their proper dignity but prostitute to others without a qualm the flower of their bodies; nor do they consider this a disgraceful thing to do, but rather when anyone of them is thus approached and refuses the favor offered him, this they consider an act of dishonor.”
These passages also provide important links that help prove the Celtae are Nephilim.

Not surprisingly, the religion that the Celtae practiced was also savage and brutal. This religion has come to be known best for the blood-thirsty priests who led its unspeakable acts, the "Druids." The actual practices of this religion have mercifully been lost to our modern age. This came about through the number of conquests of the areas ruled by the Celtae giants by the Romans and later the Norsemen, Normans and Saxons. The spread of Christianity through the region spelled the final death blow for the bloody practices of the Druids, leaving behind only altars designed for human sacrifices and the placement of "magic" stone monuments that have recently been discovered to have been carefully aligned with the stars, planets, sun and moon. The Druid religion is currently being revived by New Age and neo-pagan groups worldwide another horrifying fact that suggests another assault against the human race might be in place even as we speak.

Because Ireland was never successfully invaded by the Romans, it remained the last holdout of the human beings who practiced the religion of the Druids after the last of the Celtae giants had apparently died off. St. Patrick and St. Columcille are generally credited with bringing an end to the pagan practices. (St. Patrick was also credited with driving the snakes from Ireland; one might speculate that these "snakes" might have been serpents similar to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. If so, these might have been some sort of fallen angels in the form of reptiles.) There are a few horrific details that have filtered down to us about the Druids' practices, however. One is that these priests not only placed their blessings on human sacrifice, they often performed the rites themselves.
Julius Caesar wrote:

“The Gauls believe the power of the immortal gods can be appeased only if one human life is exchanged for another and they have sacrifices of this kind regularly established by the community. Some of them have enormous images made of wickerwork, the limbs of which they fill with living men; these are set on fire and the men perish, enveloped in the flames. They believe that the gods prefer it if the executed have been caught in the act of theft or armed robbery or some other crime. But when the supply of such victims runs out, they even go to the extent of sacrificing innocent men.”

Diodorus had an even more horrifying story about how the Celtae giants attempted to read the future:

“They devote to death a human being and plunge a dagger into him in the region above the diaphragm, and when the stricken victim has fallen, they read the future from the manner of his fall and from the twitching of his limbs, as well as from the gushing of the blood, having learned to place confidence in an ancient and long-continued practice of observing such matters."

The exact religious practices of the Anakim are unknown But suffice it to say that the little that has filtered down to us reflects the extreme wickedness and savagery of the Old Testament accounts of these creatures. That groups around the world are now in the process of reviving the Druid and Egyptian practices also speaks volumes about where many in our own times are headed, and what they are really trying to accomplish by reviving this depraved religion.... things are just not always what they appear to be.

Pausanias, 1.35.

Charles DeLoach, Giants. A Reference Guide From History, the Bible, and Recorded Legend. Scarecrow Press, Meuchen, NJ, 1995, p.54.

Ibid.

Virgil, Aeneid, 8.658-660.

Charles DeLoach, Giants: A Reference Guide from History, the Bible, and Recorded Legend, Scarecrow Press, Meuchen, NJ, 1995, p.57.

James Strong, Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Abingdon Press, NY, 1894/1970, 6062.

Ibid, 6061.

Ibid., 6060.

Deuteronomy 13:15, Deuteronomy 20:13, Joshua 6:21, Joshua 8:24, Joshua 10:28-39, Joshua 11:11, etc. 10.Diodorus, 5.32.

Julius Caesar, Commentary, 6.16.

Diodorus, 5.31.

Compiled By, D.M.IV

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? “There were GIANTS in the earth in those days....”
[Revelation 9:1] And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
[Revelation 9:2] And he opened the bottomless pit; ...”

The assertions starts with the burden of proof listed in, “GIANTS I”, based on the following statement, and further proved beyond doubt that there were indeed a number of civilizations that were giants:

GENESIS 6:2
That the SONS OF GOD saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose....
GENESIS 6:4
There were GIANTS in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the SONS OF GOD (Fallen Angels) came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
The standard contention is: is this biblical myth, or is this a historical reality of the past... and today?
The new challenging assertion set before you is this: where are they now, if they ever really did exist? The answer?....“the inner earth”. And the entrances to this new homeland: one at the extreme northern axis of the earth, the other at the extreme southern axis.
Throughout history and various cultures, this new homeland has taken on various appellations:

The Ultimate Thule Aggartha Shamballa Shangri-La Elusian Fields Asgard Atlantis Valhalla Realm of Jason & the Argonauts, etc.

As fantastic as the assertion sounds, the burden of proof resides in this brief documentation. But to save space, and not to try your patience, I have only chosen select passages from each publications included therein. Nevertheless, let us start from the most ancient documentation, progressing to the more contemporary -
Your intellectual foundations are about to be challenged... For truth is sometimes much stranger than fiction
From the “SECRETS OF ENOCH” 2. “The men (literally, angels) took me on to the fifth heaven and placed me, and there I saw many and countless soldiers, called Grigori (rebellious angels), of human appearance, and their size was greater than that of great giants...”

“And I said to the Grigori: ‘I saw your brethren and their works, and their great torments, and I prayed for them, but the Lord has condemned them to be under earth till heaven and earth shall end forever’. ....”
THE BOOK OF ENOCH (The Watchers)
“Then they (the angels) took wives, each choosing for himself, whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the divining of roots and trees. And the women conceiving brought forth giants, whom stature was each three hundreth cubits. ....
”To Michael likewise the Lord said,... bind them for seventy generations underneaththe earth,...”
“From there I went on towards the extremities of the earth; where I saw large beasts different from each other, and birds various in countenances and forms, as well as with notes of different sounds. ... ”
“From there I advanced on towards the north, to the extremities of the earth. And there I saw a great and glorious wonder at the extremities of the whole earth.I saw there heavenly gates opening into heavens; three of them distinctly separated. The northern winds proceeded from them, blowing cold, hail, frost, snow, dew, and rain....”

THE BOOK OF JUBILEES 9. “...that the angels of God saw them (earthly women) on a certain year of this jubilee, that they were beautiful to look upon; and they took themselves wives of all whom they chose, and they bare to them sons and they were giants. ...”
10.“And against the angels whom He (God) had sent upon earth, He was exceedingly wroth, and He gave commandment to root them out of all their dominion, and He bade us to bind them in the depths of the earth, and behold they bound in the midst of them...”

1.From, THE THE LOST BOOK OF... . Enoch was a distance grandson of Seth; Seth was the 3rd son of Adam. The book in it’s entirety contains 45 rare manuscripts. First published in 1926 by Alpha House, Inc.; this reprint is by World Bible Publisher, Inc., and the compiler is Dr. Frank Crane. 2.Ch. XVIII: 1, pg. 87 3.Ch. XVIII: 5, pg 87 4.From, THE BOOKS OF ENOCH, THE WATCHERS, TGS Publishing, Yoakum, TX. 77995. Translated by, Richard Laurence, L.L.D. The Watchers were angels whom were sent by God to instruct man. Note also that this is an entirely separate publication. 5.Ch.7:10-12, pg. 3. 6.Ch.10:15, pg. 5. 7.Ch.32:1-2, pg. 13. 8.Ch.33:1-3, pg. 13. 9.Another separate publication from THE BOOK OF JUBILEES, pg. 23, Ch. 5:1-2, TGS Publishing, Yoakum, TX. 77995, Translated by R.H. Charles, 1913. This is an ancient Pharisee text of about 153 BC. 10. Ch. 5:5-7, pg. 23.

ADMIRAL RICHARD B. BYRD'S DIARY (FEB - MAR.1947)
(“The Inner Earth : My Secret Diary”) THE LAND BEYOND THE POLES - THE EXPLORATION FLIGHT OVER THE NORTH POLE.
I must write this diary in secrecy and obscurity. It concerns my Arctic flight of the nineteenth day of February in the year of Nineteen and Forty Seven.
There comes a time when the rationality of men must fade into insignificance and one must accept the inevitability of the Truth! am not at liberty to disclose the following documentation at this writing... perhaps it shall never see the light of public scrutiny, but I must do my duty and record here for all to read one day. In a world of greed and exploitation of certain of mankind, one can no longer suppress that which is truth.
1. FLIGHT LOG: BASE CAMP ARCTIC, 2119/1947 0600 HOURS - All preparations are complete for our flight north ward and we are airborne with full fuel tanks at 0610 Hours.....
0910 HOURS - Vast Ice and snow below, note coloration of yellowish nature, and dispersed in a linear pattern. Altering course for a better examination of this color pattern below, note reddish or purple color also. Circle this area two full turns and return to assigned compass heading. Position check made again to base camp, and relay information concerning colorations in the Ice and snow below.
0910 HOURS - Both Magnetic and Gyro compasses beginning to gyrate and wobble, we are unable to hold our heading by instrumentation. Take bearing with Sun compass, yet all seems well. The controls are seemingly slow to respond and have sluggish quality, but there is no indication of Icing!
0915 HOURS - In the distance is what appears to be mountains.
0949 HOURS -29 minutes elapsed flight time from the first sighting of the mountains, it is no illusion. They are mountains and consisting of a small range that I have never seen before!
0955 HOURS - Altitude change to 2950 feet, encountering strong turbulence again.
2. 1000 HOURS
We are crossing over the small mountain range and still proceeding northward as best as can be ascertained. Beyond the mountain range is what appears to be a valley with a small river or stream running through the center portion. There should be no green valley below! Something is definitely wrong and abnormal here! We should be over Ice and Snow! To the portside are great forests growing on the mountain slopes. ...

1.To this point, Ch.7, pg. 80. 2.To this point, Ch.7, pg. 81.

1140 HOURS - Another radio message received. We begin the landing process now, and in moments the plane shudders slightly, and begins a descent as though caught in some great unseen elevator! The downward motion is negligible, and we touch down with only a slight jolt!
1.1145 HOURS - I am making a hasty last entry in the flight log. Several men are approaching on foot toward our aircraft. They are tall with blond hair.
2.In the distance is a large shimmering city pulsating with rainbow hues of color. I do not know what is going to happen now, but I see no signs of weapons on those approaching. I hear now a voice ordering me by name to open the cargo door. I comply.
END LOG
3. MARCH 11, 1947 I have just attended a staff meeting at the Pentagon. I have stated fully my discovery and the message from the Master. All is duly recorded. The President has been advised. I am now detained for several hours (six hours, thirty-nine minutes, to be exact.) I am interviewed intently by Top Security Forces and a medical team. It was an ordeal! I am placed under strict control via the national security provisions of this United States of America. I am ORDERED TO REMAIN SILENT IN REGARD TO ALL THAT I HAVE LEARNED, ON THE BEHALF OF HUMANITY! Incredible! I am reminded that I am a military man I must obey orders....
In further confirmation of Admiral Byrd's discovery are reports of individuals who claimed they had entered the north polar opening, as many Arctic explorers did without knowing they did, and penetrated far enough into it to reach the Subterranean World in the hollow interior of the Earth. Dr. Nephi Cottom of Los Angeles reported that one of his patients, a man of Nordic descent, told him the following story:
"I lived near the Arctic Circle in Norway. One summer my friend and I made up our minds to take a boat trip together, and go as far as we could into the north country. So we put one month's food provisions in a small fishing boat, and with sail and also a good engine in our boat, we set to sea.

At the end of one month we had travelled far into the north, beyond the Pole and into a strange new country. We were much astonished at the weather there. Warm, and at times at night it was almost too warm to sleep. Then we saw something so strange that we both were astonished. Ahead of the warm open sea we were on what looked like a great mountain. Into that mountain at a certain point the ocean seemed to be emptying. Mystified, we continued in that direction and found ourselves sailing into a vast canyon leading into the interior of the earth. We kept sailing and then we saw what surprised us - a sun shining inside the earth!”
Several of the inner earth inhabitants - huge giants - detected our boat on the river, and were quite amazed...

1.See “GIANTS 1”, for more details on this description. 2.To this point, Ch.7, pg. 82. 3.Ch.7, pg. 85. 4.Ch.1, pg. 12-13. 5.Ch.1, pg. 13.

The presence of the open sea in the Northland is also explained. Olaf Jansen claims that the northern aperture, intake or hole, so to speak, is about fourteen hundred miles across. In connection with this, let us read what Explorer Jansen 'writes, on page 288 of his book: “I have never had such a splendid sail. On to the north steadily north, with a good wind, as fast as stream and sail can take us, an open sea mile after mile, watch after watch, through these unknown regions, always clearer and clearer of ice, one might almost say: 'How long will it last?' The eye always turns to the northward as one paces the bridge. It is gazing into the future. But them is always the same dark sky ahead which means open sea.” Again, the Norwood Review of England, in its issue of May 10, 1884, says: “We do not admit that there is ice up to the Pole - once inside the great ice barrier, a new world breaks upon the Explorer, the climate is mild like that of England, and, afterward, balmy as the Greek Isles.”.....
My name is Olaf Jansen. I am a Norwegian, although I was born in the little seafaring Russian town of Uleaborg, on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, the northern arm of the Baltic Sea.

I was in my nineteenth year when we started on what proved to be our last trip as fishermen, and which resulted in the strange story that shall be given to the world, - but not until I have finished my earthly pilgrimage...
There was a tradition my father explained, that still farther northward was a land more beautiful than any that mortal man had ever known, and that it was inhabited by the Chosen.

My youthful imagination was fired by the ardor, zeal and religious fervor of my good father, and I exclaimed: 'why not sail to this goodly land? The sky is fair, the wind favorable and the sea open."....

The compass, which we had fastened back in its place, in fear of another storm, was still pointing due north, and moving on its pivot just as it had in Stockholm. The dipping of the needle had ceased. What could this mean? Then, too, our many days of sailing had certainly carried us far past the North Pole. And yet the needle continued to point north. We were sorely perplexed, for surely our direction was now south.....

Along the banks great forests miles in extent could be seen stretching away on the shoreline. The trees were of enormous size. We landed after anchoring near a sandy beach, and waded ashore, and were rewarded by finding a quantity of nuts that were very palatable and satisfying to hunger, and a welcome change from the monotony of our stock of provisions....

1.Excerpt from the author’s Forward, pg. 5. 2.From this point on, all quotes are from Olaf Jansen, whom is dictating the story to W.G. Emerson. Pg. 7. 3.Ch.2, pg. 10. 4.Ch.3, pg. 15.

It was about the first of September, over five months we calculated, since our leave taking from Stockholm Suddenly we were frightened almost out of our wits by hearing in the far distance the singing of people. Very soon thereafter we discovered a huge ship gliding down the river directly toward us. Those aboard were singing in one mighty chorus that, echoing from bank to bank, sounded like a thousand voices, filling the whole universe with quivering melody. The accompaniment was played on stringed instruments not unlike our harps.
It was a larger ship than any we had ever seen, and was differently constructed....
The immense craft paused, and almost immediately a boat was lowered and six men of gigantic stature rowed to our little fishing-sloop. They spoke to us in a strange language. We knew from their manner, however, that they were not unfriendly. They talked a great deal among themselves, and one of them laughed immoderately, as though in finding us a queer discovery had been made. One of them spied our compass, and it seemed to interest them more than any other part of our sloop.....

"They seem to be kindly disposed," I replied, "although what terrible giants! They must be the select six of the kingdom's crack regiment. Just look at their great size...."
The surprise of my father and myself was indescribable when, amid the regal magnificence of a spacious hall, we were finally brought before the Great High Priest, ruler over all the land. He was richly robed, and much taller than those about him, and could not have been less than fourteen or fifteen feet in height. The immense room in which we were received seemed finished in solid slabs of gold thickly studded with jewels of amazing brilliancy....
I remember hearing my father remark that the giant race of people in the land of 'The Smoky God had almost as accurate an idea of the geography of the "outside" surface of the earth as had the average college professor in Stockholm.......

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;” Phillipian 2:10
“And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.” Revelations 5:3
“Seven rivers I beheld upon earth, greater than all rivers, one of which takes its course from the west; it to a great sea its water flows. Two comes from the north to the sea, there waters flowing into the Erythraean sea, on the east. And with respect to the remaining four, they take their course in the cavity of the north” Book Of Enoch 76:6-7

1.Ch.3, pg. 16. 2.Ch.3, pg. 19. 3.Ch.4, pg. 21.

PROLOGUE:
IN THE FIRST PLACE PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THAT I do not expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when, in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London....
1.The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed before I was half through! It is all that saved him from exploding--and my dreams of an Honorary Fellowship, gold medals, and a niche in the Hall of Fame faded into the thin, cold air of his arctic atmosphere....
As I looked I began to appreciate the reason for the strangeness of the landscape that had haunted me from the first with an illusive suggestion of the bizarre and unnatural - THERE WAS NO HORIZON! As far as the eye could reach out the sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom -distance was lost in the distance. That was all - here was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe below the line of vision". A great light is commencing to break on me," continued Perry, taking out his watch. "I believe that I have partially solved the riddle It is now two o'clock. When we emerged from the prospector the sun was directly above us. Where is it now?"

I glanced up to find the great orb still motionless in the center of the heaven. And such a sun! I had scarcely noticed it before. Fully thrice the size of the sun I had known throughout my life, and apparently so near that the sight of it carried the conviction that one might almost reach up and touch it.....

When we had passed out of the amphitheater onto the great plain we saw a caravan of men and women - human beings like ourselves-and for the first time hope and relief filled my heart, until I could have cried out in the exuberance of my happiness. It is true that they were a half-naked, wild-appearing aggregation; but they at least were fashioned along the same lines as ourselves - there was nothing grotesque or horrible about them as about the other creatures in this strange, weird world.

But as we came closer, our hearts sank once more, for we discovered that the poor wretches were chained neck to neck in a long line,... With little ceremony Perry and I were chained at the end of the line, and without further ado the interrupted march was resumed....
On we stumbled beneath that hateful noonday sun. If we fell we were prodded with a sharp point. Our companions in chains did not stumble. They strode along proudly erect. Occasionally they would exchange words with one another in a monosyllabic language. They were a noble-appearing race with well-formed heads and perfect physiques. The men were heavily bearded, tall and muscular; the women, smaller and more gracefully molded, with great masses of raven hair caught into loose knots upon their heads. The features of both sexes were well proportioned..........

1 .As stated in the title, this is an excerpt from the author’s Prologue, E.R. Burroughs; it ends here. 2. Ch.1, pg. 7. From this point forward, the quotes are quoted by David Innes to Burroughs. 3. Ch.3. pg. 13. 4. Ch.3. pg. 14.

MY EPILOGUE: There are some additional notes I wish to point out before closing. According to the ancient manuscripts, the Watchers not only provoked God by going into earthly women but, they also provoked Him by going into different animals - bestiality. And they taught man these depraved acts as well. And the results of their offspring, as you would probably surmise: terrible giants, unheard of abominations, horrible to look upon. Even the ancient historian Herodotus (circa 500 BC) made minute quotes of some of these atrocities (sic) of nature. But let us quote from another ancient manuscripts that was mentioned by the chroniclers of Joshua 10:13, and 2 Samuel 1:18 :
From THE BOOK OF JASHER 1.“And their judges and rulers (which were the giants at this time) went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice, and son of men of those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of field, and fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw that the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.”
From THE BOOK OF JUBILEES
2.“And lawlessness increased on the earth and all flesh corrupted its way, alike men and cattle and beasts and birds and everything that walks on the earth - all of them corrupted their ways and their orders, and they began to devour each other,...”

...and the earth was filled with inquity (sic). And after this they sinned against the beasts and the birds, and all that moves and walks on the earth...”

I think it may be high time that we all had a little private conference with our teachers of Archaeology, Paleontology, Anthropology, Geology, and as well as Geography and Cartography.
“And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” Job 1:7
“The devil is the evil spirit of the lower places...” Secrets of Enoch 31:4 Compiled By, D.M.IV

From, THE BOOK OF JASHER (The Upright Record), TGS Publishing, Yoakum, TX. 77995, Ch. 4:18, pg. 8.

THE BOOK OF JUBILEES, Ch. 5:2, pg. 23.

Ch. 7:24, pg. 28.

If you’re up for another long read, this is part 2 of my original DD on WSB. Link here for those interested. WSB has been removing my DDs so here I am.
TLDR; there is no tldr. If you are invested in this topic then read the whole thing and make up your mind about what it means to you as you see fit.

My goals from this DD post -

There are a couple of important relevant points about short interest that I don’t see other recent GME DD’s talking about that I would like to bring to the table for discussion. I prefix their titles with “forgotten point”.
I would like to be objective and only present data while avoiding confirmation bias. If you see me biased, feel free to point it out.
Share what I personally think and plan to do moving forward. This is not advice but only my personal opinion.

Short interest data analysis

Preface -

This analysis was written before the SI official report expected on Feb 9; and is based on data from Ortex.
The reason for the above is because whether official numbers turn up equal or lower to estimates, they don’t really affect the points I bring up here.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that current short interest data is accurate and that the report reflects real short interest.

Alright, let’s start by looking at a couple metrics available from Ortex, utilization and on loan.

https://preview.redd.it/q5dn66bs7rg61.png?width=3475&format=png&auto=webp&s=67a1a43fc24392f9cdd70de79da13700284dc4fe
Here are definitions provided by Ortex for the data in the chart:
UTILIZATION:
The ratio between the number of shares on loan across all outstanding loans in the wholesale market and the number of shares available for lending at lending programs. 0% means that no shares have been borrowed or lent at these lending programs; 100% means that all shares available to borrow or lend at a lending program have, in fact, been lent. This does not represent the number of shares listed on the exchange that have been lent, because not all listed shares our available for lending; it indicates how much of the supply actually available for lending has been lent. Unless otherwise specified, this is given in decimal format.
SHARES ON LOAN
The current number of shares out on loan
Note that “shares on loan” is less than short interest estimate. This is likely due to naked shorting (regardless whether by MM or otherwise). The difference between those values is ~5M shares, suggesting 5M naked shorted shares but that’s a tangent.

Forgotten point 1: Float shrinks as shorts cover

According to the above definitions, we can deduce the total number of loanable shares by taking the “On Loan” value and dividing it by utilization. This value represents the total number of shares available to loan + loaned out shares, which is the total borrowable float. Aka true float shares minus unavailable to short (e.g cash accounts). We can then come up with the following values.
January 25th -> 48.6M shares January 26th -> 44.7M shares January 27th -> 40M shares January 28th -> 30.2M shares January 29th -> 28M share Feb 8th -> 26M shares

Observations

Utilization remained at 100% until January 28th. It started dropping on the 29th, suggesting shorts covering. This means all the borrowable float was borrowed up until January 28th.
The values above are suggesting that the size of the borrowable float has decreased significantly.

Point (2) above means one of two things. Either:

My original hypothesis that the float shrinks as shorts cover is correct. Some covering has occurred, as a result many synthetic longs disappeared.
OR, a significant number of shares suddenly became unavailable to lend (e.g, people moving their accounts from margin to cash).

I think the latter is unlikely because that would mean retail controls ~1.1B dollars (by current price). Therefore I think the former is what happened thus confirming my hypothesis that the float has shrunk.
This is important because of what I mention in the next section. If you remember my previous DD, I hypothesized that the squeeze should become way more violent as more covering occurs.

Forgotten point 2: Absolute short interest vs (short interest / float) ratio as influencer on squeeze

I’m seeing a lot of posts talking about the absolute value of the current short interest (aka total number of shares sold short). What is surprising me is I don’t see anybody talking about the short/float ratio.
See, whenever a VW comparison was brought up, the smart apes would tend to point out that the reason VW squeeze was very powerful was _not_ because of high short interest, in fact short interest was not high for VW like GME, but specifically because of the ratio of (shares sold short / available float to buy).
See, this is basically supply and demand. The higher this ratio is, the higher demand is and the higher a price would rise during a squeeze.
In case of VW, I’ve seen references of that ratio being ~12. To put this into perspective, for each 12 buyers there is 1 seller (assuming both parties are buying and selling 1 stock each for simplicity). Now let’s compare to GME.

Before recent events

If you read my original post, you’ll see the data was suggesting that the short / float ratio was around 2:1 at best, 1.4:1 at worst.
- Although this value was not very high, I speculated that this ratio would increase as shorts start covering because theoretically synthetic longs should start to disappear from the float as they cover in turn reducing the total “real float”.
I calculated the real float as ~30M shares. See my previous post for what I mean by real float.

After recent events

Now let’s take a second look at what the float looks like now after updated short interest estimates. I’ve updated blackrock and fidelity holdings with the values from their latest filings. Note that these values don’t account for retail holdings; and they only account for top 10 institutional holders so in reality the float should be smaller than this by at least a few million shares.

https://preview.redd.it/qhb2dioe8rg61.png?width=1441&format=png&auto=webp&s=afee02e1a4e2d000d21d0738e64af4137e6f0fb4

Observations

According to the data, the current short/true_float ratio is at worst case 2.4:1. This is significantly increased from before squeeze; the worst case was 1:4:1. Realistically this value is probably much higher as indicated by the negative buyable float.
In other words, supply is much more scarce now than before. If shorts cover, demand will become extremely higher than it was before recent events. If a squeeze were to happen, theoretically it may be able to reach higher highs than recent squeeze.
Even if the squeeze were to continue, it would not end until a share offering or a large institution selling a large position because shares are more scarce now.

Speculations from above data

The share price is currently extremely volatile; I speculate this is due to lack of shares to buy. Any interested large buyers can influence share price substantially very quickly.
Due to the lack of share availability, I’m speculating that this was the primary reason trading was halted. Deposit requirements increased to 100% because clearing houses saw the squeeze happening and didn’t feel confident that enough real shares would be delivered and wanted money upfront so they don’t become left bagholding when short positions default.

What I think happened

I don’t know what happened, the data is simply not enough. Anybody who claims to know with certainty are lying. All we have is bits and pieces of data we can use to deduce high probability outcomes.
Regardless whether what happened recently was a squeeze or wasn’t, many of the underlying conditions and hypotheses that can cause a potential stock rise/squeeze still exist; just with a smaller short interest.
The primary factor that changed is short interest. But even if that did truly decrease, it is still very high even if it’s not >100% of float; and it also increased the demand/supply ratio with it substantially. The only difference now is if another squeeze happens, it will likely last a shorter time frame.

Speculations about what happened

Organic demand initially skyrocketed the price. A partial squeeze happened.
Dumb investors/funds that were not prepared got margin called and/or took losses. There were likely new shorts added along the way (e.g at 100 and 200) that got margin called when the price continued rising > 400
Smart investors/funds decide to let others get massacred and instead the squeeze with dated calls. I mean, If I’m a shorter and I’m smart, greedy, and I feel confident that the price would go down why would I cover at a huge loss? I’d rather limit my max losses by buying OTM calls at my maximum loss threshold at a few months out; let the other shorts get massacred in the squeeze then cover later after it cools down. If I’m smart, I would have done this as soon as price passed the $20-$30 price.
Since there are literally no shares I would wait for price to drop substantially before trying to work out a deal with Gamestop or one of the large institutional holders to buy out their shares at a set price. Maybe that’s why Fidelity sold their position? (Perhaps at higher than market price behind closed doors)

What this means going forward

The other shorts eventually need to get out. They can’t get out now due to lack of supply and they’re betting on the company failure.
If the company fails and share price drops, current shorts will wait for share availability, or work out a deal with Gamestop and/or large institutional investors to buy out their shares at a reasonable price.
If the company succeeds and the share price continues rising, the remaining shorts will eventually get squeezed. Since the available shares aren’t enough to cover, I expect either another halt or behind closed door deals to buy out at certain prices.
The time limit for the above is unknown and highly depends on how much the borrow rate is costing the shorters, how the company does in earnings and how the share price behaves from buying demand. If demand keeps growing.
If a squeeze happens in the future, it will likely be shorter in duration due to the decreased short interest. It could happen over 1 day. However price could go up higher due to scarcer supply.

My personal stance and departing thoughts

I entered this position from the start because I like gamestop and I can see them naturally growing into a price >$200 over the next few years. This remains unchanged.
Can another squeeze happen? Absolutely. There are still 20M shares that need to be bought to cover which simply currently aren't available on the market. That's even assuming there are no new shorts.
Are the odds of it happening the same as before? Maybe; however the timeline definitely changed. It may take longer time to happen. If it happens, it will also be shorter lived. If the company succeeds and the share price slowly climbs shorts will eventually cover it's just a question of when.
In other words, this turned into a long term play that could happen over months or 1-2 years.
The above may sound frustrating; especially since it’s no longer inevitable within weeks like it was before when short interest was mind boggling. With that said, I’m still bullish. One underrated aspect not talked about often enough is that there are still large institutional holders that have their positions mostly unchanged even though they are now sitting on >10X profits. These guys are smart and greedy. If they’re not selling now then they see more potential and this is bullish.
I entered this position earlier than many so I’m biased in holding. I didn’t sell a single share on the climb. The recent drop cost me multiple $M. The bright side is if this takes a year then at least I’ll pay significantly less taxes on my gains.
I'm not touching this position anytime soon. GME can make $200 with no squeeze.
I hope this helps.

Hi! I've lurked on this forum for years now. Reading tons of advice and seeing other people's experiences - since then I decided to give 'Dropshipping' a good go. I've had experience with about 4 failed stores, 1 semi-successful store and 1 (my current) 'successful' store, which is on course to turn over around $300k this year.
I've only recently made an account, and wanted to make this thread to hopefully give people advice that I wish I'd had 18 months ago, when I opened my first shoddy store! I'm still learning e-v-e-r-y day, but I've learnt a lot in these 18 months, and would like to pay it back. I've made a comment on a similar post, so some of the info will be repeated - but this should be in more depth, and broken down a bit better.
Few notes before reading: I've only been dropshipping for 18months+, I'm in the clothing niche, I only have experience in China -> US/EU fulfilment, not POD services or US suppliers.
Store Design:
Your storefront is your open door for customers to look through and decide if they want to give you their hard earned money. If you are low on start-up cash, the free themes *can* be sufficient for your first few months of sales. The only problem with the free themes (particularly Shopify), is that they are so recognisable at this point. Many have become synonamous with low-quality AliExpress dropshipping stores, and may make customers wary right off the bat.
There are some marketplaces that sell 100s of Shopify themes, from $40-$500. Filter by reviews, and if possible invest on the lower end of that budget, in a solid and more importantly *CLEAN* theme. The design of the theme will obviously depend on your niche, but anyone with computer knowledge can make a clean, minimalist logo on Photoshop or other free alternatives. Investing in a theme will make you look more like a start up - rather than a copycat.
In today's market, simple primarily white background and blue/black text still works well. Stay away from 'dark' themes with black/red backgrounds - ones where it is difficult to blend your product images in. If you are interested in this buyer psychology, I'd recommend reading up on Amazon's approach to their platform design, plenty of free articles are available.
Sourcing Products/Suppliers:
So you have your site, it looks clean, you've had good feedback from family and friends. What do you put in it? Ultimately, this is something you have to decide based on your passions, the market you know, niches and buyers climate. People may try to advise you on this, but this is something that you have to decide. You don't have to love the product, but ideally you need to recognise a demand for it. if you are really struggling, just look at the ads you are being targeted with. Is it a small store? Keep an eye on their progress, see how they do things. For the record, I am in the clothing niche, I worked for a novelty t-shirt company in sales for 2-3 years, so it was something I knew a little bit about.
You can begin with AliExpress, I started with clothing on AliExpress - but in my opinion it's a short term intro plan - and isn't sustainable or conducive to building a long-term brand. Often the product quality is quite low, your 'suppliers' are actually middlemen, and in my experience there is very little desire to communicate and collaborate with you when issues arise, shipping, returns etc. In hindsight, I wish I'd gone straight to my own supplier.
I don't want to spend long on AE, and I'm not discrediting it is as an option *it absolutely can work, and can be super lucrative!*, but in my opinion - it's not for long term stores. I guess AE's greatest strength is that it can be effective in the testing phase, as soon as you know your product is in demand, try and find your own supplier.
Where? There are a variety of marketplaces you can get in touch with Chinese suppliers, the #1 that springs to mind is AliBaba, where I found mine. I had no luck or interest from AliExpress suppliers, and found other sites hard to navigate. You will absolutely want to test different samples, some will try to sell you up the river on shipping costs for samples - if it's a product you believe in, sometimes you've just got to bite the bullet on this one. If you haggle early on, most will think you aren't a serious buyer. The time for negotiating will come when they *need* you. This is the time to ask every question under the sun, also - sizing, material, quality, different shipping rates, different shipping lines, processing time, PayPal/Wire transfer fees. Always check, check and check for extra fees, make sure you ask for landed cost to each country. The worst thing is when you have calculated your margins, got orders and there is a sudden 'COVID surcharge' or whatever else pops up.
You may find the suppliers are overly eager to secure you even though you have a small amount of orders, trying every charm and trick in the book. They are salesmen/women - that's what they do. Be polite, but quick with them, you want to come across as serious, and not a walkover. Otherwise they will absolutely try to mark the product up and get the best possible price. Negotiation is encouraged, but they are unlikely to budge (in my experience) until you are ordering daily/weekly from them.
Remember, your supplier is going to be absolutely key to your business. When you have many orders rolling in a day, you cannot afford for them to go AWOL. As long as you are supplying them with orders, they should want to help you out. My supplier will still try the odd trick, even after however many orders with them and speaking to them daily.
Marketing:
I'm not getting into specifics, and will just outline my early experiences. I've advertised with Youtube influencers, and on the Facebook/IG platform through their ad system. I've had success with both, but now run about 20% YT, 80% FB/IG. Personally I find it easier to scale FB/IG for beginners. There are so many resources out there, DO NOT EXCHANGE MONEY for anything! They may have some value, but in my opinion aren't necessary. 99% of the info I've found has been totally free. Youtube is absolutely your friend.
Aside from cold audiences, remarketing/email lists/loyalty rewards all have their own benefits, you'll have to find the right mix for your product/audience.
Again, ads are their own subject - I'm in no way an expert, and probably know about 1% of what there is to know, this is just my experience using ads daily to reach my customers.
Keep them sweet:
It's going great, you've got a beautiful store, awesome branded product and your ads are converting. Surely you can just sit back and relax now? This is where the real work begins, if you are doing more than, I'd say 30 orders a day, you are going to start being busy with enquiries.
To minimise enquiries - make sure your shipping times/policy is super clear, have a FAQs page with key info, have that info on the product page - and once more at checkout. You do not want to be hoodwinking people into thinking your product will be there *next day*, when it's shipping from China with DHL and will be 5-7 biz days. Try to have tracking and orders synced up, too.
Make sure you reply quickly and as politely as possible to all customer enquiries, customers will already be wary buying from you, particularly if you were found on IG, and their product hasn't turned up after a week.
Summary:
There is plenty more 'sections' you could go into depth with, like I say - you could probably write a book on each section alone, but this is just some of the key things I've learnt on my road so far. Thanks to everyone who has helped me over the years with their threads and not even knowing it.
If you've found any value, any Qs you can leave them here - and no, you can't have my store URL, haha. Got to keep some of the secret sauce a secret!

I know you guys are probably sick of hearing GME related stuff but I really wanted to post this here to get some additional thoughts/feedback from experienced investors.
Long post ahead, but I encourage you to read the whole thing.
TLDR: Data points strongly point to Hedge Funds using tricks to appear as if they covered their shorts when they haven't truly covered. Full version below.
There’s an insightful piece on https://tradesmithdaily.com/investing-strategies/the-drop-in-gamestop-short-interest-could-be-real-or-deceptive-market-manipulation/ that identifies there are two ways for both short interest and price to fall quickly.
First way is retail investors not holding the line and panic selling thereby driving the price down further, releasing into the market more of the float and enabling shorts to covebuy back shares at progressively lower levels.
**
Quoting from Tradesmithdaily:
Plummeting short interest along with a plummeting GME share price, in other words, could indicate that the Reddit army is headed for the hills, and the longs were selling early, giving the shorts a means to cover, as the longs got out… Important to note that if the long holders of GME shares did not break ranks and sell en masse, it would have been impossible for the share price to fall and hedge fund short interest to fall at the same time. because, without a critical mass of long-side holders selling into the market, the hedge funds covering their shorts would have nobody to buy from as they covered (bought back) their short positions.
**
However the other scenario where this can occur is the hedge fund short interest in GME didn’t really dissipate but instead they played a trick to make it seem like it did, demoralizing the retail side and further “breaking the squeeze.”
**
To now quote verbatim from Tradesmithdaily:
The way the hedge funds could have done this — made it appear as if they covered their shorts, even when they really didn’t — involves trickery in the options market.
The tactics involved are not a secret. In fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) knows all about such tactics, and published a “risk alert” memo on the topic in August 2013.
The SEC memo is titled “Strengthening Practices for Preventing and Detecting Illegal Options Trading Used to Reset Reg SHO Close-out Obligations.” You can read it here via the SEC website.
The memo contains a dozen pages of highly technical language, but here’s a quick rundown:

If short sellers are facing a squeeze because shares are hard to buy, or scrutiny for holding an illegal short position, they can create an appearance of having closed their short position through the use of deceptive options trades.
A hedge fund that is short a stock can write call options on a stock — meaning they are now “short” the call options, having sold the call options to someone else (typically a market maker) — and simultaneously buy shares against the call options.
The shares bought against the call options could be “synthetic” longs — meaning they are not part of the original share float of the stock — as sold to the hedge fund by the market maker that takes the other side of the options trade.
This works because, if a market maker buys options from an options writer, the market maker has legal privileges to do a version of “naked shorting” as part of their hedging function. This is necessary, under the current rules and the current system, for market makers to protect themselves when facilitating options trades.
As a result of the above transaction, the hedge fund that sold short calls was able to buy synthetic long shares against the calls. (A synthetic share is one that has a long on one side and a short on the other but wasn’t part of the original float.) The synthetic long shares are the other side of the naked shorts, legally initiated by the market maker, so the market maker can hedge.
The hedge fund that bought the shares can now report that they have “bought back” their short position via buying long shares — except they actually haven’t! The synthetic shares they bought are canceled out against the short call positions they initiated, a necessity of the maneuver by way of the market maker’s hedging of the call position they bought from the hedge fund.

It gets very complicated, very fast.
But the gist is that hedge funds can use tricks to make it look like they’ve covered their shorts — even if they haven’t truly covered, and can’t, for lack of available float — by way of exploiting loopholes that exist due to an interplay of reporting rule delays, market maker naked shorting exceptions, and legal practices of synthetic share creation (new longs and shorts made from thin air) relating to market-making.
Below is a section of the SEC memo (from page 8) that gets to the heart of it:
“Trader A may enter a buy-write transaction, consisting of selling deep-in-the-money calls and buying shares of stock against the call sale. By doing so, Trader A appears to have purchased shares to meet the broker-dealer’s close-out obligation for the fail to deliver that resulted from the reverse conversion. In practice, however, the circumstances suggest that Trader A has no intention of delivering shares, and is instead re-establishing or extending a fail position.”
**
In short (no pun intended) these tricks “help hedge funds maintain short positions that, legally speaking, they weren’t supposed to have because the shares were never properly located”, which triggers alarm bells when we consider the extraordinarily high amount of FTIDs/Failed to Deliver Shares (https://wherearetheshares.com/) and Michael Burry’s (now deleted tweet viewable here https://web.archive.org/web/20210130030954/https://twitter.com/michaeljburry?lang=en) about how when he called back shares he lent out, brokers took weeks to actually find them with the implication they could not be located.
These factors lend credence to the idea that shorts weren’t really covered but were given the impression of being covered with trickery using options, in order to “cover” short positions that they shouldn’t have had to begin with because shares were never properly located.
Separately but potentially related, S3 released updated short numbers last Sunday reducing from their projection of short interest from 122% to 113% (a day later on Friday) to 55% on Sunday (while markets were closed therefore in my estimation using the same data set that calculated 113%), which many found to be suspicious. Later it was found that this new number was calculated using the same data set that yielded 122% short interest percentage, but with the significant difference of adding synthetic long shares into the short float equation which is against standard practice.
For a more detailed breakdown a user here pasted a good analysis of how those numbers were reached https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/laoaru/read_this_they_are_screwed_numbers_dont_lie/
**
Excerpt:
The real short % according to S3's data is 122%. However, their 55% figure is technically not a lie, but extremely misleading. I will explain everything.
Here is what they did:Sources (S3 head):https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355990194575564801?s=19 https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1356004816414269448 https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355969693841051650
S3 head is redefining share float to include shares that don't exist in order to be able to say shorted % of float is lower.
it reduces the traditional SI % Float, Instead of Shares Shorted/Float our calc is Shares Shorted/ (Float + Shares Shorted)
So, by this definition, if a stock is shorted 400% of existing shares (total banana count borrowed and resold 4x) and total shares is 100, short % is calculated like this:400 shorts / (100 shares + 400 longs whose shares are borrowed) = 0.8That is, the normal way we define short % would say it's 400% shorted. S3's way says 80%.
Knowing this formula, we can work back to what S3 would have said the short % of float was using the normal definition of short % of float:55% short of float means for all existing shares + shorts (or, ont he other side of the trade "longs whose shares were borrowed away to short") is 55/45 as much as existing shares. Meaning, portion of shares short by the normal definition (% of existing bananas borrowed) is 55/45 = 1.22
That is, S3's data is telling them that after friday trading, GME is still 122% short.
**
Many have pointed out this could be manipulation on S3’s part. It’s interesting to note that as late as the Jan 29th, Ihor from S3 stated most GME shorts have not covered and net shares shorted hadn't moved much at all (https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355246955874701314). Initially on the 28th he claimed short interest float to be $122 (https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1354847896173240322). The next day he claimed short interest to be 113% (https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1355249817048522755) of float. 2 days later on Sunday, S3 released a report on the calculated short interest to be 55% (oddly their original announcement tweet appears deleted, but found this https://twitter.com/S3Partners/status/1356392101806800897), which was confusing to many as this was a big discrepancy in short percentage in a short time. It turned out this percentage was calculated by including synthetic longs into the equation which is a practice that is not standard, thereby yielding a lower short interest percentage of 55% which the media then bandied around before and during market open on Monday. Whether this involved collusion to harm the retail investor I cannot conclusively say as I don’t have the evidence to conclusively make that claim, but definitely something to consider along with all other data points.
With the possibility of Synthetic Long Shares being used in a fraudulent way, if you care about how this could play out if we force the issue, I would recommend you to follow instructions from this comment https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lcpwh0/how_gme_can_still_be_a_great_play/gm2tsnw/ and call or email Gamestop Investor Relations and ask them to call an emergency share holder meeting to save the company from bankruptcy, as calling this vote means calling shares back to owners eliminating all synthetic stock, and hence taking leverage away from short selling funds participating in fraudulent activity
If you'd like to read more into the subject here are more solid posts that are related to this subject that I recommend you check out:
https://old.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lalucf/i_suspect_the_hedgies_are_illegally_covering/
https://old.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l97ykd/the_real_reason_wall_street_is_terrified_of_the/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lanf94/gme_is_a_time_bomb_and_its_highlighting_a_severe/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lag1d3/why_gme_short_interest_appears_to_have_fallen/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l9rk78/sec_doj_60_minutes_public_data_suggests_massive/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/l9z88h/evidence_of_massive_naked_short_selling_fraud_in/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lbydkz/s3_partners_s3_si_of_float_metric_is_total/

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Faith, Conviction, Calculated Risk

Swimming In The Deep

$AMC is not $GME And Why Today Was A Victory & We Need To Prepare For The Real Fight On Monday (PART 2: The Plot Thickens - How To Spot Evidence Of Short Ladder Attacks And Stop Them)

Matched Betting Extra Place Horse Racing - January 21 Profits - £4,707 on top of Full Time Job

What is a ‘place’ in horse racing?

What is an ‘Extra Place’ in horse racing?

£500 for a rainy day- A Beginners Guide to Matched Betting

Hidden Proofs Of A Giant Race

GME DD: Float deep dive + MOASS speculations - Part 2

My goals from this DD post -

Short interest data analysis

Forgotten point 1: Float shrinks as shorts cover

Observations

Forgotten point 2: Absolute short interest vs (short interest / float) ratio as influencer on squeeze

Before recent events

After recent events

Observations

Speculations from above data

What I think happened

Speculations about what happened

What this means going forward

My personal stance and departing thoughts

18 months on...

Actual DD posted in r/options by u/sfjetsetter about how price dip is caused by paper hands OR it's being lowered through Hedge Fund Options trickery

exchange odds calculator video

exchange odds calculator top