I mean nowadays a lot of people get overwhelmed with those “play this game and win money” type of adds on their mobile and it’s definitely all scammy stuff, but the idea to scam people with it must’ve come from somewhere, right? Have there ever been games where you can actually walk out of with a profit?

[I know I said final edit, but I made a final final edit below, and preserved the original post at the bottom. I'm disorganized, sue me.] 2nd-to-FINAL EDIT: Toning down the Rhetoric. We need real data, can this be mathed out? I like that guys idea of a shareholder meeting. GET THESE FUCKS IN JAIL. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
ALLEGATION: SECURITIES FRAUD, NAKED SHORTING COLLUSION BETWEEN MELVIN AND CITADEL
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Let's roleplay, retards. I'll play the billionaire fuckhead who wants to bankrupt Gamestop, because I think it'll be a fun story to jerk off to.
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I hatch a brilliant little plan to short them to death. Here's my plan.
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I collude with the company who invested in me, who processes my transactions, to make the world think I have 5 Million GME. This happens. I don't know how, but keep going with me.
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So now, all I have to do, is NEVER let one of these specific 5 million GME shares out of my account, or the jig is up. They'd be caught as a FAIL TO DELIVER if someone ever got their hands on one. So how do I never sell one of these? Shorting!
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But no no guys... not just regular shorting. We... we would short. EVERY. TRANSACTION. EVEN THE ONES THAT LOSE US MONEY. It's more important and valuable to me to pay for a clean share off the market to boomerang back, than it is to release one of my POISON SHARES into the market and get found out. Luckily, I know a clearinghouse that sits in front of all my transactions, and can help with this little bit of intercepting magic.
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So, we do this for a while. Hey, wait, a big order came in, there wasn't enough float in the pool to boomerang clean shares, oh shit, we let a couple go. Well, let's wait and see what happens.
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< INSERT LINK HERE TO THE FAIL-TO-DELIVERS ON GME SECURITY OVER TIME > https://i.redd.it/1wpfodbyb6f61.png
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Oh, shit. Things are warming up. People think Gamestop might really come back. If there's a lot of trading, they might've found out about my 5 million FAKE POISON shares, when the clearinghouse comes to deduct it from my account.
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Oh, shit. It happened. A lot. Look at those fail to delivers. They're everywhere on $GME, and only on GME.
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The jig is up.
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I don't want to get caught, so I hit my "omfg algorithm" button, that will liquidate and put any asset in my entire portfolio in front of those buy orders for GME. I know, the redditors are idiots, so I'll HEDGE THIS POSITION with another profitable meme position.... like AMC.
They decided "FUCK IT" eventually, and traded in their FAKE SHARES for REAL MONEY at some point during this, and those are FOUND OUT WITH FAIL TO DELIVERS. THEY ARE SLIDING ALL THEIR ILL GOTTEN GME GAINS INTO OTHER STOCKS, PROBABLY THRU OTHER BROKERS, SO THEY CAN BERNIE MADOFF THIS BITCH AND RUN AWAY WITH ALL THE MONEY.
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THOSE ARE FAKE SHARES, "CREATED" BY CITADEL AS IF MELVIN OWNED THEM, AND ALWAYS FRONTED (SEE: LAUNDERED) CLEAN SHARES WHENEVER TRANSACTIONS WOULD HAVE COME IN FOR THEM. AND THERES WAY MORE THAN 5 MILLION AND ITS NOT JUST MIGHT NOT JUST BE GAMESTOP. [Edited, im retarded]
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Final final Edit/addendum [lol i know, i'm unorganized, shutup] 2/5/21 3:51pm EST: I am still here, I am still convinced, and I am still advocating. I however will not be posting here anymore. I am preserving it via an internet archive screenshot, and logging off for good.
The amount of ACTIVE disinformation is a data point. Look at the seemingly unrelated geopolitical panic boilling over among the rich and well connected specifically. Look at the people who have been victimized by this behavior in the past, finding their courage to speak up. Most of all, look at the data. Keep your head in the math and data. Create mathematical models of your own to represent the forces that YOU KNOW are in play, and come to your own conclusions.
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I spent the past 2 days kind of sweating a lot, and freaking out. Am I gonna die? They gonna put a hit out me? Am I in danger?
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NO. These are lazy fucking idiots. These guys' wives boyfreinds don't even wash their own fucking car.
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You don't have anything to fear. Their crimes are in the open, in daylight, with data. They committed them so nakedly, so lazily, so sloppily.... The data PROVING this has been in the open for what, like weeks? months? Think of the MILLION other securities they could have done this to instead of pushing that gamestop threshhold over 100%. These are just LAZY ENTITLED FUCKING CUNTS. They are willing to risk SYSTEMIC FINANCIAL SYSTEM COLLAPSE because they got too lazy to fucking copy paste their strategy on a new thing.
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And you know what I am? I am lazy too. And we're all sitting at home, being lazy, and we're gonna take your ILLEGALLY GOTTEN LAZY GAINS and put them to true good use.
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Cool, right?
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REDDITORS YOU MUST REALIZE, THAT THIS ALL CHANGED THURSDAY. A DYING RAT DOES NOT LAY DOWN TO DIE, AND THE DEATHBLOW WAS NOT DEALT THURSDAY.
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They are now actively ponzi scheming. You can again, see it in the trends. Its hydraulic flow of capital, across securities, to protect their one, poisoned, fake stance. This is MASSIVELY ILLEGAL to cover with borrowed. I didnt know what the fuck a ponzi scheme even WAS until I started trying to find a way to explain my stupid fucking waterfall analogy.
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Do you know why % held by institutions was above 100% for way too fucking explainably long? Those were the fake shares that citadel and melvin colluded to make. Melvin as a short seller, wouldnt look suspicious if the "institutional % held" by them was high.
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Do you know why % of float went down, that wierd S3 data anomaly? They started selling. Their. Fake. Shares.
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Do you know why we see lots of fail to delivers occurring? Those are those fake shares showing up in the drains.
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It's been a ponzi scheme all along. Just, it was being held WITHIN the single GME security. But, on thursday, they got caught. The financial world was either sleeping on it, or in on it, and wasnt prepared for them to get caught. Either way really doesn't matter right now, as the result was: RAISE THE MARGINS. LET THEM DIE. ...... oh also we mightve just fucked a bunch of smaller brokers.... like, a lot of them, by essentially making them have to have 10x more operating capital than they do..... well.... whatever, everyone sees the writing on the wall. If they believe, they'll raise some more capital. Please correlate this with the actual facts surrounding robinhood, 212, etc halt of trading. They DID fuck up too with their reaction, I am not excusing them. But look at the actual events.
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So they were caught. Nothing to do now, but to sell their fake shares. They've been doubling down on shorts this whole time since probably $20, all the while leaking faked shares into the pool. We all hold fake shares. There's no way of knowing anymore. The well is poisoned.
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We need to force a shareholder vote now, to get a tally. We need to force the SEC to do their goddamn jobs and fast, go freeze these criminals assets COMPLETELY, NOT THE GME SECURITY ALONE, because they are GETTING AWAY WITH IT via a naked ponzi scheme.
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The bomb is no longer contained within GME. They detonated their bomb on thursday, when they got CAUGHT, and decided that its jail no matter what, so they clicked the algorithm named "PONZI SCHEME" and fucking started making calls to drum up disinfo. Do you understand the criminal motive, of a 100% defeated foe (fake shares revealed), to do another criminal self preserving move (ponzi)?
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Up until Thursday they were using legal mechanisms to push back from being found out. When they got caught, they switched to illegal ponzi mechanisms. I'm a fucking ape and I can understand this criminal motive.
When the ponzi algorithm runs out, you are left with a stock GME that has a market cap representing $0 of melvins dollars, and a market cap of whatever other securities they are funneling their money into, representing $all of melvins dollars. Do you notice how, if melvin also held some sort of position in those other companies, melvin still has his dollars? And do you notice how there are exactly $0 of melvins money to squeeze out of GME when the correction actually occurs? P O N Z I
THEY WILL WIN, unless the REGULATORS COME AND DO THEIR GODDAMN JOB. And remember, the villians here have already released the poison into the well. It's gonna be very very very VERY hard to unpoison this shit. Do the regulators just say that, hey, that amount of lead in your drinking water is fine now?
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Let's see whose side they are really on.
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I've forwarded it to a diverse range of tiplines and media outlets. I am not enough. One retards voice will never be heard. Apes strong together. APES STRONG TOGETHER.
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Only the light of day will reveal all these SQUIRMING, MISINFORMING, MONSTERS hiding in our system. The data is there. Only those who DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT, are not seeing it. They are the paper handed bitches, who are barking as loud as they can BECAUSE THEIR JAW IS MADE OF STYROFOAM AND FAKE SHARES.
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You and I are all 2am_spaghetti, because 2am_spaghetti is just some fucking nerd who knows how to game systems (IN VIDEO GAMES) and can see some fucking patterns in this system. These monsters are game theorying real life, and they just lost. But rather than pay the cost, they are literally trying to hit reset by doing a manuever that has historically nuked the entire system, counting that the lay person doesn't know enough. Because it worked in '08. And who knows how many other times.
Make your own judgement, apes.
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Original post below.
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please help me, I'm resorting to just sending people reddit DMs, I am 110% certain of this, you can call me the time traveler
Their stoploss algorithm is modeled after HYDRAULICS across their whole portfolio. The squeeze has a pressure relief valve, and this is it.
https://imgur.com/MHmpwVe Edit: maybe a better explanation? :: https://imgur.com/gallery/5t9QgEc
Imagine using your car jack while the handle is twisted open. No pressure, fluid is just movin around. Even in this state, sometimes if you pump it fast enough you can see little jumps of life. The real solution though, is to Tighten it up, now we have a pressurized system.
Visualize their algorithm as a cascading waterfall, pouring portfolio-wide capital to the very bottom until there is literally nothing left and in which case it EXPLODES. We hit that thursday with those reports of 5k bids being filled right before everything shut down. But in this waterfall, the only stock they HAVE to defend is GME. They already are out of water, but theyve erected an insanely big waterfall that hides where they are out of water up top, and fills it in by the time its time to fulfill at the bottom buy. The hole has ALWAYS been there the moment they overshorted, and it remains. Its why they didnt bail at 20, or 80, or 115. THEY CAN'T AS LONG AS THOSE NAKED SHORT VOLUME > FLOAT. This was the math all along.
This also explains the Fail to delivers on GME, the clearinghouses are finding the fake shares in the drains while Melvin tries to chlorine this pool.
TLDR: The mathematical strategy of the situation is to reduce the blue area's leverage (multiplicative), and grow the maximum red force (additive).
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We have to reduce blue to win, or come up with an incredible amount of red, quickly. If we don't, all of yellows dollars will flow to the other meme stocks / negatively correlated stocks and THERE WILL BE LESS TENDIES == LESS TOP END OF SQUEEZE. IN FACT, GME TENDIES ARE BASICALLY BEING GIVEN TO THE OTHER STOCKS, IN AN EFFORT TO MAKE COSTS LOW, SO THE COST OF COVERING THOSE FAIL TO DELIVERS IS MANAGEABLE.
Melvin (or to be fair, whoever originally authored and held the naked short shares) is using TIME as their ally - THE FAIL TO DELIVERS == THE AMOUNT OF NAKED SHORT STOCK, and IF THEY RUN OUT THE CLOCK, ALL OF THEIR FAKE STOCK GETS CAUGHT IN THE DRAINS AND IS PAID FOR BY WHOEVER PAYS FOR THAT SHIT AND THEY DO NOT GO TO JAIL
This theory connects the dots.
Please if you have an in with wsb mods etc, forward them this to read. Ive been trying via modmail, posts, everything. Anyone with a platform needs to know this. Since all the memes are booming like an ETF, the profits on the others are being just siphoned into GME which holds their ultimate loss - the naked shorts that we KNOW they have on GME.
EDIT2: omg melvin is so sinister. They knew redditors would bandwagon. They are using our own UNFOCUSED HYPE against us to prop up GME. PLEASE HELP ME BE A MEGAPHONE, WE HAVE TO GET THE WORD OUT.
EDIT: 💎💎🙌🏼🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

When I turned 18, there was a casino about 2 hours away on a reservation that I could get into. We'd get paid on Friday night, head to the gas station near us that would cash a paycheck, pile into my crappy little Ford, then make the drive. We'd get there a little before midnight and everyone had their own game.
The second time we went, one of my friends was hypnotized by the craps table. There were 16 players standing around this sea of green, and every minute or so, you could hear them screaming at the top of their lungs like they just won a million dollars. On the way home that night, I taught him everything I learned from books I'd read about the different bets. "Smart" bets where the house edge was only 1.4%, all the way down to the risky ones where the house edge was over 10% (meaning that for every $100 wagered, you should expect to lose $10).
The next time we went, we hung around the table, trying to figure out the right way to bet. It seemed a little complicated, so we tried other games. At the end of the night, I had the last $10 and he asked if he could borrow it to go place a bet. I handed it over, then went to the bathroom in preparation for the ride home. When I finally found him again, he had a stack of chips in front of him. He had been gone for about 5 minutes and already turned $10 into a few hundred. Well, if you can turn 10 into 100, you can turn 100 into 1,000 just as easily. We left empty handed that night, but I'll never forget the rush.
I loved blackjack. I learned how to play at an early age from my uncle, who would always cheat and take my money. He'd say "I just taught you a very valuable lesson." He actually taught me two: 1) if you play against a casino, you may have a good night and win thousands of dollars, but if you keep going back, you'll eventually have nothing left. 2) My uncle was a scumbag who continually cheated and took my money, then told the family I was a poor sport and they couldn't understand why I hated doing anything with him. One of my earliest memories at the casino was running $100 at the blackjack table into $3000, which is more than I made in a month of bussing tables. I went home, paid my rent and blew the rest on useless things I can't even remember.
What does any of this have to do with $GME? Well I'm still chasing the same high as I was when I was 18. I don't go to the casino anymore, but I've got something even better on my computer. I bought $2k worth of weeklies on Jan 25. Before everything crashed, they were worth over $100k, more than enough to fix most of the problems I've caused in my life. BUT, I was still standing around that craps table. The roller had just made his 30th point in a row, $GME was on fire and couldn't possibly roll a 7! I put my 2k back in my pocket and shoved the rest on the pass line. A few minutes later, the croupier inevitably yells "7 out!" and just like that, I'm back to nothing.
Now I do what every moron around the table does. You reach back into your pocket, pull out the 2k and make a deal with your maker. "Just let it happen one more time. I won't be greedy THIS time and I'll stop when I hit 50k." I stop looking at the smart bets and start eyeing the center of the table, where hard ways are paying 10:1. Yeah, that'll be how I get back to 50k. A couple of those in a row and I can put a down payment on a house. 5 minutes later, I'm on my way out to the car and I feel like I've been punched in the gut. Again.
Every one of you in this subreddit is another person sitting at the casino. Everyone has their game. The people holding $GME stonks right now? You're playing baccarat. If you've never heard of it, it's what James Bond plays in the old movies. It's about the most boring thing you can do. Two hands are dealt and you're betting on which one wins before anything happens. There's no actual skill and it's the same thing as betting heads or tails, while losing 1% of your bet every time.
The people who cashed out and picked something else like $AMC or $BB? Those are the slot players. You had a big hit and now you're going to switch machines because the other ones are "due". You're looking for the exact same magic, thinking there was something smart in your play, when it was really just dumb luck in timing.
The people saying "If Daddy Elon or Cowboy Cuban gets in, we can trigger a squeeze!" You're the guy who spent too much money in the first 20 minutes of the trip and now you're begging everyone else for a loan.
Tldr: Nothing is happening with $GME. Stop saying "tomorrow is the day." Billionaires are not coming to bail you out. If institutional investors come in, they're waiting for this constant downhill slide to end at where the stock belongs, probably around $20. You can't trigger shit by holding. The HFs will outlast you.
Edit: Screenshots from the worst 40 minutes of my financial life https://imgur.com/a/MlTRJmx
Edit 2: JFC, some of you are takin WSB way too seriously. You should not be using reddit for DD. Also, this is not financial advice. Don't take financial advice from someone who tells you stories about chasing highs at casinos.
Edit 3: This is WSB, my dudes. I'm glad most of you were entertained by my story. For the few of you who got that worked up by a random stranger on the internet telling you that he's a degenerate, you may actually have a problem. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/

OG poster u/PlayFree_Bird
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Alright, I hate to say it, but there is some less-than-ideal information circulating out there, particularly about the famed "gamma squeeze" we hear so much about these days. I'll get to that. Let's go through the questions you simpletons want to know, as explained by a mouth-breathing fool who has managed to convince you he knows what he's talking about:

Did we win today? Is it endgame?

Kind of. Be patient.

In what ways did we win?

First, there was the obvious victory of bouncing back 65% today after the worst market manipulation I've ever witnessed. We kept the upward momentum going.
Secondly, every day you finish higher is another day the shorts are underwater. If you are perpetually going up, the walls are closing in on them.
Finally, a lot of put options expired worthless today while a number of call options expired in-the-money. It's always good to make put holders lose money because you drain the bank accounts of people betting against you.

Yes! Call options! We finished above $320 and get a gamma squeeze to infinity now, right?

No. That's not how this works. Too many people don't quite understand what a gamma squeeze is.
A gamma squeeze happens when call option sellers (or "writers") have to hedge their naked calls by buying stocks. They do this because the risk of selling naked calls is theoretically infinite if they don't. It's called delta hedging. You don't need to know all the fancy math ("delta" and "gamma" are those greek symbols for nerds), just understand this: as it becomes more probable that the call option you sold will cost you money, you hedge more.
This is a continuous PROCESS, not a discreet moment in time. The market makers and hedge funds and institutions selling you calls don't wake up on Friday morning and think, "Shit! I think I'm going to lose everything if these stocks keep going up! I have to BUY NOW!!!" That would be stupid. They are hedging all the way up. I guarantee you that most of the calls that were exercised at $320 today were already covered. They already went out and bought those shares and most of the upwards pressure that places on the market is priced in already.

So, no gamma squeeze?

Probably not significantly. They're not going to be madly rushing out on Monday to buy shit they already own for the most part.

Why are people talking about a gamma squeeze at $320, then?

We did have a gamma squeeze at $320. On Wednesday, two days ago. The price exceeded $320 (then the highest strike price on the books) and promptly surged to $371 before coming back down to around $320. That's what a gamma squeeze is: a frenzied rush by call sellers to cover calls.
It typically happens BEFORE expiration, not after. It's rare for market makers to get so caught with their pants down that they have to get squeezed for the previous week's calls on a Monday. I don't know where this idea of a gamma squeeze now at $320 is coming from.

This hurts my feelings. So, what's so great about the $320 threshold, anyway? Did it matter at all?

It's still a good thing. There may have been a few lingering naked calls to cover. And, like I said, it's always good to make put-holders lose money because stick it to the 🌈🐻, that's why.
$320 was a significant level because there were quite a few open call options at that strike. You can see the entire option chain here: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/gme/option-chain
Go through and count up all the January 29th options that were in-the-money at today's close. I think maybe 90,000 or something? Screw it, I didn't count. Somebody who can figure out how to use a calculator can add those up. Multiply that number by 100 (because option contracts are sold in groups of 100) and that's how many shares need to change hands thanks to contracts expiring ITM.
It may be that with so many shares needing to change hands and so little liquidity in this market, some weird things could happen.

What weird things?

Well, if nothing else, a lot of shares will need to be tied up as the process of settling calls plays out.
You have to remember that when somebody says they own shares, they don't necessarily own own the shares right at that moment.
When you press "buy" on your phone and it says your order was filled, that doesn't mean that the process happens instantaneously. For all intents and purposes as far as you are concerned, sure, the process looks instant. However, there's a lot of messy stuff that happens on the back-end of the system between the brokers and the clearing houses. The clearing houses are where the daily tab gets settled: who owes whom and what they owe and at what price, etc.
Monday could be interesting as this tab for millions of stocks (in a market with only 50-something million shares actively circulating) gets settled. It might not be crazy, but it could. We'll see.
Michael Burry (Christian Bale, for all you noobs) seems to think that all the naked short-selling above the float will result in a shit-storm when people actually go to get their shares back: https://twitter.com/michaeljburry/status/1355221824661983233
Liquidity crunch + lots of shares being moved around + nobody knows where they all are currently = potential nightmare for Wall Street.

I just want my infinite short squeeze and my tendies, so how do we get the MOASS?

Something needs to be the catalyst. Something needs to get the short sellers really underwater, so much so that they are drowning. That's why there's been so much hype about gamma squeezes; the gamma and short squeezes are two separate things, but the gamma squeezing has been really good to us lately. It has triggered some crazy upwards price movements. I still think one was about to happen yesterday morning that would have triggered the squeeze-pocalypse, the Mother of All Short Squeezes. The bastards at the brokerages (acting with and for the clearing houses), took your tendies. It's criminal what played out.
I actually think a gamma squeeze was possible today, as well, as the price shot up to $378 around noon. If it had gotten to $400, it stood a very good chance of running up to $500, which would have caused a run up to $650 and beyond. Then Robinhood said, "Oh, actually, you plebs cannot buy 5 shares anymore, only 2 now." The price came back down again.
Oddly enough, the S&P500 sold off over a full percentage point (that's a lot of money) right after GME hit that $378 peak. Do you think this doesn't freak the finance world out? They know a gamma squeeze is like the fuse on a firework. It consumes itself until it ignites the rocket.

How will Wall Street defend themselves?

They will try to keep snipping the fuse. That's what all these restrictions on brokerages are about. They are trying to defuse the situation slowly because having it all get sorted out quickly and frantically is no good for them.
We need enough upwards price momentum that those option chains keep going up and up and feeding on themselves. They need to become a self-sustaining chain reaction, fed by hedging pressure. And you need to put pressure on your elected representatives to tell them that Wall Street cannot be allowed to just shut down the game when they are losing. I hate to tell you this, but the squeeze has so far been stopped purely by the losers declaring that it will not happen at any cost. It's bullshit. Eat the rich. But there it is.

Do you feel you've used the word "squeeze" too much by now?

Yes. I've been writing and looking at the word "squeeze" so much that it is starting to lose its meaning. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeeeeeze.
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EDIT:
TL;DR Shares most likely already bought so no gamma squeeze, doesn't matter anyway 🙌💎🚀 🙌💎🚀 🙌💎🚀
EDIT 2:
STOP THANKING ME FOR THIS POST, RETARDS! Literally the first sentence is me giving credit to the original poster, THANK HIM.

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 (average ~$67--I have to admit, the drop today was too tasty so my cost basis went up from yesterday)/share with my later buys averaged in), and I'm using money I can absolutely lose. My capital at risk and tolerance for risk generally is likely substantially different than yours. In this post I will go a little further and speculate more than I'd normally do in a post due to the questions I've been getting, so fair warning, some of it might be very wrong. I suspect we'll learn some of the truth years from now when some investigative journalist writes a book about it.
Thank you everyone for the comments and questions on the first and second post on this topic.
Today was a study in the power of fear, courage, and the levers you can pull when you wield billions of dollars...
Woops, excuse me. I'm sorry hedge fund guys... I meant trillions of dollars--I just briefly forget you control not just your own but a lot of other peoples' money too for a moment there.
Also, for people still trading this on market-based rationale (as I am), it was a good day to measure the conviction behind your thesis. I like to think I have conviction, but in case you are somehow not yet familiar with the legend of DFV, you need to see these posts (fair warning, nsfw, and some may be offended/triggered by the crude language). The last two posts might be impressive, but you should follow it in chronological order and pay attention to the evolution of sentiment in the comments to experience true enlightenment.
Anyway, I apologize, but this post will be very long--there's just a lot to unpack.

Pre-Market

Disclaimer: given yesterday's pre-market action I didn't even pay attention to the screen until near retail pre-market. I'm less confident in my ability to read what's going on in a historical chart vs the feel I get watching live, but I'll try.
Early in the pre-market it looks to me like some momentum traders are taking profit, discounting the probability that the short-side will give them a deep discount later, which you can reasonably assume given the strategy they ran yesterday. If they're right they can sell some small volume into the pre-market top, wait for the hedge funds try to run the price back down, and then lever up the gains even higher buying the dip. Buy-side here look to me like people FOMOing and YOLOing in at any price to grab their slice of gainz, or what looks to be market history in the making. No way are short-side hedge funds trying to cover anything at these prices.
Mark Cuban--well said! Free markets baby!
Mohamed El-Erian is money in the bank as always. "upgrade in quality" on the pandemic drop was the best, clearest actionable call while most were at peak panic, and boy did it print. Your identifying the bubble as the excessive short (vs blaming retail activity) is money yet again. Also, The PAIN TRADE (sorry, later interview segment I only have on DVR, couldn't find on youtube--maybe someone else can)!
The short attack starts, but I'm hoping no one was panicking this time--we've seen it before. Looks like the momentum guys are minting money buying the double dip into market open.
CNBC, please get a good market technician to explain the market action. Buy-side dominance, sell-side share availability evaporating into nothing (look at day-by-day volume last few days), this thing is now at runaway supercritical mass. There is no changing the trajectory unless you can change the very fabric of the market and the rules behind it (woops, I guess I should have knocked on wood there).
If you know the mechanics, what's happening in the market with GME is not mysterious AT ALL. I feel like you guys are trying to scare retail out early "for their own good" (with all sincerity, to your credit) rather than explain what's happening. Possibly you also fear that explaining it would equate to enabling/encouraging people to keep trying to do it inappropriately (possibly fair point, but at least come out and say that if that's the case). Outside the market, however...wow.

You Thought Yesterday Was Fear? THIS is Fear!

Ok short-side people, my hat is off to you. Just when I thought shouting fire in a locked theater was fear mongering poetry in motion, you went and took it to 11. What's even better? Yelling fire in a theater with only one exit. That way people can cause the financial equivalent of stampede casualties. Absolutely brilliant.
Robin Hood disables buying of GME, AMC, and a few of the other WSB favorites. Other brokerages do the same. Even for people on 0% margin. Man, and here I thought I had seen it all yesterday.
Side note: I will give a shout out to TD Ameritrade. You guys got erroneously lumped together with RH during an early CNBC segment, but you telegraphed the volatility risk management changes and gradually ramped up margin requirements over the past week. No one on your platform should have been surprised if they were paying attention. And you didn't stop anyone from trading their own money at any point in time. My account balance thanks you. I heard others may have had problems, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given the DDOS attacks that were flyiing around
Robin Hood. Seriously WTF. I'm sure it was TOTALLY coincidence that your big announcements happen almost precisely when what has to be one of the best and most aggressive short ladder attacks of all time starts painting the tape, what looked like a DDOS attack on Reddit's CDN infrastructure (pretty certain it was the CDN because other stuff got taken out at the same time too), and a flood of bots hit social media (ok, short-side, this last one is getting old).
Taking out a large-scale cloud CDN is real big boy stuff though, so I wouldn't entirely rule out nation state type action--those guys are good at sniffing out opportunities to foment social unrest.
Anyway, at this point, as the market dives, I have to admit I was worried for a moment. Not that somehow the short-side would win (hah! the long-side whales in the pond know what's up), but that a lot of retail would get hurt in the action. That concern subsided quite a bit on the third halt on that slide. But first...
A side lesson on market orders
Someone printed bonus bank big time (and someone lost--I feel your pain, whoever you are).
During the face-ripping volatility my play money account briefly ascended to rarified heights of 7 figures. It took me a second to realize it, then another second to process it. Then, as soon as it clicked, that one, glorious moment in time was gone.
What happened?
During the insane chop of the short ladder attack, someone decided to sweep the 29 Jan 21 115 Call contracts, but they couldn't get a grip on the price, which was going coast to coast as IV blew up and the price was being slammed around. So whoever was trying to buy said "F it, MARKET ORDER" (i.e. buy up to $X,XXX,XXX worth of contracts at any price). This is referred to as a sweep if funded to buy all/most of the contracts on offer (HFT shops snipe every contract at each specific price with a shotgun of limit orders, which is far safer, but something only near-market compute resources can do really well). For retail, or old-tech pros, if you want all the contracts quickly, you drop a market order loaded with big bucks and see what you get... BUT, some clever shark had contracts available for the reasonable sum of... $4,400, or something around that. I was too stunned to grab a screencap. The buy market order swept the book clean and ran right into that glorious, nigh-obscene backstop limit. So someone got nearly $440,000 PER CONTRACT that was, at the time theoretically priced at around $15,000. $425,000 loss... PER CONTRACT. Maybe I'm not giving the buyer enough credit.. you can get sniped like that even if you try to do a safety check of the order book first, but, especially in low liquidity environments, if a HFT can peak into your order flow (or maybe just observes a high volume of sweeps occurring), they can end up front running your sweep, pick off the reasonable contracts, and slam a ridiculous limit sell order into place before your order makes it to the exchange. Either way, I hope that sweep wasn't loaded for bear into the millions. If so... OUCH. Someone got cleaned out.
So, the lesson here folks... in a super high volatility, low-liquidity market, a market order will just run up the ladder into the first sell order it can find, and some very brutal people will put limit sells like that out there just in case they hit the jackpot. And someone did. If you're on the winning side, great. It can basically bankrupt you if you're on the losing side. My recommendation: Just don't try it. I wouldn't be surprised if really shady shenanigans were involved in this, but no way to know (normally that's crazy-type talk, but after today....peeking at order flow and sniping sweeps is one of the fastest, most financially devastating ways to bleed big long-side players, just sayin').
edit *so while I was too busy trying not to spit out my coffee to grab a screenshot, piddlesthethug was faster on the draw and captured this: https://imgur.com/gallery/RI1WOuu
Ok, so I guess my in-the-moment mental math was off by about 10%. Man, that hurts just thinking about the guy who lost on that trade.*
Back to the market action..

A Ray of Light Through the Darkness

So I was worried watching the crazy downward movement for two different reasons.
On the one hand, I was worried the momentum pros would get the best discounts on the dip (I'll admit, I FOMO'd in too early, unnecessarily raising my cost basis).
On the other hand, I was worried for the retail people on Robin Hood who might be bailing out into incredibly steep losses because they had only two options: Watch the slide, or bail. All while dealing with what looked to me like a broad-based cloud CDN outage as they tried to get info from WSB HQ, and wondering if the insta-flood of bot messages were actually real people this time, and that everyone else was bailing on them to leave them holding the bag.
But I saw the retail flag flying high on the 3rd market halt (IIRC), and I knew most would be ok. What did I see, you ask? Why, the glorious $211.00 / $5,000 bid/ask spread. WSB Reddit is down? Those crazy mofos give you the finger right on the ticker tape. I've been asked many times in the last few hours about why I was so sure shorts weren't covering on the down move. THIS is how I knew. For sure. It's in the market data itself.
edit So, there's feedback in the comments that this is likely more of a technical glitch. Man, at least it was hilarious in the moment. But also now I know maybe not to trust price updates when the spread between orders being posted is so wide. Maybe a technical limitation of TOS
I'll admit, I tried to one-up those bros with a 4206.90 limit sell order, but it never made it through. I'm impressed that the HFT guys at the hedge fund must have realized really quickly what a morale booster that kind of thing would have been, and kept a lower backstop ask in place almost continuously from then on I'm sure others tried the same thing. Occasionally $1,000 and other high-dollar asks would peak through from time to time from then on, which told me the long-side HFTs were probably successfully sniping the backstops regularly.
So, translating for those of you who found that confusing. First, such a high ask is basically a FU to the short-side (who, as you remember, need to eventually buy shares to cover their short positions). More importantly, as an indicator of retail sentiment, it meant that NO ONE ELSE WAS TRYING TO SELL AT ANY PRICE LOWER THAN $5,000. Absolutely no one was bailing out.
I laughed for a minute, then started getting a little worried. Holy cow.. NO retail selling into the fear? How are they resisting that kind of price move??
The answer, as we all know now... they weren't afraid... they weren't even worried. They were F*CKING PISSED.
Meanwhile the momentum guys and long-side HFTs keep gobbling up the generously donated shares that the short-side are plowing into their ladder attack. Lots of HFT duels going on as long-side HFTs try to intercept shares meant to travel between short-side HFT accounts for their ladder. You can tell when you see prices like $227.0001 constantly flying across the tape. Retail can't even attempt to enter an order like that--those are for the big boys with privileged low-latency access.
The fact that you can even see that on the tape with human eyes is really bad for the short-side people.
Why, you ask? Because it means liquidity is drying up, and fast.

The Liquidity Tide is Flowing Out Quickly. Who's Naked (short)?

Market technicals time. I still wish this sub would allow pictures so I could throw up a chart, but I guess a table will do fine.
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Date	Volume	Price at US Market Close
Friday, 1/22/21	197,157,196	$65.01
Monday, 1/25/21	177,874,00	$76.79
Tuesday, 1/26/21	178,587,974	$147.98
Wednesday, 1/27/21	93,396,666	$347.51
Thursday, 1/28/21	58,815,805	$193.60

What do I see? I see the shares available to trade dropping so fast that all the near-exchange compute power in the world won't let the short-side HFTs maintain order flow volume for their attacks. Many retail people asking me questions thought today was the heaviest trading. Nope--it was just the craziest.
What about the price dropping on Thursday? Is that a sign that the short-side pulled a miracle out and pushed price down against a parabolic move on even less volume than Wednesday? Is the long side running out of capital?
Nope. It means the short-side hedge funds are just about finished.
But wait, I thought the price needed to be higher for them to be taken out? How is it that price being lower is bad for them? Won't that allow them to cover at a lower price?
No, the volume is so low that they can't cover any meaningful fraction of their position without spiking the price parabolic almost instantly. Just not enough shares on offer at reasonable prices (especially when WSB keeps flashing you 6942.00s).
It's true, a higher price hurts, but the interest charge for one more day is just noise at this point. The only tick that will REALLY count is the last tick of trading on Friday.
In the meantime, the price drop (and watching the sparring in real time) tells me that the long-side whales and their HFT quants are so certain of the squeeze that they're no longer worried AT ALL about whether it will happen, and they aren't even worried at all about retail morale to help carry the water anymore.
Instead, they're now really, really worried about how CHEAPLY they can make it happen.
They are wondering if they can't edge out just a sliver more alpha out of what will already be a blow-out trade for the history books (probably). You see, to make it happen they just have to keep hoovering up shares. It doesn't matter what those shares cost. If you're certain that the squeeze is now locked in, why push the price up and pay more than you have to? Just keep pressing hard enough to force short-side to keep sending those tasty shares your way, but not so much you move the price. Short-side realizes this and doesn't try to drive price down too aggressively. They can't afford to let price run away, so they have to keep some pressure on at the lowest volume they can manage, but they don't want to push down too hard and give the long-side HFTs too deep of a discount and bleed their ammo out even faster. That dynamic keeps price within a narrow (for GME today, anyway) trading range for the rest of the day into the close.
Good plan guys, but those after market people are pushing the price up again. Damnit WSB bros and Euros, you're costing those poor long-side whales their extra 0.0000001% of alpha on this trade just so you can run up your green rockets... See, that's the kind of nonsense that just validates Lee Cooperman's concerns.
On a totally unrelated note, I have to say that I appreciate the shift in CNBC's reporting. Much more thoughtful and informed. Just please get a good market technician in there who will be willing to talk about what is going on under the hood if possible. A lot of people watching on the sidelines are far more terrified than they need to be because it all looks random to them. And they're worried that you guys look confused and worried--and if the experts on the news are worried....??!
You should be able to find one who has access to the really good data that we retailers can only guess at, who can explain it to us unwashed masses.

Ok, So.. Questions

There is no market justification for this. How can you tell me is this fundamentally sound and not just straight throwing money away irresponsibly?? (side note: not that that should matter--if you want to throw your money away why shouldn't you be allowed to?)
We're not trading in your securities pricing model. This isn't irrational just because your model says long and short positions are the same thing. The model is not a real market. There is asymmetrical counterparty risk here given the shorts are on the hook for all the money they have, and possibly all the money their brokers have, and possibly anyone with exposure to the broker too! You may want people to trade by the rules you want them to follow. But the rest of us trade in the real market as it is actually implemented. Remember? That's what you tell the retailers who take their accounts to zero. Remember what you told the KBIO short-squeezed people? They had fair warning that short positions carry infinite risk, including more than your initial investment. You guys know this. It's literally part of your job to know this.
But-but-the systemic risk!! This is Madness!
...Madness?
THIS. IS. THE MARKET!!! *Retail kicks the short-side hedge funds down an infinity loss black hole\*.
Ok, seriously though, that is actually a fundamentally sound, and properly profit-driven answer at least as justifiable as the hedge funds' justification for going >100% of float short. If they can be allowed to gamble INFINITE LOSSES because they expect to make profit on the possibility the company goes bankrupt, can't others do the inverse on the possibility the company I don't know.. doesn't go bankrupt and gets a better strategy from the team that created what is now a $43bn market cap company (CHWY) that does exactly some of the things GME needs to do (digital revenue growth) maybe? I mean, I first bought in on that fundamental value thesis in the 30s and then upped my cost basis given the asymmetry of risk in the technical analysis as an obvious no-brainer momentum trade. The squeeze is just, as WSB people might say, tendies raining down from on high as an added bonus.
I get that you disagree on the fundamental viability of GME. Great. Isn't that what makes a market?
Regarding the consequences of a squeeze, in practice my expectation was maybe at worst some kind of ex-market settlement after liquidation of the funds with exposure to keep things nice and orderly for the rest of the market. I mean, they handled the VW thing somehow right? I see now that I just underestimated elite hedge fund managers though--those guys are so hardcore (I'll explain why I think so a bit lower down).
If hedge fund people are so hardcore, how did the retail long side ever have a chance of winning this squeeze trade they're talking about?
Because it's an asymmetrical battle once you have short interest cornered. And the risk is also crazily asymmetrical in favor of the long side if short interest is what it is in GME. In fact, the hedge funds essentially cornered themselves without anyone even doing anything. They just dug themselves right in there. Kind of impressive really, in a weird way.
What does the short side need to cover? They need the price to be low, and they need to buy shares.
How does price move lower? You have to push share volume such that supply overwhelms demand and price therefore goes down (man, I knew econ 101 would come in handy someday).
But wait... if you have to sell shares to push the price down.. won't you just undo all your work when you have to buy it back to actually cover?
The trick is you have to push price down so hard, so fast, so unpredictably, that you SCARE OTHER PEOPLE into selling their shares too, because they're scared of taking losses. Their sales help push the price down for free! and then you scoop them up at discount price! Also, there are ways to make people scared other than price movement and fear of losses, when you get right down to it. So, you know, you just need to get really, really, really good at making people scared. Remember to add a line item to your budget to make sure you can really do it right.
On the other hand..
What does the long side need to do? They need to own as much of the shares as they can get their hands on. And then they need to hold on to them. They can't be weak hands either. They need to be hands that will hold even under the most intense heat of battle, and the immense pressure of mind-numbing fear... they need to be as if they were made of... diamond... (oh wow, maybe those WSB people kind of have a point here).
Why does this matter? Because at some point the sell side will eventually run out of shares to borrow. They simply won't be there, because they'll be safely tucked away in the long-side's accounts. Once you run out of shares to borrow and sell, you have no way to move the price anymore. You can't just drop a fat stack--excuse me, I mean suitcase (we're talking hedge fund money here after all)--of Benjamins on the ticker tape directly. Only shares. No more shares, no way to have any direct effect on the price whatsoever.
Ok, doesn't that just mean trading stops? Can't you just out-wait the long side then?
Well, you could.. until someone on the long side puts 1 share up on a 69420 ask, and an even crazier person actually buys at that price on the last tick on a Friday. Let's just say it gets really bad at that point.
Ok.. but how do the retail people actually get paid?
Well, to be quite honest, it's entirely up to each of them individually. You've seen the volumes being thrown around the past week+. I guarantee you every single retailer out there could have printed money multiple times trading that flow. If they choose to, and time it well. Or they could lose it all--this is the market. Some of them apparently seem to have some plan, or an implicit trust in certain individuals to help them know when to punch out. Maybe it works out, but maybe not. There will be financial casualties on the field for sure--this is the bare-knuckled capitalist jungle after all, remember? But everyone ponied up to the table with their own money somehow, so they all get to play in the big leagues just like everyone else. In theory, anyway.
And now, Probably the #1 question I've been asked on all of these posts has been: So what happens next? Do we get the infinity squeeze? Do the hedge funds go down?
Great questions. I don't know. No one does. That's what I've said every time, but I get that's a frustrating answer, so I'll write a bit more and speculate further. Please again understand these are my opinions with a degree of speculation I wouldn't normally put in a post.

The Market and the Economy. Main Street, Wall Street, and Washington

The pandemic has hurt so many people that it's hard to comprehend. Honestly, I don't even pretend to be able to. I have been crazy fortunate enough to almost not be affected at all. Honestly, it is a little unnerving to me how great the disconnect is between people who are doing fine (or better than fine, looking at my IRA) versus the people who are on the opposite side of the ever-widening divide that, let's be honest, has been growing wider since long before the pandemic.
People on the other side--who have been told they cannot work even if they want to, who wonder if congress will get it together to at least keep them from getting thrown out of their house if they have to keep taking one for the team for the good of all, are wondering if they're even living in the same reality.
Because all they see on the news each day is that the stock market is at record highs, or some amazing tech stocks have 10x'd in the last 6 months. How can that be happening during a pandemic? Because The Market is not The Economy. The Market looks forward to that brighter future that Economy types just need to wait for. Don't worry--it'll be here sometime before the end of the year. We think. We're making money on that assumption right now, anyway. Oh, by the way, if you're in The Market, you get to get richer as a minor, unearned side-effect of the solutions our governments have come up with to fight the pandemic.
Wow. That sounds amazing. How do I get to part of that world?
Retail fintech, baby. Physical assets like real estate might be a bit out of reach at the moment, but stocks will do. I can even buy fractional shares of BRK/A LOL.
Finally, I can trade for my own slice of heaven, watching that balance go up (and up--go stonks!!). Now I too get to dream the dream. I get to feel connected to that mythical world, The Market, rather than being stuck in the plain old Economy. Sure, I might blow up my account, but that's because it's the jungle. Bare-knuckled, big league capitalism going on right here, and at least I get to show up an put my shares on the table with everyone else. At least I'm playing the same game. Everyone has to start somewhere--at least now I get to start, even if I have to learn my lesson by zeroing my account a few times. I've basically had to deal with what felt like my life zeroing out a few times before. This is number on a screen going to 0 is nothing.
Laugh or cry, right? I'll post my losses on WSB and at least get some laughs.
Geez, some of the people here are making bank. I better learn from them and see if they'll let me in on their trades. Wow... this actually might work. I don't understand yet, but I trust these guys telling me to hold onto this crazy trade. I don't understand it, but all the memes say it's going to be big.
...WOW... I can pay off my credit card with this number. Do I punch out now? No? Hold?... Ok, getting nervous watching the number go down but I trust you freaks. We're still in the jungle, but at least I'm in with with my posse now. Market open tomorrow--we ride the rocket baby! And if it goes down, at least I'm going down with my crew. At least if that happens the memes will be so hilarious I'll forget to cry.
Wow.. I can't believe it... we might actually pull this off. Laugh at us now, "pros"!
We're in The Market now, and Market rules tell us what is going to happen. We're getting all that hedge fund money Right? Right?
Maybe.
First, I say maybe because nothing is ever guaranteed until it clears. Secondly, because the rules of The Market are not as perfectly enforced as we would like to assume. We are also finding out they may not be perfectly fair. The Market most experts are willing to talk about is really more like the ideal The Market is supposed to be. This is the version of the market I make my trading decisions in. However, the Real Market gets strange and unpredictable at the edges, when things are taken to extremes, or rules are pushed beyond the breaking point, or some of the mechanics deep in the guts of the Real Market get stretched. GME ticks basically all of those boxes, which is why so many people are getting nervous (aside from the crazy money they might lose). It's also important to remember that the sheer amount of money flowing through the market has distorting power unto itself. Because it's money, and people really, really, really like their money--especially when they're used to having a lot of it, and rules involving that kind of money tend to look more... flexible, shall we say.
Ok, back to GME. If this situation with GME is allowed to play out to its conclusion in The Market, we'll see what happens. I think all the long-side people get the chance to be paid (what, I'm not sure--and remember, you have to actually sell your position at some point or it's all still just numbers on your screen), but no one knows for certain.
But this might legitimately get so big that it spills out of The Market and back into The Economy.
Geez, and here I thought the point of all of this was so that we all get to make so much money we wouldn't ever have to think and worry about that thing again.
Unfortunately, while he's kind of a buzzkill, Thomas Petterfy has a point. This could be a serious problem.
It might blow out The Market, which will definitely crap on The Economy, which as we all know from hard experience, will seriously crush Main Street.
If it's that big a deal, we may even need Washington to be involved. Once that happens, who knows what to expect.. this kind of scenario being possible is why I've been saying I have no idea how this ends, and no one else does either.
How did we end up in this ridiculous situation? From GAMESTOP?? And it's not Retail's fault the situation is what it is.. why is everyone telling US that we need to back down to save The Market?? What about the short-side hedge funds that slammed that risk into the system to begin with?? We're just playing by the rules of The Market!!
Well, here are my thoughts, opinions, and some even further speculation... This may be total fantasy land stuff here, but since I keep getting asked I'll share anyway. Just keep that disclaimer in mind.

A Study in Big Finance Power Moves: If you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem...

What happens when you owe money you have no way to pay back? It's a scary question to have to face personally. Still, on balance and on average, if you're fortunate enough to have access to credit the borrowing is a risk that is worth taking (especially if you're reasonably careful). Lenders can take a risk loaning you money, you take a risk by borrowing in order to do something now that you would otherwise have had to wait a long time or maybe would never have realistically been able to do otherwise. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes it's due to reasons totally beyond your control. In any case, if you find yourself there you have no choice but to dust yourself off, pick yourself up as best as you can, and try to move on and rebuild. A lot of people had to learn that in 2008. Man that year really sucked.
Wall street learned their lessons too. Most learned what I think most of us would consider the right lessons--lessons about risk management, and the need to guard vigilantly against systemic risk, concentration of risk through excess concentration of leverage on common assets, etc. Many suspect that at least a few others may have learned an entirely different set of, shall we say, unhealthy lessons. Also, to try to be completely fair, maybe managing other peoples' money on 10x+ leverage comes with a kind of pressure that just clouds your judgement. I could actually, genuinely buy that. I know I make mistakes under pressure even when I'm trading risk capital I could totally lose with no real consequence. Whatever the motive, here's my read on what's happening:
First, remember that as much fun as WSB are making of the short-side hedge fund guys right now, those guys are smart. Scary smart. Keep that in mind.
Next, let's put ourselves in their shoes.
If you're a high-alpha hedge fund manager slinging trades on a $20bn 10x leveraged to 200bn portfolio, get caught in a bad situation, and are down mark-to-market several hundred million.. what do you do? Do you take your losses and try again next time? Hell no.
You're elite. You don't realize losses--you double down--you can still save this trade no sweat.
But what if that doesn't work out so well and you're in the hole >$2bn? Obvious double down. Need you ask? I'm net up on the rest of my positions (of course), and the momentum when this thing makes its mean reversion move will be so hot you can almost taste the alpha from here. Speaking of momentum, imagine the move if your friends on TV start hyping the story harder! Genius!
Ok, so that still didn't work... this is now a frigging 7 sigma departure from your modeled risk, and you're now locked into a situation that is about as close to mathematically impossible to escape as you can get in the real world, and quickly converging on infinite downside. Holy crap. The fund might be liquidated by your prime broker by tomorrow morning--and man, even the broker is freaking out. F'in Elon Musk and his twitter! You're cancelling your advance booking on his rocket ship to Mars first thing tomorrow... Ok, focus--this might legit impact your total annual return. You need a plan, and you know the smartest people on the planet, right? The masters of the universe! Awesome--they've even seen this kind of thing before and still have the playbook!! Of course! It's obvious now--you borrow a few more billion and double down again first thing in the morning. So simple. Sticky note that Mars trip cancellation so you don't forget.
Ok... so that didn't work? You even cashed in some pretty heavy chits too. Ah well, that was a long shot anyway. So where were you? Oh yeah.. if shenanigans don't work, skip to page 10...
...Which says, of course, to double down again. Anyone even keeping track anymore? Oh, S3 says it's $40bn and we're going parabolic? Man, that chart gives me goosebumps. All according to plan...
So what happens tomorrow? One possible outcome of PURE FANTASTIC SPECULATION...
End of the week--phew. Never though it'd come. Where are you at now?... Over $9000^\)!!! Wow. You did it boys, and as a bonus the memes will be so sweet.
^\)side note: add 8 zeros to the end...
Awesome--your problems have been solved. Because...
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..
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BOOM
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Now it's EVERYONE's problem. Come at me, Chamath, THIS is REAL baller shit.
Now all you gotta do is make all the hysterical retirees watching their IRAs hanging in the balance blame those WSB kids. Hahaha. Boomers, amirite? hate when those kids step on their law--I mean IRAs. GG guys, keep you memes. THAT is how it's done.
Ok, but seriously, I hope that's not how it ends. I guess we just take it day by day at this point.
Apologies for the length. Good luck in the market!
Also, apologies in advance for formatting, spelling, and grammatical errors. I was typing this thing in between doing all kinds of other things for most of the day.
Edit getting a bunch of questions on if it's possible the hedge funds are finding ways to cover in spite of my assumptions. Of course. I'm a retail guy trying to read the charts and price action. I don't have any special tools like the pros may have.

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.
Rather than doing a writeup of Friday, I think the time I have at the moment would be better spent going over some conceptual market mechanics. As I mentioned in my previous post that covered some light analysis of the week, my first glance was that Friday was a low conviction, low volume day where momentum traders/and volatility arbitraging HFT algos were skirmishing, and a slightly deeper look tells me that's probably the case for almost the entire day, up to the last minutes before close.
There was a bit of a push toward the end of the day just to extract maximum interest charge pain. Keep in mind also that on Friday many of the retail brokerages still had issues with GME, and GME price was also protected from aggressive short-side attack due to the uptick rule.

Capital Flow, Liquid Float, and Price

Ok, so let's go with a diagram I put together while thinking about how to best answer a ton of questions related to the mechanics behind triggering a squeeze. This is not very formal--just conceptual to help you think about the relationship between price, liquid free float, and capital required to move things around.
Capital Flow to Price Volatility Leverage Conceptual Diagram
As you can see in the diagram, I figured it would be conceptually clearest to model the relationship kind of like a seesaw.
On the left you can see that people selling tends to increase liquid float, moving the fulcrum of our conceptual seesaw to the right, except in the case of selling to people who are planning to buy and hold, which moves the fulcrum to the left.
The lower the liquid free float, or the further to the left the fulcrum goes, the greater the likely impact of any particular capital flow (net selling or buying) on share price. Importantly, as the diagrams on the right half show, it's not a linear relationship. The closer the liquid free float comes to 0%, the faster the price volatility increases... theoretically approaching infinity as liquid free float approaches 0%.
I find it sometimes help to think of the extreme case to help clarify. On the extremely liquid side, if you have all of the tens of millions of GME shares in play, dropping $10,000 in to buy shares probably doesn't even register on the ticker. On the other extreme, if what if there was only 1 share in play? That same $10,000 instantly prices GME at $10,000 a share--if you can even get the person holding it to sell!
Since company value is estimated mark-to-market, GME would instantly become rated one of the most (if not the most) valuable companies in the world. This is in no way true, of course, as you could not subsequently sell all the rest of the shares at that price, but as far as a whole bunch of market mechanics and market participants are concerned, they would have to treat it that way until another transaction took place to re-price the company.
So, in the grand scheme of things, in terms of difficulty of initiating what magnitude of a squeeze, the primary factor is locking up actively traded/liquid free float. Also important to keep in mind, locking up the float is only very gradually noticeable until you get very close to locking it all down, and you reach a point where suddenly each fraction of free float being locked up has parabolically greater impact on price volatility, reaching its limit where going from 2 actively traded shares to 1 actively traded share doubles price volatility sensitivity to capital flow by just locking up a single additional share.
So simple, right? Actually, yes. However, don't mistake simple for easy (absolutely not the same thing in this case).

Market Games

So, GME and other high short interest stocks are looked at in two ways by many market participants. On the one hand, you have normal investors and traders who don't really pay attention to it at all, and, if they do, they see it as a tool for price discovery that is otherwise neutral and dampens volatility (people tend to short stocks as price goes up, and cover shorts as price drops, so normal shorting activity is at least in theory supposed to help keep price stable).
Then you have what I'll call market gamers. These are people who are willing to look through the veil of what various mechanics in the market are theoretically intended to accomplish, and just pay attention to what they actually do. There are a number of market mechanics that get really strange in extreme circumstance, and shorting is one of them, as using it to the extreme can absolutely crush a company's share price and actually harm the company badly. The counter to that is the increasing risk of a squeeze, which gets worse with extreme price volatility.
Imagine it this way. Short interest in a stock is like the stock comes with a very strange feature--a closed wormhole portal into the brokerage account of the short position holder that, if slammed with a high enough day or week end price, blows open and sucks their account capital through, and possibly their broker's capital too, until they've patched it closed again with shares of stock they were short.
That's not how you're supposed to look at it, but that's kind of how it actually works in practice. Most wall street types would find it appalling and wrong to think about it that way, but with Millenials and younger jumping in to the market we're talking about generations of people who grew up watching things like people doing 4 minute speed runs through games intended to take~100 hrs to complete, using nothing but the mechanics of the game in ways entirely unintended by the developers. That's kind of what GME is like, from a certain point of view--a speed run through the market, blitzing and confusing everyone watching--throwing a ton of money at hedge funds' short interest until you blow a hole in their account and suck the capital out with the force of a black hole. Of course people are getting jumpy.

Battleground - Strategy and Tactics

In a way, GME has turned into a battleground stock in the minds of many wall street people. Wall Street vs WSB is basically the way it's been depicted in the media, and a number of them seem to be taking it personally.
With a battleground stock I find it helpful to think of it like a literal battleground, but with territory marked out by stock price. It helps you consider the impact on each 'side', what their motives are, and tactical and strategic implications. The reason I think this way is that once a stock becomes a battleground, the issue is no longer about price discovery--it's about proving a point or accomplishing a specific goal, which changes the dynamics of the trade.
In my opinion, the retail strength/defensive line is at the $148 level as mentioned in my previous post analyzing the week. This is based on the majority of volume being in the runup from $30 to $148, which triggered the first squeeze.
My guess is short-side strength hardens at the $350 level, based on that being the level at which the whale plugged the first squeeze. What this means is that you can expect some short-side people to actively short more at that level, possibly following through on momentum, as many of them want to prove a point that GME is a <$20 stock, as stated by a number of them on CNBC. $350 might seem like a low number given Friday's close, but remember that Friday trading was subject to the uptick rule, so the short effectively could not push back, and was instead fighting a rearguard action to bleed the long-side advance as much as possible, and lure them off their strength as much as possible.
Say what? Is there a point to those analogies like that? Why yes, of course, because those analogies are very good mental models for what is going to happen in a short squeeze campaign.
Remember, in the grand scheme of things, the goal of the long side is first and foremost to lock up liquid float. That means buying and holding shares. The question is.. how much will it cost you to move the needle on that, so to speak. the higher the price the short side can force you to pay to lock up float, the longer it'll take and the more expensive it will be. It is also like fighting far from your supply lines in that respect, in that there will be weaker hands mixed in far beyond hard support levels, such that quick pushes by the short side will shake them out, loosening float back up.
How about on the long side? You want the short side to overextend themselves by shorting the price down on momentum, and hopefully get them to keep building up short interest at the lowest price at which they will do so. This means having to have the patience to see the price go as low as you can tolerate before you start losing your key support to despair. Why? Because it means you're buying the shares they throw at you at a lower price (costs less to move the needle on locking up liquid free float) and also that their short position is at a lower average price, lowering the price it will take to trigger a squeeze.
The above is why, in some cases, you will see a sharp dip before the vertical move in a squeeze. You can essentially lure the short side into an ambush by falling back to lower and lower price points, which allows you to continue to lock up free float at ever cheaper prices while the short side thinks it is winning. Once you think you've accumulated enough to prevent covering without a parabolic price move, you spike the price back the other way and it's effectively game over. It can take some time to play out to its conclusion, but that is the essence of it.
Let's make it concrete and put some numbers to it. let's say you need to lock up 10mio more shares for the squeeze (no idea, just using the number for easy math). If you can buy it all skirmishing at the $200 line, you'll pay $2bn to do it. If instead you've extended to the $300 line, you're going to pay $3bn. If you're an alpha-seeking whale, why pay 50% more to accomplish the same thing if you can get away with it? If you recall, I referenced seeing what I thought looked like this type of ticker behavior in my 3rd post.
That being said, you might not mess around with those types of tactics at this point if you think you're already close to blowing up the next short interest holder.
If you think you're close, then you're looking at the most efficient way to make the last tick at trading close as high as possible.
That is very similar to the price action we saw on Friday at the end of the day, as mentioned earlier. If you think about it, if the goal is the have the price at/above a certain point at the end of the day, what is more efficient? Rush in the morning, then have to pay that higher price level for the whole day to maintain it, or wait until later in the day, as late as you think you can manage, and then push to that point at the very last tick?
That, at least, is a very high level view of what you're trying to accomplish, but it gets very complicated in the details. If you're dueling with a good HFT algorithm, you can run into things like the price getting spiked to trigger halts to run out the clock (kind of like fouling someone in basketball), which gets harder in the final minutes of trading due to the wider LU/LD allowances, but still doable, even if you have to do it by sucking price level up (maybe to give you 5 mins to call your buddy at Blackrock to dump shares onto the ticker or something like that).
Another thing to keep in mind. One of the reasons these things can roll on for a long time, is it might not be a one and done blowout (possibly on purpose). Think about it--if you can get people to keep piling short interest in--particularly for emotional reasons, you can ring the register as many times as they are willing to keep doing it to ultimately prove their point. Think of the Citron guy who re-shorted back in around what.. $90 or $100 I think? All because he wanted to make his point when he got blown out at the move off of $30. There are people piling back in right now. Who knows how many times they're willing to reload the short float.
Ok, so this post is much longer than I originally intended anyway, but I think the diagram and some of the descriptions above should provide a good amount of food for thought and discussion. A number of people asked me why I said that price to squeeze was secondary at this point. If you haven't already figured out why, try to think about it, or maybe ask in comments and someone can help with a further discussion.
A couple of final points:

• Assuming the long-side people continue to lock up liquid float, remember that volatility can get greater in BOTH directions. This can mean that you get wiped out if you're somehow still trading GME on margin, as a quick price collapse can get you margin called even if the price quickly rebounds later.
• Greater volatility means you should mentally prepare for big dips as well as swings to the upside. Pre-market and after hours trading don't have circuit breakers, so it could get wild during those times too.
• Also with extreme volatility you end up possibly hitting halts more frequently. After the first frustrating day of this happening with GME I made myself a basic thinkorswim thinkscript study so I'd have a handy reference on whether it looked like this was going to happen. For those of you on ToS, use it on the 1 minute chart. Note that the LULD tolerances are different in first few minutes and toward the end of the day, so you'd have to adjust the parameters (or just keep it in mind). I use it with the step lines vs the default line. If price crosses the guard lines then you're getting close--if it crosses the circuit breaker line then you're about to be or already are getting halted. Here is the code:

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input TrailingPeriodLength = 5; input CircuitBreakerPercent = 10.0; input GuardMultiplePercent = 70.0; def trlAvg = Average(close, TrailingPeriodLength); plot trailingAverage = trlAvg; plot upperStop = trlAvg * (1 + CircuitBreakerPercent / 100); plot lowerStop = trlAvg * (1 - CircuitBreakerPercent / 100); plot upperRail = trlAvg * (1 + CircuitBreakerPercent / 100 * GuardMultiplePercent / 100); plot lowerRail = trlAvg * (1 - CircuitBreakerPercent / 100 * GuardMultiplePercent / 100); 

Also, I got a comment in another post telling me to get a job lol. Actually I have one, so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to post from Monday forward. As I've mentioned in a few comments on prior posts, I actually am not active on social media normally. I just created this account to try to help people use this probably once-in-a-lifetime event and the intense interest it's generating to help people learn to become better investors and traders. I'll try to keep posting, but maybe not as regularly, and probably shorter (which I know some of you will be happy about :)).
Hope you all have a good rest of the weekend. Good luck in the Market on Monday