Skip to main content

Game Stop (GME) the story is getting more intersting

 So the outrage of the ordinary investors was a good story but it turns out it was mostly BS.  Some of the early investors had a strong feeling about the company and its ability to turn its story around.  These guys made big bets and were very well rewarded.

However, it seems that the real play was Gamma Hedging!  First off, short interest in GME was small once the stock hit $70.  That's important, prior to that week in late January 2020 the short interest was huge something like 180% of available stock, which means many players were doing naked shorting (which is illegal), but once the stock doubled short interest went down fast -- to around 30%  still high but nowhere near the nose bleed zone of before (it should be noted that the cost of borrowing GME stock exploded in mid-February -- making the whole thing expensive).

It seems now that it was the derivative market (puts and call on the stock) that created the frenzy.  These were the places where the extreme leverage caused some hedge funds to go under because if you've sold a put (the right to someone sell you a stock) or sold some calls you could have been in trouble as the expiry date got closer and closer (the very definition of a gamma short).  

All in all interesting because despite what the press wrote about the whole GME episode, the reality was that the play was Wall Street Vs. Wall Street (or really Wall Street Vs. Greenwich).  In other words a typical sort of squeeze!


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more