Here is a rant that nobody cares about, but it's good enough to read, I'll even give you a TLDR now.
TLDR: We are this way, because it's the only way we are allowed to be, as retail traders.
Now that that's out of the way, lets look at it from a normie traders point of view.

Pattern Day Trading: Why does it exist? To protect us? From what? Do you ask for a W2 for everyone literally walking into a casino to see if they are capable of losing what they are risking? No, they are free to spend as they please. Funny, I thought that's what a free market was for too?
Market Makers: You want us to literally just stop, leave, and use a casino? Use DraftKings and that sort of platform, ok. Now what, how do you make your money off of "dumb money" when it's gone? You need us, we need you.
*WHY* is a collective of people on Reddit such a danger?: For the sake of arguing, before this happened, there were 800,000 of us just being collectively dumb together. LETS JUST SAY, combined, we had 1 billion dollars between 800,000 people. That's scary? You lost 2.7b in the first wave of short losses, then asked for help for another 3b. Do you know what that means? THAT MEANS, that hedge funds, as a collective, is the problem, NOT REDDIT.
When we got together, it was a crime, when you got together, it was not a problem? How can we be "investors" in a rigged game, literally, please explain it. We HAVE TO GAMBLE to make money, because those are YOUR RULES.
Trading is passive income, not a job: Yeah, it's a passive way to kill time for 95% of us, make a little side money, couple grand here or there, sometimes get lucky and make 10k. This is a lot for regular people, it's literally NOTHING to you, but debt payment and vacation funds for us.
We are Degenerates and Dumb Money: If a large group of dumb people cost you money is a problem...then why is a large group of smart people (you market makers and hedge funds) that manipulate costs to take dumb moneys money away, allowed?

Anyways, there is a list 3 miles long.
GameStop isn't about GameStop, it's a beacon of reason, it could have been any stock, Citron just picked the target and we used it.
Good Luck Diamond Handing gents. Think about it this way. No matter what happens, THEY HAVE LOST MORE MONEY THIS MONTH, than what average day traders have collectively made in 5 years. Let that sink in.
Edit: This blew up, appreciate all the support!
I recently saw this video, it's 10 minutes long, but the first 3 are incredibly important! Jim Cramer exposes what illegal activities hedge funds and short sellers do to manipulate the market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMuEis3byY4&t=2s . They literally take advantage of the SEC not knowing what they do.
Hold strong brothers

Hullo! You junkies doing great here, ya? I’ve just got home from a game of tennis with me lads and I was hoping to get some casino ideas from ye folks here. I’m particularly looking for a casino that’ll give me a welcome bonus and some free spins to go with that. I asked some of me lads but none of them had a f*cking clue! Would you mind helping me out or do I just run along and mind me own business?

Hullo! You folks doing great here,? I’ve just got home from a game of tennis with me lads and I was hoping to get some casino ideas from the folks here. I’m particularly looking for a casino that’ll give me a welcome bonus and some free spins to go with that. I asked some of me lads but none of them had a clue! Would you mind helping me out or do I just run along and mind me own business?

TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html

TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
If there's one thing I took away from this its that we can't wait for other people to do the right thing, we each need to individually step up to ensure it happens
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html

Your at a casino and their having a live tv show to win big! The money is tax free to you, if you lose you get nothing so choose wisely what game your best at the given choices.
Or
Keep $500k to walk away (tax free) but be branded a loser on live tv.
(If you could name one you’d personally pick and it’s not listed here please comment what would it be? )
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TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html

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Alexa was sitting cross legged before Sassie, with Aiov lying casually on the German Shepherd’s back. She had a metal bowl in her lap with chunks of fresh meat for Aiov and cooked meat for her large canine protector. It had been a difficult time as the dog had missed Aaron more and more, to the point that she had begun to refuse food. Aiov's enthusiasm, however, seemed to help slightly in countering that refusal, and Alexa had found that feeding them together at least got some food into the lonely Earth ambassador.
She scratched at the dog’s head as Aiov happily chomped on another scrap of meat. “Look at that! You won’t be outdone by a leokit now, will you?” She placed a cube of seared meat before Sassie’s nose. She sniffed it twice before eating. “You’re going to be so spoiled by the time we get him back. We’ll both get in trouble.”
Aiov snuggled into the thick black and tan fur, using her paw to guide the next morsel into her mouth. Sassie managed a few more pieces before turning her head away with a grunt. Satisfied with what she had achieved Alexa gave a few more scraps to Aiov before placing the bowl into the recycler. The loudspeakers throughout the Rinoxian vessel blared a loud message announcing they had now crossed into Hive space and that their readiness was being moved to level three.
Her door chimed. Opening it, she found Allistan in his new Terran Wolves uniform. “You need to come quickly, the Porkchop Express has arrived.”
As she grabbed Aaron's old leather jacket, Sassie immediately rose to follow which caused Aiov to roll to the floor. "You come," she spoke to the dog, then turned to the distinctly unhappy leokit who had just lost her warm pillow. "You stay, sorry.”
They walked briskly through the corridors of the Rinoxian warship towards a secure meeting room which had two Terran Wolves outside the door. Their black uniforms and red collars were easily identifiable and they gave sharp salutes as Alexa approached. “I told you not to salute.”
The two guards lowered their hands sheepishly as the doors opened. Sassie immediately surged past Alexa to happily greet the returning crew members. She moved from Ranjaz to Jaym, receiving many scratches and hugs. Even Eruwenn and Cygna received a quick examination, but she soon stopped when no sign of Aaron could be found. The German Shepherd forlornly returned to Alexa's side as the Awakened took a seat at the meeting table. “Is the room secure?”
Cygna, now in a smart black uniform with white collar, stood. “We have taken additional precautions due to the sensitive information we will be discussing.”
Tilting her head, Alexa took in the Fae’Dan’s new clothing. “You’re one of us now?”
Eruwenn gave a slight chuckle. Aside from Alexa, she was the only one not in uniform. “She lost a game of dalcho, or two.”
“Seven.” Ranjaz said with a wicked grin. “Don’t worry, she’s actually been a fairly competent assistant. Aside from her gambling issues, obviously.”
Her head drooping to look at her feet, Cygna replied, “I swear by Tulseria’s right hand, I will get you back for this!”
The Kittran’s grin grew more predatory. “Wanna bet?”
There was a long table by the wall where Embar was fixing himself a drink, He turned, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I approve of your recruiting techniques.”
The Kittran shrugged. “She’s worth it – even broke the code on this.” He tossed the recovered device onto the table as Embar returned and took his seat opposite him. “And, you’re going to want a stronger drink, General.”
Curiosity piqued, Allistan took his seat, preparing his notepad and pen. “What did you find?”
Ranjaz was about to speak when Eruwenn held up her hand. “I think we should let General Embar read this first. He can take a moment before we all continue.”
Raising an eyebrow, Embar sat down in a nearby chair and connected the device to a non-networked datapad. “Why me?” He began scrolling through the files, tapping on icons and delving deeper. His breathing suddenly stopped, his face contorting. Disbelief morphed into anger, and as his body tensed, anger turned to white-hot rage. He placed the datapad down on the table before him and stood, walking back towards the drinks table. He lowered his head, his body radiating anger as his muscles clenched and unclenched, then raised his fist into the air and slammed it into the table. Bottles, glasses and everything else it had held went crashing to the ground as it buckled under force of his blow. “We’re going to kill every last one of those Sentinel bastards!”
No longer smiling, Ranjaz stood. “You’re Tulseria damned right we are.”
Jaym was sitting silently, but she pulled a rag from her pocket and dabbed at her tears. After they had fled from the casino she had tried to help crack the encryption on the stolen device. Part of her wished they never had, as its contents had disturbed her so much. Now that they had finally caught up with Alexa, Embar and the others who had been on the Rinoxian homeworld, she empathised deeply with the pain this information was bringing. “It’s so awful, I’m so sorry Embar.”
Eruwenn patted the young Arkellian on the shoulder to comfort her as she looked at the Rinoxian. “Please believe me, General Warbringer. The council knew nothing of this.”
Alexa picked up the datapad, using her nanites to more quickly access the information. She grit her teeth, biting back her anger, then passed it quickly to Allistan. “You need to read this. Then we need to plan our next move.” She looked at the back of the unmoving Rinoxian. “Embar?”
Embar slowly turned around, his jaw set, determination in his eyes. “We keep this quiet. We’re on an active mission and need everyone focused on the job at hand.”
Allistan went to click his pen as he read, but with a gasp the pen fell from his fingers. “We can’t keep quiet, the galaxy needs to see this.”
The Rinoxian nodded. “They will. When the time is right.”

It had been two cycles and the incursion fleet had advanced deep into Hive space. Over half of the force accompanying them were the Rinoxians under their new Galactic Federation commanders. There were over a dozen Galactic Federation ships along with six Gowe destroyers, and a dozen ships from other races including the Niham and Kah’Ree. Admiral Pelar, on board the Blazing Dawn, commanded four Ashi ships including the Righteous Fury.
The smallest craft by far was the Porkchop Express, a speck amongst titans. Its white painted hull, chrome bull bars and bright cartoon logo were a stark contrast to the military ships it accompanied. Sassie was more comfortable now that she was in familiar territory, and slept on a pile of Aaron’s clothes in his quarters.
Allistan and Alexa were sitting opposite Jar’Bek in his small office. The Ashi looked exhausted as he finally put down his datapad. “I’m sorry to have kept you.”
Allistan fidgeted in his seat. “Not at all, was that your mother again?”
Stiffening slightly at the use of the word mother the lawyer forced himself to relax again. “Admiral Pelar has informed us that they have been repeatedly scanned by the Gowe. She’s taking no action, as we’re supposed to be allies, but wanted you to be aware.” Alexa nodded and he continued. “When we arrive at the next system the commanders of each ship have been called to the Hooves of Destiny. Vice-Admiral Koo Ji has requested an in person meeting, with all senior officers.”
There were several pen clicks. “That seems unusual.”
Jar’Bek gave a knowing nod. “Extremely. To remove every ship’s command, behind enemy lines? It makes no sense.”
Alexa pushed her hair back from her face. “The Rinoxians agreed to it?”
The Ashi nodded. “Most of their command have been replaced. Anyway, they outnumber – and outgun – the other ships. Why would they be concerned?”
Allistan’s pen clicked. “They probably just put it down to Gal. Fed. protocols, or fear.”
Jar’Bek nodded. “They’ve had us stopping in random systems to scan. No doubt it’s to delay us, but perhaps also to lower the Rinoxian’s guard?”
Leaning back in her chair, the Awakened considered the options. “Maybe there's another fleet waiting to ambush us? Or following us?”
Allistan twirled his pen in his fingers. “No, no. All eyes are on the border since Aaron’s capture. It must be something else.”
Moving on to her next idea, Alexa asked, “Sabotage?”
The Ashi gave a chuckle. “That is Admiral Pelar’s conclusion. The Gal. Fed. officers have been on board the other ships, and the possibility exists that there are Sentinels working amongst them. They are all in command positions, and will all be leaving. It’s a logical conclusion.”
Allistan’s pen halted its spinning. “The Ashi ships, they can’t have been sabotaged, right?”
The lawyer nodded. “True, but, it wouldn’t matter. Their ships are old and have seen too much action. Those Gowe ships alone are more than they could handle.”
The Fae’Dan sighed and shook his head at the situation they were facing. “We should have brought more ships. The new ones.”
Alexa, staring at the ceiling, spoke softly. “No, we don’t need to show our hand just yet. But send word to Chae’Sol, make sure he has the coordinates.”
Jar’Bek nodded and made a note on his datapad. “What about the others?”
The Awakened closed her eyes. It was times like this she missed her human and his habit of taking charge. “Tell Embar to warn his contacts among the Rinoxians. The others… I have no idea, I just want to sleep.”
Allistan, a stickler for accuracy, replied, “I didn’t think Awakened slept?”
She sat up and gave a half-hearted smile. In an unusual moment of vulnerability, she replied, “I was told you can do anything in a dream. For those moments, we would all be together again.”
Allistan struggled to come up with a response to that, and the Ashi, having noticed this, stepped in to fill the gap in conversation. “We’ll find him. I can’t lose the most profitable client in the galaxy now, can I?”
Now past the moment of awkwardness, the Fae’Dan also answered. “I’m sure he’s fine. In fact, he’s probably already on his way back to us.”
Alexa gave Allistan a withering look. “You think he single-handedly defeated the Hive, stole a ship and managed to figure out how to fly it back here?”
The former Inspector paused to consider it. “No. It will most likely be something even more preposterous. Perhaps he married their Queen?”
The ridiculousness of the idea brought a chuckle to the Awakened. “Maybe. Hopefully nothing that drastic; he’d probably just turn their society upside down with some ridiculous scheme.”
Jar’Bek also smiled. “A little civil unrest, perhaps a few riots? No doubt with merchandise.”
Finally breaking into a broad grin, Alexa replied, “I think we all might be over-estimating him a little.”

Aaron stood in the trade area of Toivoa station with a contingent of Gardener Royal Guards behind him, Tsy’Lo by his side, and a very angry mob in front of him. Several well-dressed local leaders were dragged from the crowd to stand before him; Mycena, Tricinic, Procyon and a dozen other refugee races were crammed into the triple height area of the station.
One of the leaders staggered towards Aaron. “You! You caused this!”
Aaron, feigning as much innocence as possible, pointed to his chest. “Me?”
One of the Mycena he had met during his time on the station came forward. “We’ve all seen the videos! They kept us in the dark about what is going on out there! The Galactic Federation are coming! Our leaders lied to us!”
The accusatory leader, a Procyon with greying fur, pointed at Aaron. “Your... Your propaganda, has driven them mad! Your lies! They’re destroying the station!”
The human smiled and maintained his innocent expression. “My propaganda?” Several in the crowd held up datapads; Aaron’s smiling face was on every one. “Oh... that propaganda.”
Tsy’Lo tugged on his sleeve. “What did you do?!”
Aaron crouched down slightly. “Remember when I accidentally picked up the kids datapad and you returned it?”
“Yes…” The Tricinic flushed orange as realisation struck. “It wasn’t the child’s datapad!”
Aaron straightened up. “Yeah, thanks for helping bring down society.” He laughed as Tsy’Lo became a very opaque green hue. “Don’t worry, I’ve got an idea.”
The greying Procyon shook his fist at the human. “You better! They should throw you in a cage for the rest of your life for this. Hundreds of celes of peace, destroyed!”
Aaron looked down at the angry alien. “Your peace, not theirs.” He gestured back towards the Gardeners, and walked towards them without waiting for a reply. He raised his hands high, motioning for the unruly mob to settle down. “Alright, alright. Settle down, munchkins. So the wizard’s a liar? Welcome to reality. The Gardeners have been fighting and dying to keep you safe from the flying monkeys, while you all hide in your Emerald City and get on with your lives. That shit ends now. You’re crying out for change? Then welcome to the revolution, baby! We’re opening up the borders, we’re rejoining the rest of the galaxy! No more hiding!”
The crowd was already worked up, and cheering came easily despite the large lack of understanding. The human nodded — he was enjoying this far too much — and then gestured again for quiet. He spoke quietly at first, adding excitement to his voice as it built in power. “So prepare for a chance of a lifetime! Be prepared for sensational news!”
The Procyon official’s mouth opened and closed silently before he managed to shake his mind free of the initial shock of the human’s words. “No! Stop! What are you even saying?”
Aaron didn’t care about the official. He put the palm of his hand on their face, which easily dwarfed it in size, and gently pushed them slowly backwards. He then leapt up onto a crate; his showmanship on camera was nothing to his on-stage presence. “A shining new era is tiptoeing nearer, and where do you feature? Just listen to teacher! You’ve stagnated here for long enough. Lied to and kept in the dark, well, no more!”
The crowd was his, he knew it. The official knew it. Tsy’Lo knew it and was a nervous shade of blue. Aaron clambered from the crate to the roof of a stall, standing high above the crowd. The cheers followed every rambling sentence and, drunk on power, Aaron was loving it. “Spread the word to every planet, every station, every colony and every ship. Change is not coming, it’s here and it is now!”
The crowd roared again, and the desperate official turned to Tsy’Lo. “What in the nine moons is he talking about?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.” Aaron snapped. He stood looking out over the crowd. “I am the Ambassador of a world called Earth. I have taken ownership of a small star system that is being colonised as we speak. These colonies are a coalition of races, from within the Federation, as well as without. We rule ourselves, but have treaties and agreements with the Federation itself, as well as various individual races within it.”
Several questions were called out from the crowd, but one voice was louder than the others. “How does that help us?”
With a smile, the human walked back and forth across the roof of the stall as he spoke. “Good question my friend.” He pointed vaguely at where the voice had come from. “I do not have contact with my homeworld at this time. To ensure that all of whatever Earth has become would be included we put in place clauses for future territories, dominions, settlements etc, etc…” The crowd was quiet now, trying to follow the human’s explanation. Looking out at the blank faces Aaron realised he needed to get to the point. “Congratulations, you’re now a protectorate of Earth!”

He was met with utter silence.

Suddenly, there were several angry yells from the crowd, some claiming this was a joke while others were simply confused. The official was the one who dared clamber to the crate below Aaron in order to yell up to him. “Are you insane?”
Aaron’s smile made Tsy’Lo shudder, as it was the same one he had given as he had explained his idea to the Gardener Queen. The human stepped forward to stand at the front of the stall roof. “I declared war on the Gardeners. The war lasted seven Earth minutes, and was quickly resolved when the Queen surrendered to me in person.”
Silence fell once again, and Aaron found himself half-yearning for the sound of crickets to emphasize the moment.
The crowd erupted once more, outrage at the ridiculous claims the strange alien was spewing forth. Tsy’Lo released a deafeningly loud harmonic whistle which was followed by another momentary quiet. They paled as the crowd's attention fell on them. “You need to listen, all of you. He is speaking the truth, sort of. He held the Queen and the Gardeners council hostage with a bomb.” Small grey particles filled the Tricinic at the memory of being used as a weapon. The crowd began to grow rowdy at this news, causing Tsy’Lo to let off another sonic blast. “It is all a human trick; once we are part of his alliance we fall under the treaties he already has in place.”
The crowd looked back up to the human. “Like I said, congratulations. You just walked in through the backdoor of a peace treaty with the Galactic Federation, and over a dozen separate treaties with other races.”
The crowd were now arguing amongst themselves. The official - who Aaron was now mentally calling Gobshite - once again challenged him. “At what cost, though? What do you get out of this?”
The smile of mischief once more graced the human’s lips and Tsy’Lo considered pulling him down from his stage. They had been on their way to the border when news of the riots on Toivoa reached them. Aaron’s presence had been demanded and he had happily accepted. The human looked almost as gleeful as that moment of acceptance when he spoke again. “Me? I get to go home. I get friends with big sticks. I get to trade openly with you, and believe me, I have a lot of crap to sell you.” He chuckled. “You get to be part of the galaxy again. You get to travel and trade. Our rules are simple and fair; everyone is equal under the law. You have exactly the same rights as everyone else who joined us. And the cost?” He paused for effect, making sure they were all paying attention. “You stand on your own two feet.” He glanced around, noting the sheer diversity of the crowd. “Or one foot... or four... Or whatever it is you’re balancing on.”
The crowd was a buzz of conversation, and Gobshite once again chimed in. “You think they’ll let us back without a fight? We can expose them! Those bastards tried to exterminate us!”
The crowd jeered along with the old Procyon. Aaron held up his hands. “Woah, woah. Only some of them. That’s the thing, there are a lot more members now. So here’s the plan: shut up. If you don’t say anything, they sure as shit aren’t going to out themselves, are they? While everyone is staring at the former Hive terror that they all feared, you guys just start working and trading, nice and quiet.”
A few murmurs of agreement came from the crowd. Gobshite, however, was more than a murmur. “You want us to forget our ancestors suffering?”
A little irritated, Aaron was more harsh than he intended. “You’ve wallowed in it long enough. Look at you, hiding for generations, keeping your communications to a minimum to avoid detection. Is this all some master plan as you build an army to seek revenge? Fuck no!” He saw the shame on their faces. “You’re happy to leave this status quo to future generations? You want to remember the suffering of your ancestors, fine, build a fucking statue. But don’t hold back your children to do it.”
The crowd were growing louder again as they discussed his words. “Look!” the human yelled. “I’m not saying you forget, or forgive. I’m saying you keep your mouths shut. We won’t announce your presence to the Federation. Instead, I want those of you looking to start something new to come join the new colonies. No big fanfares, just get on with it. In a place filled with different races, you’ll just be another stranger.”
He saw the crowd looking at each other, and knew was a lot to take in all at once. “We gather evidence, build trust. Get yourselves established, forge friendships and alliances, and become accepted as part of the new colonies. Let those in the know think their past crimes are forgotten. And when we are ready, we burn down their false history and anyone who tries to defend it!”
The crowd cheered once more, and Aaron smiled triumphantly down at Tsy'Lo as he leapt casually from the roof. As he landed, many hands patted his back and many questions were yelled, but it all ceased as one of the Gardeners stepped forward. It was Eridor, as there was no mistaking the red cape he wore. "We need to leave, the Federation have entered our space.”
Next

On the Podium This Week: The Pegassi Osiris
Once you’re done washing the sands of Cayo Perico out from between your toes, make sure to drop by the lobby of The Diamond Casino & Resort to give the Lucky Wheel its daily spin and walk away with GTA$, RP, clothing and all manner of mystery prizes. This week’s top prize is that symbol of opulence, excess and reckless abandon: the Pegassi Osiris.
Looking for a new home away from home? Lucky for you, The Diamond is offering 35% off the price of both the Master Penthouse Suite and its pursuant Customizations and Optional Extras, including Colors and Patterns, the Lounge, Media Room, Spa, Bar & Party Hub enhancements, as well as amenities like the Private Dealer, Office, Extra Bedroom and Garage.
There are also sales on a range of luxe vehicles to flex your status on your peers. See below for the complete list of sales and discounts:
Master Penthouse Suite – 35% off
Master Penthouse Customizations – 35% off

Floor Plans and Optional Extras, including Lounge Area, Media Room, Spa, Bar & Party Hub, Private Dealer, Office, Extra Bedroom, Garage
Colors
Patterns

Vehicles – 35% off

Vysser Neo
Obey 8F Drafter
Överflöd Imorgon
Lampadati Tigon

Double money and RP on In and Out game mode

Prime Gaming Bonuses:
GTA Online players who successfully connected their Rockstar Games Social Club account with Prime Gaming by December 13th will get free access to the Kosatka submarine’s Sonar Station, along with GTA$200K just for playing any time this week. Any Prime Gaming members in good standing who do buy the Sonar Station at full price will be given a 100% rebate within 72 hours after purchasing it.
In addition, Prime Gaming members receive exclusive discounts: this week it’s 70% off of the Benefactor Krieger and 80% off the Pegassi Tezeract.
To ensure access to future benefits, make sure to visit Prime Gaming and sign up.

THE CAYO PERICO HEIST BONUSES

Plus The Heist Challenge Rewards Including a Free Vehicle for All Players and More
The Cayo Perico Heist marks a new era for Heists in GTA Online and we are celebrating with a slew of perks and bonuses for a limited time, including a free Dinka Veto Classic for everyone to whip around in, new clothing awards and a special jacket for those who participated in last month’s Community Heist Challenge and so much more.
CAYO PERICO HEIST BONUSES
From today through January 14th, everyone who progresses through The Cayo Perico Heist – from scoping to taking down the score – will receive special clothing items along the way.
Those who complete a Cayo Perico Scoping Mission will receive a rare Manor Tie-dye Tee that is sure to provoke envy from the fashion victims lined up outside Didier Sachs. Completing any Prep Mission for the Cayo Perico Heist, meanwhile, will land you the rare Rockstar Gray Pattern Tee And completing the Cayo Perico Heist finale before the deadline will land you the highly coveted Panther Tour Jacket.
All the above bonuses will be available for the next four weeks and until January 14th, please allow 72 hours from completing each mission to receive each item.
COMMUNITY HEIST CHALLENGE REWARDS
Thanks to the GTA Online community coming together to blitz The Heist Challenge last month, all GTA Online players who play between December 18th – 20th can head over to Southern San Andreas Super Autos to claim the new Dinka Veto Classic for free and to keep.

Be sure to pick up the Veto Classic this weekend before it goes up for sale on December 21st.

And if you were one of the many talented thieves who completed a Heist to help put the GTA Online community over the GTA$100 Billion mark during November’s Heist Challenge, you will receive the Panther Varsity Jacket for your efforts.

I love New Vegas, its my favorite game of all time. And it is for a lot of other people too. This unfortunately means that its almost impossible to say anything negative about the game on Reddit without getting massively shat on. The only point you seem to be allowed to criticize is the bugs, which gets rebutted by "but they only had 18 months to make it" or "Bethesda was in charge of QA", as if any of these things excuse it for you as a customer.
So now that the game is 10 years old and most of us have played it tons of times, I thought it would be a good time to make a thread where we can actually criticize this lovely game. I'll start, now bear in mind this is of course all degrees of subjective so don't throw "uR nOT obJEvTiVE" at me just yet:

The bugs has to be meantioned first. The game ran horribly at release and still did for a long time after. Its first many years later with patches and mods that we reached something that can be called mostly stable. I'm playing it right now only with stability mods on and it still crashes about once every 1-2 hours, and its still very buggy and janky.
Caravan, this game's made up card game, is horrible. Firstly its very buggy somehow. I am surprised they couldn't even bug fix a solitaire-like card game, but here we are. Secondly even when it works its not very fun. It takes minimum 3 cards to make a caravan and only one king or jack to ruin it. It means it heavily favors just fucking up your opponent and hope you win the war of card attrition. The game used to be stupidly easy but was then patched so now the AI will spam kings and jacks constantly. After I got the 30 games achievement I dropped it. Lastly the game doesn't do anything with Caravan. There is no quest to become the Mojave champion or such. I get this isn't needed but it would have helped make it interesting. The only other games in the game are casino games which all depends on your luck stat. I would love being able to play high stakes Caravan.
Cut content. Roleplaying is best when you actually have good reason to join both sides. In Fallout New Vegas the NCR gets the majority of the content. If you side with the Legion you can finish all the faction quests in a few hours, meanwhile the NCR has so many quests I always have to check the wiki to remember them all. Its such a shame. It doesn't help that for 3 of the endings you can work with the NCR but only 1 for the Legion. I don't get this when in 2 of those endings you end up double crossing the NCR anyways, why not allow the player to double cross the Legion? The difference being that the NCR will stand down and the Legion will then try to fight you and your army.
Caesar's Legion is weird. I love most of the faction. I love the ideological conflict between a faction trying to redo democracy but running into the same problems with corruption vs a brutal but safe dictatorship. I like talking to everyone and its cool to see how different peoples' options are of the factions. Some just hate the Legion outright because of their massacre. Some see the value of having a safe society, Cass mentions how she considered running her caravan in the Legion instead of the NCR because its safer. Its cool. However I can't get over the fact that this faction is a big ancient Rome LARP. They run around in football gear. Why not just make them look normal, or similar to Romans but not literally Romans. Its such a well crafted faction that gets ruined by this pretty silly design.
Independent is basically the House route but with you instead. You don't get to choose what your plans are other than your interactions with the small factions, which also doesn't feel special. You don't ever get to use your securitrons. It would have been extremely cool to be able to send your army with you to wipe out or subjugate factions instead of just doing the same quest you do if you side with House. Again, you are also forced into a choice between an uneasy alliance with the NCR where you double cross them, or killing both major factions. You can't make it clear to them beforehand that you don't want to be annexed.
The economy is poorly balanced. In Fallout 3 you barely made any money and vendors were just as poor, so it took a long time to accumulate wealth. Most players would just use gear they found instead of paying for it at a store. In Fallout New Vegas you can easily have 5000 caps by the time you reach The Strip. I had twice that when I reached it 2 days ago. Stores have tons of money and are more than willing to buy all your junk. The economy just breaks when vendors are willing to buy all the crap you pick up at such high prices as NV has. I think you can get them to buy for 90% of their value, that's fucking insane. I try to not level up barter too quickly as it just makes the game too easy but I also hate crippling myself like this. The game's vendors need to be selective about what they buy and how much they pay for it. You need 2000 caps to inter the strip, that's pretty much nothing. The game even gives you tons of ways around the credit check so clearly they meant for it to be a hurdle.
The map. I'm not saying its bad, but going from Fallout 3 to NV makes you miss the feeling of being able to go in any direction and always find something. New Vegas is very railroaded. It has a ton of mountains and invisible walls to make the player go specific places (Edit: a lot of people are citing this one setence and using it to rebut me, guys read the whole damn thing). I can still let myself get lost in Fallout 3, in NV I always know exactly which way I'm supposed to go. The game has no counterpart to F3's Andale or Oasis. There are no small outskirts places for you to discover in some random spot. All the towns are along the main roads, with a handful of cool places that are off the beaten path. I love following the road through Primm->Nipton->Novac->Boulder City->Vegas, its an excellent experience for following the main story and finding a ton of side content, and I love they gave returning players the option to head straight north and try their luck. But when I just want to do some side content I always feel like I have to follow a track. I AM NOT SAYING THE MAP IS BAD. Just that it follows a certain design that some don't like. I like it when I just want to do the main story, its a really nice experience that way. But if you want to just go in any direction like in a Bethesda RPG you will get disappointed. There are tons of invisible walls and mountains in the way. Imagine if you started in Freeside instead and just had to get the cash to get into the strip (more than 2k). Then you can choose to follow the I-88, go towards Jacobstown, Bitter Springs, do stuff in Freeside or the other communities around Vegas. Would be a great alternative start for returning players.

Edit: some extra

Combat is ass to say it bluntly. For some reason people always excuse the poor combat in RPG's because its not the games' focus or because its almost tradition at this point. I don't see why I as a player and paying customer should make excuses for a product I paid for. Its embarrasing how poor the AI is in the game, how poorly combat works and how unbalanced the game is. I can go through a ton of the game with my Couriers Stash 10mm and Vault armor and just blast entire legion or NCR camps, and then suddenly difficulty can turn on a dime and an enemy can kill me in 3-4 hits. Difficulty in RPGs is such an important thing as it directly influences your decisions. In Fallout 1 and 2 I did my best to not bite off more than I could chew. In NV can do pretty much anything other than go to Sloan at the start, which is a part that most have noticed too.
The selection of guns is fine, but not armors. Without ultimate edition you don't get any good early game armor in the game. The only option is leather armor. Mid game you fight to get either power armor or combat armor mk2, and late game is all about Riot Gear from Lonesome Road. They could have made armor interesting by giving it stronger buffs and debuffs. PA and metal armor has a -1 to agility but often +1 to strength. Why not give such traits to all armors and maybe even make it stronger? Too much of the armor is also faction armor which you don't want to be wearing unless you are infiltrating somewhere.
Speech is too much like Fallout 3 and not enough like 1 and 2. In 3 and NV dialogue either ends in a skill check (too often speech) or you having to do a task if you can't pass the check. What's being said is largely unimportant unless it leads to a different outcome. In Fallout 1 and 2 dialogue was much more about reading each option and thinking about how the character you were talking too would react. You often couldn't just [speech] 50 do what I want. NV has a few moments where you actually does have to argue and its some of its strongest parts.
Crafting could have been more. This is more of a "what could have been" argument, but personally I don't see why you shouldn't be able to craft a lot more guns or armors. I don't want Fallout 4's style of somehow being able to craft tons of pre war objects you clearly don't have the tools to make, but just having a good selection of makeshift guns and armors would have made crafting and also survival much better.

These are my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours!

TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html
Note: This is a re-post for visibility

THANK YOU MODS FOR LETTING THIS THROUGH!
Please click HERE for the PDF version if you would like to download the dd.
(credit: research compiled by IG:@wydstockbros)
To get things started, I'm not a financial advisor, I'm not a bot, and this one goes out to you, Chamath.
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tl;dr
AMC is the global leader in a $17 billion dollar industry that’s been beaten senseless to the ground with so much room to run. After pioneering deals with streaming services, buying out their competition, and upgrading their facilities worldwide, 80% short interest is highly inappropriate for its TRUE fundamental value — $69.69 a share.
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀$AMC TO $69.69🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀$AMC TO THE MOON🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
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"I'm questioning whether they[WSB] are actually doing the research when it comes to things like GameStop and AMC ..." - clueless CNBC dude.
I fuckin miss movies. And when I say movies, I mean the whole damn experience. I wanna buy my $15 popcorn, pour an ungodly amount of butter and jalapenos on that shit and munch in a recliner seat watching in laser 4k quality. I like this company. I like this stock.
For the past few days, I've been scouring Google for news articles and company data. I've also been trying to find some detailed DD in here but they’ve all been pretty limp-dick when it came to AMC. And most of the news articles I've read were surface-level AT BEST with a grim outlook based on first-glance analysis. Guess these analysts are just too damn lazy to dig deep.
Because when we dive into these issues, we can easily see that the theater giant may not be in as bad a situation as the media/analysts are claiming.
In fact, I believe that AMC is absolutely misunderstood, overlooked, and undervalued.
Here is why I am more confident than ever that $AMC will not only reach $30 but is in the perfect setup to see ATHs and WELL ABOVE.

I. Ugly Start, Beautiful Setup

Chances are if you are currently holding a significant position in $AMC, then most likely you've already read up on the company and its current standing in the cinema industry. You've probably read about how the corporation has nearly $5 billion dollars worth of debt with many of its locations still closed as the pandemic remains a global issue. You may have realized that new movies haven't been coming out. But more than that, you're seeing that movies are just being released on streaming platforms anyway. You might be concerned for AMC, or even the industry as a whole.
All of these concerns are very valid and based on real uncertainty, but let's break down each of these points and see if they’re as bad as analysts claim.

II. A Discussion on Debt

Media outlets keep honing in on this debt like it’s an ugly scar of the corporation. But what we need to focus on is why that debt came to be, how the money was spent, and how this debt was a strategic play in order to cement AMC into the new era of cinema-streaming.
We can categorize the money used into four parts:

New equipment and amenities
Lease payments
Maintenance costs (utilities, wages, etc.)
Expansion (buying out the competition)

Pay close attention to the last category because this one is important. Over the past five years, AMC has been acquiring smaller theater companies like Odeon. After buying out these companies, AMC then had to suit its "new locations" with the standard luxury amenities AMC is known for. This makes for a significant bulk of their debt totaling over $3 billion in just acquisitions. This was the investment that helped solidify AMCs spot as the world's largest cinema chain.
On the topic of maintenance costs, AMC managed to raise enough money to get through 2021. With ongoing news of vaccines, we can hope their efficacy leads to a speedy reopening near mid-late 2021. But when the economy does reopen—and AMC is back at full operation—what will it look like?

III. The Future of AMC

There's an elephant here.. right in this very room. Yes, streaming and cinema have had some serious beef in the past. In fact, some cinema chains are having tensions with streaming to this day. But what has AMC done in regards to streaming? They were the first to settle deals in order to partner up and take part in streaming revenue.
Yup, you read that right. AMC is both having their cake and eating it too.
Why would motion picture companies do this? Why not just end the cinema industry? To put simply, analysts are deeply underestimating the value of the "cinema experience". Just as I mentioned in the intro, I miss the cinemas. But I am definitely not alone. But let's not talk about me and the hypothetical "people'', instead let's talk about research studies.
In a 3-year study done in Korea, researchers found that shortening the window of cinema exclusivity and releasing movies on streaming early did not have a significant effect on ticket sales. And though this is a limited study done outside of the US, remember that AMC is a global corporation and these results have a hopeful outlook for the future relationship of cinema-streaming for AMC worldwide.
"But wait, you still haven't mentioned what streaming gets out of this?"
It's not what streaming "gets out of this" but rather what these motion picture companies maintain in keeping a healthy relationship with cinemas. During the peak heat of the movie theater-streaming feud, AMC halted the showing of Trolls and vowed to never show a Universal Pictures film in its theaters again if they were to continue releasing their films on streaming platforms without a proper cinema-exclusivity window. But today, we can see that the tensions have fallen and both motion picture companies and AMC have found a way to mutually benefit each other.
Now besides streaming, AMC has been investing in luxury amenities as seen by their chairs, 4K laser projectors, MERV air filtration, and ultra-surround sound speakers. With so many locations and so many amenities, they are offering full theater rentals with high demand during the pandemic. AMC has further cultivated their century-old movie experience into modern times. And this pandemic didn’t just change their amenities.
They had to learn how to cut costs and have more efficient operations in order to survive. This only spells good news for when they emerge with better operations, more money to spend, and higher valuations. So that begs the question, how high can the company's share price go realistically?

IV. Valuation

First, let's look at the Movie Theater industry as a whole in comparison to a few other popular entertainment industries:
Movie Theater US Market Size $17.1 billion
Casinos US Market Size $15.7 billion
Amusement Parks US Market Size $14 billion
Music Label Music Production US Market Size $9.4 billion
Music Publishing US Market Size $7 billion
In the world of entertainment, cinema is a very lucrative business.
And, again, who is the largest movie theater chain in the world? Yup, AMC.
Clueless CNBC dude mentioned that we retail traders don't trade with a fundamental reason but is there a fundamental reason in shorting a $17 billion dollar industry GLOBAL leader down to its grave? Does AMC deserve to die? I surely don't think so.
Now I won't touch upon squeezes in this since I'm sure many of you folk have already read/heard enough about them, but I will leave this quick intuitive article about it. And yes, these shorts can and will be squoze once we have faith in our upper valuations and investors(we) begin buying again.
And buy again we will. As many users flee limp-dick Robinhood and join one of the real brokerages, their positions/funds will be settled and ready to trade come next week. Where do you think these angry RH refugees will be putting their investments? That's right, exactly into the positions that RH stopped them from buying last week: which includes $AMC.
If you were part of the RH user base and your plays were affected by the blatant market manipulation, it's not only "not too late", but I believe it is an opportune time to BUY.
How high can it go then? When will I know it's too late to take a position?
So when we talk about valuation, many people fear the uncertainty of a stock rising far past its current value. Well, I think Chamath Palihapitiya said it best:
"Everybody that bought that stock is also underwriting how they want to own it."
In our current price-action environment, it's not too ridiculous to see how we are forming the foundations for AMC to continue rising beyond ATHs. We are already hitting nearly $16 on the day and rallying +53% while enduring heavy trade restrictions. Who's to say that this passion cannot continue? Now I’m no expert and can’t tell you how high this can go, but I am personally eyeing $69.69 as a target.
With so many current factors at play including hype, short covers, and ITM options having to be exercised, this is actually the BEST entrance to manifest its ATH valuation and chart some never before seen territory in its price action. It's like the manifest destiny of stock valuation. In fact, we may never see this opportunity for AMC again if we don't act now and solidify its value upward.
At the end of the day, prices are what the buyers/sellers settle upon so WE can pioneer that value if we damn well please. This is what a free market is all about.
Will there be people that disagree with this?
Sure.
Will people continue to short AMC as it goes up?
Absolutely.
Do I think that AMC being shorted 80% and rising is fair?
Really? See section III.
But institutions are selling off! Like Silver Lake liquidating their 44m shares.
Yes, then the next day $AMC dipped to $7.50 and has since recovered… with AMC $600m less in debt.
We all know who is shorting AMC, and I am sick of these hedge funds who think they, alone, can decide whether or not a company is worth a damn.

V. Conclusion - Resurgence

We are at the cusp of AMCs resurgence. Because most of us have been kept from participating in social activities, we can better understand that the public is yearning for a sense of normalcy. Sure we've gone pretty far with just watching movies on our TVs or computers through the pandemic, but that doesn't scratch the itch for many folk.
What you're investing into when you invest in AMC is the entire experience in tandem with its new streaming deals. And having been beaten so low—while still holding such great fundamental prospects— its share price is ready to blow up.
In the future when “The Deep Squeeze” is turned into a movie, we’ll be a part of history.
And you’re going to want to see it on the big screen.
--
Position: $50k in calls and shares
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀$AMC TO $69.69🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀$AMC TO THE MOON🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

TLDR: GameStop’s Congress hearing is on Feb 18th, they need to investigate the Prime Brokers and DTCC for their complicity in enabling naked shorting within GME and by extension, potential collusion to shut down trading on Jan 28th, the day the short squeeze was going to kick off. (stick to the end for an analysis of some illegal tactics short side hedge funds have been using)
Thesis: On the day the retail market for GME shut down on 1/28 (the day the short squeeze would’ve happened had there been no market intervention), DTCC (clearing house monopoly) shut down retail buying in order to protect itself and Prime Brokers (which privately own the DTCC) from being exposed to the consequences of being party to illegal activity. I believe Prime Brokers and DTCC need to be called to the GameStop hearing on February 18th to be questioned for their complicity in enabling illegal naked shorting of the GME stock, as well as potential collusion to shut out retail buyers on 1/28.
In my previous post (which I recommend reading for some context) I explored the subject of rampant illegal naked shorting in GME, and how Prime Brokers (consisting of banks like Goldman, Morgan, etc) and DTCC would be complicit in the naked shorting. This in turn raises the thought experiment that they would be incentivized to do anything possible to prevent the short squeeze from happening on 1/28 because had the short squeeze happened, the shorts would go bankrupt and their Prime Brokers who lent them their naked shorted shares would need to cover the shares. This would not only represent a humongous capital expense for Prime Brokers, the culpability of Prime Brokers (and that of the DTCC) in this situation would also have likely been exposed as well.
A quick primer on what a Prime Broker is: Prime Brokers are essentially the service side of the short- selling business. They lend out securities and cash, you can think of them as the “house” in a casino: They provide a gambler with markers to play and to manage his winnings. According to Matt Taibi, “Under the original concept, if a hedge fund that wanted to short a stock they would first need to “locate” the stock with his Prime Broker but as time passed, Prime Brokers increasingly allowed their hedge-fund customers to use automated systems and “locate” the stock themselves, and what this does is enable short-sellers to sell stock without delivering and thereby perform naked shorts with counterfeit shares. (source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210213125246/https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/wall-streets-naked-swindle-194908/). (I highly recommend you read Matt Taibi’s article on naked shorting and how it was used to take down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There are so many parallels with GME it’s hard to miss. It’s amazing to consider that 12 years after this article was published and brought to public awareness, the problem of naked shorting still exists as a systemic issue.)
Prime Brokers have a long history of being associated with naked shorting. To highlight a few examples, Prime Brokers like Merill Lynch and Goldman have long been implicated for naked shorting Overstock.com (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/accidentally-released-and-incredibly-embarrassing-documents-show-how-goldman-et-al-engaged-in-naked-short-selling-244035/, https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/naked-short-suit-overstock-biz-cx_lm_0202naked.html?sh=271400d1763f). Another example is when Goldman’s Prime Brokerage was implicated by the SEC in 2016 and got away with a small fine of 16 million (Source: https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-9.html). An example that very recently came in the news is a story where CIBC, BOA, UBS and TD Bank Prime Brokerages are accused of facilitating naked short selling and using counterfeit stock to attack and bring the stock price of a company from $34.77 to $1.83 (Source: https://www.securitiesfinancetimes.com/securitieslendingnews/industryarticle.php?article_id=224548).
The DTCC also has a very long history of being associated with naked shorting. The Wall Street Journal noted that 1% of the DTCC’s volume end in failure to deliver which “have put DTCC in the middle of a long-running fight over whether unscrupulous investors are driving down hundreds of small companies' share prices… DTCC has turned a blind eye to the naked-shorting problem. ” (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720). The DTCC has also had numerous complaints submitted to the SEC for enabling naked shorting (source: https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/decosta122203.htm) and have been sued tens or hundreds of times for assisting naked shorts (source: https://smithonstocks.com/part-3-in-series-on-illegal-naked-shortings-role-in-stock-manipulation-prime-brokers-and-the-dtcc-have-a-troubling-monopoly-on-clearing-and-settling-stock-trades/ and http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html and https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118359867562957720)
On 1/28 Robinhood received a letter from the DTCC at 4 am requiring them to halt trading or come up with 3 billion dollars, which Robinhood did not have, and therefore with one swoop of the pen the DTCC shut down buy side momentum but strangely allowed selling. Retail investors were shut out of the market and as any student of microeconomics would know, by shutting buy but only allowing sell, the price is bound to fall. Meanwhile while hedge funds were able to keep trading not only in the market but also crosstrade in the dark pools (“private” stock markets that retail is shut out of, more on this later), and use this crucial lifeline given to them by the DTCC to prevent the squeeze from happening that day.
With retail abruptly being shut out from buy (even cash accounts were shut out, which didn’t make sense) and only allowed to sell, almost everyone could smell manipulation was afoot (which triggered the Congress hearing) and the most of the blame was pointed at Robinhood. Personally and in hindsight, I believe Robinhood was just a willing scapegoat. When we think about who had the most to lose if a short squeeze occurred, I’ll narrow it down to three entities, Shorts and their stakeholders (ie Citadel), Prime Brokers and the DTCC.
It’s important to remember that the actual impetus that triggered the shutdown of the market for retail investors came from the DTCC. Working backwards, if you consider that GME was rampantly naked shorted and DTCC and Prime Brokers would have to be complicit in it, I believe the DTCC, Primer Brokers and possibly Citadel (who provides 40% of Robinhood’s revenue) brazenly manipulated the market on 1/28 by shutting down purchasing for retail buyers to prevent the squeeze from being squoze on that day as doing so would be catastrophic for all aforementioned parties involved. I believe that on the upcoming Gamestop Congress hearings the Financial Services Committee needs to call on decision makers of DTCC and Prime Brokers explore their role and complicity in the shut out of retail buyers that day as well as being enablers of naked shorting in GME.
An interesting thought experiment: On 1/28 when the price was 450+ and shorts were likely under 100, if we assume prime brokers allowed naked shorting in GME, then when the squeeze was about to happen (or happening), if Prime Brokers had margin had called the shorts, they would presumably also also gone down because shorts would not be able to pay in that event and the brokers would be holding the bag. By that logic, they have every incentive in this case to NOT to margin call and instead the most logical option would probably would have been to make a backroom deal, which is what I personally think most likely happened.
If you’ve read up to this point, you might be thinking what can I do about this? I am aware that there a lot of cynicism that we can’t do anything, that there will be no justice for retail investors who were harmed this situation, and that institutions and people in power will prevent anything from being done. I feel this sometimes too, but remember:
A single voice can be drowned out, but if we all speak together then we will make our voice heard. Ape Strong Together.
With the hearing coming up on February 18th, I highly recommend you email and tweet the representatives involved in the hearing, as well as your own district representatives, and urge them to read into the factors presented in this post and call the DTCC and Prime Brokers to the hearingl. They need to be questioned on why GME has so many counterfeit shares, failed to deliver, their complicity in naked shorting, and investigated for their role in the retail shut down of 1/28. Below are 4 members of congress I recommend both tweeting and emailing
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://twitter.com/AOC, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Al Green https://twitter.com/repalgreen, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Maxine Waters https://twitter.com/maxinewaters, email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Nancy Pelosi Email: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]).
And you can find other members of Financial Services Committee here to reach out to: https://financialservices.house.gov/about/committee-membership.htm
What follows should probably be a separate post, but I will take the opportunity to summarize some of the illegal tactics that shorts have been identified to be using in their war with retail investors. Note that this may not be an exhaustive list and there may be newer tactics deployed in the future. Retail investors might not have the same tricks, resources and willingness to break the law for profit as hedgies do, but my hope and belief is that if we pool our knowledge and analysis, we will figure out their game and effectively adapt.
Feel free to forward the list below to any representatives and lawmakers if you concur that these tactics were used:
Rampant Naked Shorting - With the extremely high number of Fail to Delivers (FTID) , short interest being as high as 226% recently, and institutions alone holding a staggering 177% of the total float (likely due in large part to counterfeit shares), signs strongly point to GME being rampant with naked shorts and counterfeit shares. I believe the original goal of shorts was to drive GME to bankruptcy with these naked shorts, using the laddering of naked shorts (aka short ladder attack), executed with the help of counterfeit stock which is a classic and reliable method of driving down the stock price. I believe the GME stock has seen relentlessly aggressive short attacks, especially on the week of Monday February 1st, which drove the stock price down and triggered panic selling.
Ladder Attacks with the help of Dark Pools - Another identified method of ladder attacks was identified to come from crosstrading with darkpools (the stock market has its own private stock exchange where institutions can trade…). Essentially darkpools are private stock markets retail investors do not have access to, where short side funds can purchase securities “off market” and then sell “on-market”, with the effect of creating a lot more downward pressure on the market without the upward pressure from buying.
Illegally masking shorts with synthetic longs. Another tactic shorts are suspected of using in GME is the use of illegally using options to evade short positions in violation of Reg SHO which SEC describes in this risk alert and which I elaborate in this post. Essentially it’s the use of using options to create synthetic longs to illegally and artificially cover and prolong short positions and at same time obscuring the true short interest %. If you consider that it would be far more profitable for shorts to not cover at high prices but instead ladder attack the price and wait for retail investors to lose interest and close their shorts at as low of a price as possible, then you can see why this strategy would be very effective.
Using way out-of-money call options to obscure true short interest. You may have heard about the 43 million worth of 800 dollar calls purchased when the price was 100 and found it odd. Later it was identified as a tactic to cheaply purchase synthetic call options (since at 800 its way out of money) to obscure their short positions (with the added benefit of hedging at 800 if a squeeze does happen)
One thing I want to note, particularly to legislators at the GameStop hearing: Retail investors were not incited to pump GME. Retail investors spotted a unique Short Squeeze opportunity created by the greed of short side hedge funds, whereby GameStop was being abusively naked shorted with the goal of bringing it to bankruptcy, and hedge funds were so greedy about it that they shorted the company with a short interest of 226% of float, meaning A LOT of counterfeit shares were being used to short the company. Retail investors saw this as an opportunity to short squeeze the hedge fund shorters, which is a legal and legitimate investment strategy. The short squeeze would have happened had everyone played fair, but instead, financial institutions who were culpable to the naked shorting intervened and shut down retail buying, hurting the retail investors and successfully manipulating the market. The investment itself was in my opinion a sound decision based on the short squeeze, but in hindsight retail investors did not seriously consider the risk of the market would be blatantly and publicly manipulated and that the market would be rigged against them.
If this post was useful (and I hope it was! Gave up my Friday night to write this for you Apes), please upvote for visibility and share it far and wide. The GameStop hearings could be a first step and hope towards legislative change, and it’s extremely important that the right story is told at those hearings (and by the right story I mean the real truth of what happened.) I hope the truly culpable parties are investigated and brought to justice. Again, I know many of us feel cynical that anything meaning will be done towards finding justice against the lawbreakers in this case, but if you feel even an ounce of injustice or empathy at how retail investors were unfairly harmed in the course of investing in GME, I strongly urge you to contact a legislator associated with the GameStop hearings and bring this to their attention so they can review this case with more complete information. In addition I recommend you to contact the SEC and any journalist you know or via journalist tip lines. It’s not going to be easy but the more awareness we raise the higher the likelihood our voices will be heard and positive change will be made.
As we navigate the rocky waters ahead, I’ll gift you with a favorite quote of mine:
The only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are.
🚀🚀🚀
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor, I just like the stock.
Ps. If you’ve read to the end, I’ll leave you with a few more thoughts and reminders:
- If I were to distill life into one thing, it would be to never lose hope.
- Remember that if you’ve lost money in any way shape or form, don’t be depressed, money can always be made back and the important thing is to maintain a good attitude.
- Only invest what you can afford to lose.
- Perhaps the most important factor in good investing is patience.
If you’d like to read more about counterfeiting stocks this is a good place to start http://counterfeitingstock.com/CS2.0/CounterfeitingStock.html

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Illegal Tactics and DTCC/Prime Broker Complicity In Naked Shorting & Retail Shutdown of GME (DTCC/Prime Brokers decision makers need to be questioned at the 2/18 GameStop Congress hearing)

Illegal Tactics and DTCC/Prime Broker Complicity In Naked Shorting & Retail Shutdown of GME (DTCC/Prime Brokers decision makers need to be questioned at the 2/18 GameStop Congress hearing)

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Illegal Tactics and DTCC/Prime Broker Complicity In Naked Shorting & Retail Shutdown of GME (DTCC/Prime Brokers decision makers need to be questioned at the 2/18 GameStop Congress hearing)

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In Theaters Near You: An In-Depth AMC Analysis [Response to CNBC] [DD] 🚀🚀🌕

I. Ugly Start, Beautiful Setup

II. A Discussion on Debt

III. The Future of AMC

IV. Valuation

V. Conclusion - Resurgence

Illegal Tactics and DTCC/Prime Broker Complicity In Naked Shorting & Retail Shutdown of GME (DTCC/Prime Brokers decision makers need to be questioned at the 2/18 GameStop Congress hearing)

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