The endgame is the destruction of Melvin Capital, and that's going to happen no matter what. No one can swoop in and just tank the stock price. Even if BlackRock were to dump all their shares before Friday, it likely still wouldn't be enough because that's only 13% of GME. Michael Burry's Scion Capital owns around 5%, but I don't think Dr. Burry's going anywhere either, and the reason they're going to hold is the same reason Melvin is going to go down in flames, there's simply no stock left to buy and no indication that selling makes sense right now.
The whole thing driving this is a massive buy-up of all available stock. No one wants to sell; everyone wants to buy.
If Melvin Capital were a patient in a hospital, it'd be brain dead and on life support. We're just waiting for everyone involved to say their goodbyes so the plug can be pulled.
At $90 a share, Melvin had to get a $2.75bn capital injection to stay afloat. That was the time to get out. They instead tried to force a sell-off so they could buy up cheap shares and reduce the bleeding. That failed. For roughly every $12 over $90, Melvin Capital lost $1 billion. Well at $348 a share, they're now negative $21.5bn in value. Its over. Their greed has resulted in their utter destruction.
Once Melvin's corpse is wheeled out of the hospital, BlackRock and Burry might head for the exit, especially Burry, since he bought in at $4 a share, and a 5% stake there is such an enormous return even at $200, much less $348, that at some point, you're just being a greedy asshole.
Some people on WSB a little more ruthless, and frankly with the BS that Wall Street has gotten away with for the past few decades, I can't say I blame them; they plan to hold till $1000, which hilarious and crazy as it sounds, may not be impossible, but I'd judge it unlikely.
I'd say anyone that got in $GME before the huge price spike ($20 and lower), now's a good time to cash out. You won. Your lottery ticket hit all 6 numbers. Go live your life.
To all the short-sellers, I can only bow and say, "We who are about to die, salute you."
> The endgame is the destruction of Melvin Capital, and that's going to happen no matter what.
Sure. Then what? For all the other people, that is. Just plain crashed stock prices? An unfortunate lesson in counterparty risk as they try to extract their winnings from a bankrupt hedge fund?
Exactly. We are in the middle of the story now. There always is the person who is last to sell and whoever that is stands to lose the most. It's pretty insane how sustained the rally is. You might expect it to effect prices for a day or even two thanks to the coordination until people catch on and sell, but this has been a sustained buy from various people for almost two weeks. That kind of holding power or more specifically willpower not to sell when the stock already went up 400% is what is really impressive. I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of this every single person that owns GME is from WallStreetBets. It's inevitable that at least some people from WallStreetBets gets hurt.
Aren't you scared about massive bubbles that would happen without short sellers? I don't agree with shady behavior from short sellers,
but I think it's kind of good to have the devils advocates in the market to fight against bubbles caused by the long side. And I don't know, it's all a gentleman's club, why only be angry at the short sellers? Or are they just a more easily exploited member of the establishment? (and not saying the comeuppance isn't warranted, I lean towards the side of the little guy in this)
Short sellers are a necessary group of market participants for revealing fraud and putting downward pressure on stock prices. However, this particular short seller was clearly making foolish decisions and I see no reason that he shouldn't lose it all.
Yep, totally agreed. I have no sympathy for this one, but part of me is concerned about whether or not it has a cooling effect on short selling in general and if it does, lots of people will feel some pain in the burst of the ensuing bubble.
Since Melvin shorted the stock, there's potentially no limit to their losses, we're just at -21.5 billion right now. Who knows! At this rate we might end up -100 billion by Friday... up is down and right is left in this crazy new world.
> Since Melvin shorted the stock, there's potentially no limit to their losses,
This is the narrative going around, but is there any evidence that they had a completely un-hedged position? That they had absolutely no cover at all? I know you said "potentially no limit", but you say that, and continue on to posture that they're obviously down $21.5B. As far as I understand it, their TAUM is ~13B. So you're claiming that they lost the entire fund, and are just... pretending it didn't happen?
Lets pretend that GME goes to 1500/share, and Melvin Capital materially misrepresented (ie, criminally lied, which feels like a big accusation) about exiting their position, and they find themselves down $100B. Again, they only have ~13B TAUM.
Where do you expect the other $87B to come from? Or did you switch half-way through and are not just talking about Melvin Capital anymore?
> So you're claiming that they lost the entire fund, and are just... pretending it didn't happen?
Yes. That's right. You've exactly understood it.
> is there any evidence that they had a completely un-hedged position?
The question isn't, "Did they have a completely un-hedged position?" the question is, "Can the rest of their positions in the market cover this specific position?"
There's every reason to believe they're flat out lying about having liquidated their short position in $GME.
Don't worry though. At 4 p.m. on Friday, we'll know for sure. Just hang tight and wait. I predict its going to be a painful time for Melvin.
Diamond hands all the way. They had the chance to take it on the chin like a man, but they wanted to play rough, so we'll play rough.